The Principle of Pseudo-documentarism in the Central European and
Balkan Post-totalitarian Visual Arts
The present text is in fact an unsystematic diary, as it reflects experiences I gathered during my collaboration with contemporary Central European and Balkan visual artists and exhibiting institutions. In the course of my travels, undertaken while working on a number of curatorial projects, I repeatedly encountered feelings of ambiguous nostalgia, combined with a critique of the recent totalitarian past, as well as a cautious expectation of further developments. I gradually came to realize the specificity of my own lot in the midst of social and political change, as well as the efforts of a whole number of artists of my generation to reflect this hybrid environment, and to some degree also to mediate it. With them I often felt as though I was rambling in the streets of the film Casablanca, in a world on the edge of events in which the reflections of a given period formed a unique hybrid with an ingenuously composed structure of its own visual (and to some extent also mimetic) pseudo-documentation.
Indeed, the situation of contemporary Central European and Balkan visual art has much in common with the atmosphere of this notorious American film. Similar to the protagonists of this spectacular story, post-totalitarian art finds itself in an unstable environment full of perils but also powerful stories, intense relationships and dynamic turning points. This art represents a moderate pathos of the crucial social and political transformation and at the same time is permeated with a natural scepticism (a kind of engaged distance) of individual standpoints in relation to systemic processes. A work of art in the social context often attains the character of a cultural and social sign, the essence of which is applying the tenets of documenting reality, of the confrontation of reality with artificiality. The thematized reality is seen in the perspective of its specific historical, social, cultural and aesthetic aspects. There thus emerges an aesthetic code, the basic function of which lies in its ability to forge an authentic and at the same time tautological reference to a significant location and its social climate. The focus on the ”otherness“ of one's own position at the same time develops the critique of the dominance of the so-called Western world, and, in the context of Derrida's ”differénce“ also the tenets of deconstructionist theory. Contemporary Central European and Balkan visual arts often employ this ”otherness“ in the process of signifying, giving preference within this framework to hybrid models of pseudo- documentarism, fiction, or representation. This gives rise to a specific discourse of aesthetic erroneousness, of visual unsettling and seduction, which is suffused with the critique of the dominance of globalization and the absence of a firm institutional framework as well as an intense supplementarity of meaning.
From the point of view of the means of artistic devices, the emphasis on the pseudo-documentary quality, or fictitiousness, in contemporary Central European and Balkan art is particularly accented in photography, as well as in various forms of video art. In this respect, however, we must draw attention to a new understanding of photography which on the level of technology has expanded the province of the media for the technical production of still images (aside from traditional photography, these include various digitally enhanced and computer-manipulated visual products). We may find a whole number of reasons for such a massive expansion of technical pseudo-documentary images into the sphere of post-totalitarian visual art. For the sake of simplicity, we can divide these into external (responses to the theoretical and institutional trends in the global context of contemporary art), and internal (reflections on the local social and cultural situation) tendencies. Absolutely crucial in this context is the confrontation of the post- totalitarian cultural milieu with the position of the medium of photography within the overall context of the international art scene, which was itself heavily influenced by postmodernist impulses during the first half of the 1990s.
Within the framework of the independent culture which emerged in the Central European and Balkan totalitarian societies before the fall of the Berlin Wall, photography had a distinctively modernist position. It was often even placed outside of the sphere of the visual arts, maintaining its integrity as a separate genre, insisting on the ”autonomy of the image, and the palpable presence of the author“ (Abigail Solomon- Godeau), and, last but not least, it stressed the auratic nature of each photograph. Photographers thus instinctively reacted to the ideological deformation at the very foundations of visual communication, and at the same time deliberately developed a strong tradition of avant-garde photography. The incursion of postmodern discourse into the raw post- totalitarian atmosphere brought about most importantly a general debate on the nature and limits of the medium of photography, similar to those taking place in the Euro-American context since the 1970s. (full article is available after purchasing a subscription - not available now)
The present text is in fact an unsystematic diary, as it reflects experiences I gathered during my collaboration with contemporary Central European and Balkan visual artists and exhibiting institutions. In the course of my travels, undertaken while working on a number of curatorial projects, I repeatedly encountered feelings of ambiguous nostalgia, combined with a critique of the recent totalitarian past, as well as a cautious expectation of further developments. I gradually came to realize the specificity of my own lot in the midst of social and political change, as well as the efforts of a whole number of artists of my generation to reflect this hybrid environment, and to some degree also to mediate it. With them I often felt as though I was rambling in the streets of the film Casablanca, in a world on the edge of events in which the reflections of a given period formed a unique hybrid with an ingenuously composed structure of its own visual (and to some extent also mimetic) pseudo-documentation.
Indeed, the situation of contemporary Central European and Balkan visual art has much in common with the atmosphere of this notorious American film. Similar to the protagonists of this spectacular story, post-totalitarian art finds itself in an unstable environment full of perils but also powerful stories, intense relationships and dynamic turning points. This art represents a moderate pathos of the crucial social and political transformation and at the same time is permeated with a natural scepticism (a kind of engaged distance) of individual standpoints in relation to systemic processes. A work of art in the social context often attains the character of a cultural and social sign, the essence of which is applying the tenets of documenting reality, of the confrontation of reality with artificiality. The thematized reality is seen in the perspective of its specific historical, social, cultural and aesthetic aspects. There thus emerges an aesthetic code, the basic function of which lies in its ability to forge an authentic and at the same time tautological reference to a significant location and its social climate. The focus on the ”otherness“ of one's own position at the same time develops the critique of the dominance of the so-called Western world, and, in the context of Derrida's ”differénce“ also the tenets of deconstructionist theory. Contemporary Central European and Balkan visual arts often employ this ”otherness“ in the process of signifying, giving preference within this framework to hybrid models of pseudo- documentarism, fiction, or representation. This gives rise to a specific discourse of aesthetic erroneousness, of visual unsettling and seduction, which is suffused with the critique of the dominance of globalization and the absence of a firm institutional framework as well as an intense supplementarity of meaning.
From the point of view of the means of artistic devices, the emphasis on the pseudo-documentary quality, or fictitiousness, in contemporary Central European and Balkan art is particularly accented in photography, as well as in various forms of video art. In this respect, however, we must draw attention to a new understanding of photography which on the level of technology has expanded the province of the media for the technical production of still images (aside from traditional photography, these include various digitally enhanced and computer-manipulated visual products). We may find a whole number of reasons for such a massive expansion of technical pseudo-documentary images into the sphere of post-totalitarian visual art. For the sake of simplicity, we can divide these into external (responses to the theoretical and institutional trends in the global context of contemporary art), and internal (reflections on the local social and cultural situation) tendencies. Absolutely crucial in this context is the confrontation of the post- totalitarian cultural milieu with the position of the medium of photography within the overall context of the international art scene, which was itself heavily influenced by postmodernist impulses during the first half of the 1990s.
Within the framework of the independent culture which emerged in the Central European and Balkan totalitarian societies before the fall of the Berlin Wall, photography had a distinctively modernist position. It was often even placed outside of the sphere of the visual arts, maintaining its integrity as a separate genre, insisting on the ”autonomy of the image, and the palpable presence of the author“ (Abigail Solomon- Godeau), and, last but not least, it stressed the auratic nature of each photograph. Photographers thus instinctively reacted to the ideological deformation at the very foundations of visual communication, and at the same time deliberately developed a strong tradition of avant-garde photography. The incursion of postmodern discourse into the raw post- totalitarian atmosphere brought about most importantly a general debate on the nature and limits of the medium of photography, similar to those taking place in the Euro-American context since the 1970s. (full article is available after purchasing a subscription - not available now)