The Collective Gaze: Samples of Something That Concerns Us All
Opening: October 4th 2019, 6 pm
Exhibition: October 4th – November 1st 2019
📍Pilot, The Paintbrush Factory, Cluj, Romania
Curators: Mihai Iepure-Górski, Răzvan Anton
Participants: Matei Bejenaru, Cristina Bogdan, Ágnes-Evelin Kispál și Attila Kispál, Könczei Csilla, Monotremu, Tim Nădășan, Alina Șerban and Ștefania Ferchedău, Raluca Voinea
Partners: Institutul Prezentului, IDEA, B5 Studio, Casa Tranzit, ODD, Tranzit.org/ro, Magma, Universitatea de Arta si Design Cluj-Napoca, Centrul de Fotografie Contemporană, Iaşi – RO.
An anniversary moment or a post-existence moment – placed in a post-apocalyptic scenario – when our existence no longer has to do with survival (already classified), but rather becomes an apparition, not at all real. 1 year or 10 mean the same thing when relating to a complete, continuous, timeless time, the time of our culture (the winter of our discontent). We are not talking about survival, nor resistance, but existence. Now, after 10 years, we come to ask ourselves not if we’ll resist, but if we have ever existed.
We look around for other safe places, safe from this raw asphalt desert, where things seem to disappear in front of a monster that swallows everything (including people) and transforms everything into asphalt, cars and office buildings.
Who are these people that make up this so-called independent sector, the independents, or rather, what are they? What kind of conditions made them, what kept them alive until now and when will they be sacrificed? What will they be sacrificed for? Will they be remembered? We take samples of their existence, their presence, their rare occurrence. They are now ours and we are theirs, their end is our end. Their look is our look. We are talking about a collective, and a collective look that looks back at us, that establishes, decides our destiny in a concise, direct, marked, classified way. Messiahs.
We don’t have conclusions, only voices that whisper softly, they are talking about us now, back and forth, at the same time. The 90’s, 2000, 2010, 2020 or 20 20 are the same.
Art? It’s not about art anymore and maybe it never has been. What we now call art is just an excuse for life, for being.
What else is there to do? This sentence sounds perfectly familiar, because it is familiar. Do we find something to justify the act itself of doing, taking action or continuing? Maybe it’s inertia that remains, the one that pushes us. Disengaged from it, however, disengaged from the rear point and the ahead point, we stand still, inert, perplexed.