[From the Contemporary Art Archive to the Centre for Art Analysis]

In fact I never liked I called it an archive; (when I was in Sibiu, in high-school, all the time I was passing by the Archives of the City; it was a beautiful building, which always had a huge lock, and all the time I was wondering, what these archives would contain?; I never thought of going there or to try and research, because I didn’t know what to research, but I imagined what it could contain: photographs, documents, letters… - and I think that if you imagine is anyway much better than if you go there. Anyhow, I was associating the archive with dust, with dusty files, inactivated, not manipulated by anyone, and that’s where my restraint to use the word archive came from). Also, I didn’t really try hard to find another term, as in a way my material was a research material and an archive structure was suitable for it.

Now I can’t give up the word archive, and I don’t even want to, as it covers a certain way of working, it was a period (entire years) of archiving and then of research.

How I started this archive: first I wanted to know what is art, art theory, art education, even management, critic, curator, all these notions which I never learnt (in school), and which I was trying to understand.

Everything was organic; I was starting something that necessitated a certain attitude, a certain approach, a certain frame, etc.

After I had my first exhibition with the Archive in the public space, at the gallery Studio 35, in 98, working to structure my material, I started to read it more attentively and to realise that certain paths for analysis were developing, and in this way it is natural to arrive at a centre for art analysis, and to detective; it’s not just a simple decision, like what if I was a detective?; I felt like a detective, digging, for example I realised I won’t have enough time to research even the materials that I have, and all their openings; so the archive can be structured in different way, it could be chronologically, a West-East mix, alphabetically, thematically, on mediums, on countries, on subjects… Now it is somehow as a museum, on departments.

In fact it’s the system that pushes one to articulate as a project, or as an institution. As for the history of this archive, I pushed the moment of beginning farther in time, in 85, as it was then when I had an apartment and organized informal meetings, without plan and project, without calling it art, but doing in fact what we do also now: putting into contact people from different fields. In fact I wanted to listen and to find out how the other was working, the theatre director, the actor (the milieu in which we were moving then, in Oradea), and it is apartment art if you want, or relational aesthetics from 85, if we want to name it with a word that now everybody understands. It was an articulation of a professional context within which to move, as otherwise I was moving inside my flat, who wants to realise they are moving inside a flat from a block of flats?!; everything was unclear, and these things helped me to find my place somehow, to find a reference point in the other, to know what they think, and if we can somehow collaborate; these were not events, it happened when we had something to eat, a certain amount of good mood, when we were paid the wages, when the theatre directors from Bucharest came to work on a certain play; I was working at the theatre, Dan at the museum, Dan was visited by journalists, students, fans…

In 87 I founded within the Art Academy the experimental studio, for which I had guests from outside the academy; I made performaces, I was answered with other works; everything was connected. After the open flat there was the experimental studio, and in 91 we [Dan and I] received an artist studio; what were we to produce, we didn’t have any money, so we invited people that we met, from different fields, plus the wave of Westerners who had started to come to the East. In 96 we opened the studio, pretending it was a sort of space where anyone can come, we didn’t arrange anything inside it, we left it as it was, and it went like this for a week, and then the TV and radio came, we had live transmissions from the studio; the end of this was a debate, with people from different disciplines, about the freedom of expression…

I like more to rely on intuition, I’m not pretending I am right, I look for and I find the material that satisfies my questions.

I’m not living in the West, I’m not living here anymore either; here it’s a weak context, you cannot possibly rely on it as you would be finished, in the West you are not living long enough to understand it, so in this space between I thing I situate myself, as a person, as a professional, as an approach…, a researcher in between, and then it’s normal that I can only count on intuition.

In 99 I started to prepare the second presentation in the public space, and that’s when I arrived at the Centre for Art Analysis; about this moment there can be many dates, if someone, another detective, starts questioning me and wants precisely some things, as they can be relevant, the itinerary can be reconstituted point by point.

Another important moment which makes the demonstration of the Centre would be the publication-newspaper Sense, which before it became a newspaper was a diagram of the art context in Romania, published in Balkon [contemporary art magazine in Romania], I think this must have been in 99, and in which I was trying to show the positions in contemporary art at a national level, with official and alternative ones, and this implies a research.

I might as well think of using a 3rd CAA, the Autonomous Art Centre, as there was our money, and it resembles a private collection after all.

I think the Centre sounds more categoric, and more serious, more theoretical, that’s why I think it covers better what I do now.

Detective is a word which was born from several situations, just like dizzydent; dizzydent is connected more to our attitude towards the museum [the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest], I was talking to Dan about this, and we were joking, but in fact it’s real dissidence, with stomach aches, with panic, but also with an attitude where you assume any risk, as the authentic dissidents did in communism; on the other hand, although the tension is powerful, finally the borders are not closed anymore, you have a passport in your pocket and a support abroad, a network which is easier to build.

Detective: I was thinking, if I say researcher, which seemed to me a very interesting character, totally absorbed into his/her discipline, well, I’m not really like that, to make abstraction of everything outside, I have an amazing patience and projects developed in years, but I have contact with the outside, I’m not really autistic, and thus the story with the detective is more appropriate, as you have a thread and you’re following it, now I don’t know if it’s about a corpse, an intellectual theft, of kidnapped people or all of these together.  

    [How do you see the public of the archive, the people who came to your studio and participated in a way or another to the CAA]

You know we did performance; I believe we did it for real, we invented it for ourselves in 87, when we didn’t know what performance was. So this idea to release anything in this communication with the other which is the so-called public, goes back to the beginning of the Archive; I always liked the other, from the public or whatever it is, and I always believed in the other who is not trained, I didn’t liked the specialists (I’m talking in general, there are of course exceptions), but I like the other as a child, as they tell you directly what they feel, what they think. Of course, sometimes you need different understandings; we read according to the culture we have, but a person with a modest education can have intuition, which can compensate for culture. I don’t even know if I really want to tell them anything, if I have an important message for the other, but I like to talk, to be close, to look at them.

In 92, when I had my first personal exhibition (at the Simeza gallery), I stayed in the gallery from the first to the last day, like the gallery assistant, and unless I was asked I didn’t say there were my works, and even if I was asked, in order to give all the freedom to the other, to say anything, without any censorship, I was saying I’m working there; but I liked to follow attitudes, to hear what they say, to see what’s happening, that is, for whom are you making what you’re making, why, and if it has any relevance, if it’s worth doing it, if you have anything to say.

It’s a risk working with people, they are fragile and you have a huge responsibility; it’s as if taking someone with you, and then you have to carry them; it’s hard, you’re barely carrying yourself…

  I wasn’t even thinking to be an artist, in fact I wanted to be a psychologist…

For a long time… I had the obsession that I’m wasting my time; now I know to articulate it better; I say, I don’t have any time to waste, so I will only meet interesting people and I will only know interesting things; so I wish I know everything interesting that’s happening; and I look for it, I ask and I also find out; then there are other conditions: to have not only a position of artist, or theoretician, but also something else; I liked to see in the others what we were doing, you’re not a selfish artist, taking care only of your agenda, your career, money, but you also give; and this is connected to a larger approach. I don’t know which is the right way and how the things should be done, if we all convene that what’s happening in Romania is not right, everybody says: well you know it’s not working, it’s not possible, we can’t articulate anything together, we can’t stay together, we are not managers, some things are true, I also have a problem with them, but what would be good, and what is it to be done, where do we start from.

It was a sort of bet, let’s see what happens if you give and you’re not waiting for anything in return; and how is it to admit when something good happens which is done by someone else. Somehow we are afraid, for if you say: I like this and this, everybody follows you, and here we are with a statue in our arms; this doesn’t mean you are like a dead leaf in the wind, I think it’s different with people, you grow and you diminish from time to time, and when you diminish, someone else grows, that’s why I don’t believe in famous artists, and I don’t like recipes.  

Anyway, the people we supported and we support are not weak persons, on the contrary…   

[CAA now and in the future]

I think it will never end, just like I discovered it started since we started…

I would like it to be a centre for art analysis also for other people…

You can only do what motivates you…

The archive as a laboratory of the artist and not only…

It’s a work of art, and what’s the point in making all the lines visible…

I am at the stage where I’m rethinking what it means to be an artist in the East and in the West…

In my archive I’m trying to make sense; information is everywhere, everybody has it…

This text is based on a conversation that took place between Lia Perjovschi, Raluca Voinea and Eduard Constantin in August 2005.