Ana Kun & Gavril Pop
Collective reveries

Ana Kun

We propose here a dialogical format for a reverie on the subject of collectives, communal work and living, art as a part of life, and exhibitions that need to happen. Gavril and I have these exploratory conversations in our studio that we share with Lucian Barbu, Livia Coloji and Răzvan Cornici. Balamuc is its name, allowing under this label any and all thoughts to occur, both welcomed and intrusive, all meals to be shared, both in labor and in enjoyment, and any project to be built with deep consideration for others and never at the cost of our friendship. This dialogue proposes some seeds for the future of our art collective and the near-by world as we can perceive it without dissolving our voices into one collective author.

Gavril Pop

Not young enough to disconsider a more critical approach, not old enough to fear getting stuck, I realize how institutions still promote a highly individualistic view of creation and not only. Now I find myself more and more working collectively and when not, at least side by side with someone, potentiating each other’s solitude, while knowing that there is someone on the other side with whom you can bounce ideas. Balamuc is a palpable utopia, barely replicable, and I’m highly grateful for all my colleagues. At the same time, groups and collectives differ a lot in nature, depending on their scopes and formations. Applying for funds, for example, changes things. Our work circles can be complicated. Maybe this could be a pretext to revise our collectivity, to cut off this alienating feeling, and to establish safer spaces to experiment.

AK

One of the conversations we have is on the ideal and necessary exhibition in Timișoara. The thought has developed this far. We would include the following artists: Sorin Oncu, who’s life and work isn’t celebrated enough, the group H’arta, a long-lived and relevant collective, Silvia Moldovan, for her labor of care for non-human animals that is both life and art, Elvisey Pisică, for his grounded spoken word, but we would also look into crafts and other gardens of delights.

GP

Fleeting thoughts, or simple laments, occur at times of apparent frustration and disillusionment. They are not directed just towards the meanders of our rather small city but they also consider the implications of this difficult world we are transiting. It’s not this city that is in the wrong, but maybe a larger thing, some undefined identity crisis, a resistance towards cultural gentrification while nurturing a critical approach related to collective memory. We are aware that what happened is never to be replicated, as the nature of resources changed and redistributed. The financial crisis at the end of the 2000’s and the proliferation of other types of art events and institutions not only speculated the shift of a type of creative capital but also proposed other cultural models and paradigms. I’m not entirely sure of the nature of this new paradigm, I’m thinking of it from time to time – it seems abrupt. What I see now is a sort of leveling, another turning point is approaching where many are in tune. Let’s head towards a decentralized, decolonial, unbiased art history as much as we can.

GP

I contain a number of overly courageous ambitions that I’m not sure I’ll be able to perform, related to research, curating, talking about, who knows, you name it. It is all about creating contexts to reflect. I have this belief that many of the things and attitudes that occurred at the end of the ‘90s and all through the 2000 suddenly disappeared, never to be possible to reiterate. The world, as politics, economy, and cultural landscape, changed, maybe too quickly, and because of that things were lost. Only this unreplicable factor allows me a somehow historicizing approach, at least for a while. An exhibition about what happened at Studentfest in Timișoara, exhibitions that showcase more of our industrial, mercantile, and transitory past, so as not to get buried in mimetic cultural discourses. I find myself gathering many bits and pieces of this recent past from all friends and foes and some outrageous and cheeky happenings have a glimpse of visibility thanks to young initiatives and student-groups. It’s through these kinds of discussions that we allow an organic trajectory to emerge and not let the past be confiscated by dubious ideologies. And just like that, one could encourage the spread of new practices that do not seek nor strive for institutional acceptance.

AK

We also talk about overworking. It’s an ironic conversation to have now that we’re working on this text against a tight deadline among other tight deadlines. We overwork while trying to imagine refusing work or even some form of art boycott. It was tried before in practice, but it failed because it wasn’t completely imagined. The boycott of art as a means to change the art world wasn’t the popular subject that it should have been. Rather than allowing ourselves new highs of exploitation, especially after the new forms of precarity brought on by the covid19 never-ending pandemic, we should imagine other ways of being artists (and curators, and others) and plan for the right moment to make it happen. To oversimplify things, the peak of the pandemic was a fertile moment for change. Other moments will come, and with them a myriad of questions on the purpose of art at the end of one world and the beginning of another will make most moves difficult. Regardless of enormous questions, while we are planning the revolution, we can form stronger networks of care in which a diversity of roles can flourish. To imagine a way of doing/curating art that can be sustainable and of substance, but also not drive us into an early grave, should be an exercise we do more often.

GP

Maybe the extent to which our work goes is much further than the art-worlds at large might define. A labor of care directed towards the people around us, the non-human species around us, our families, and extended families partake, conscientiously or not, in our humble acts of creation. Of course, I often question the work-related and societal structures that I take part in where, almost every time, the only reasonable conclusion seems to be scaling down. Scale down the art world, scale down our consumption and even our production, not just in terms of physical objects but also in terms of the resources that we utilize. I experience great joy when facing small works, things that almost seem to appear in the world not in spite of it but as a result of an accumulation of worldly processes that materialize or speculate; I’d like to falsely declare: the birth of new particles is possible. I know, there is this theory that says that there is a finite amount of energy in the universe, and then there are just as many ways to rearrange it until it implodes, and then start anew. But enough with these scientific suppositions and imaginations. In short, I believe in a kind of art that does something, not just merely shows something.

GP

More and more, I realize how intricate our relationships with labor are, whether cultural or not, even if I would say that culture encompasses much more than our institutions might presume. It is something about life, about embodied knowledge and experience and some sort of continuous method of doing and seeing, ways of living, if you want. I can hardly now understand our labor outside the community that nurtures it. Some number of small archipelagos that we daily sail in-between. This togetherness is not just something of the present, but also a seed for the future.

AK

A more generous view of art production is necessary. Art making is possible because many people are contributing work, including mediators and viewers, either interpreting or ignoring the art object. The label should strive to cover this additional labor as much as possible, sharing the focus with the now invisible yet indispensable workers. It always took a village to raise an artist.