Over the Counter

The Phe­no­me­na of Post-so­ci­a­list Eco­nomy in Con­tem­por­ary Art

HUN­GA­RI­AN AND IN­TER­NA­TI­O­NAL CON­TEM­POR­ARY ART EX­HI­BIT­ION

“We know that art is not an ideal of be­auty that is out­si­de the rule of so­ci­al law, but ama­ni­fe­sta­ti­on of life that is de­ter­mi­ned by the other for­ces of the age, and de­ri­ves from, as well as acts upon, our every­day lives. The so­ci­al and po­li­ti­cal cri­ses of the age have con­se­qu­ently never been in­de­pen­dent from the cri­ses art has ex­pe­ri­en­ced. There is,howe­ver, a short delay bet­ween the two.” (LAJOS KAS­SÁK: A KOR­SZE­RŰ MŰ­VÉ­SZET ÉL, 1925)

The ex­hi­bit­ion called Over the Coun­ter has been ins­pi­red by the eco­no­mic il­lu­sions, utopi­as, cre­a­ti­vity and frus­tra­ti­on that Cent­ral Euro­pe has been home to re­cently, and is­ma­de re­le­vant by the glo­bal eco­no­mic cris­is which began in 2008, and which can be lo­o­ked upon as a ne­ga­tive cri­ti­que of the pro­cess of adopt­ing the ca­pi­ta­list order. The title of the ex­hi­bit­ion re­fers to dif­fe­rent work prog­res­ses going on in the ser­vi­ce sec­tor, and beyond this to the po­sit­i­on of ar­tists in the pro­duc­ti­on. Eit­her­we take the „ef­fec­tive” evas­ion of cert­ain rules, or the cros­sings of dif­fe­rent eco­no­mi­cal pro­ces­ses, we find the pro­duct on the coun­ter, and this is the very thing to which we can re­la­te. The Eng­lish vers­ion of the title stands for a quasi in­for­mal or di­rect­mar­ket that avo­ids stock­mar­ket. Also it can­me­an non-pre­script­ion­me­di­ci­ne – in the case of the ex­hi­bit­ion we would like to state the fle­xi­bi­lity of eco­no­mi­cal pro­ces­ses and the exis­ten­ce of an out-of-cont­rol but ope­rab­le me­chan­ism. The ex­hi­bit of­fers an op­por­tunity to look for ar­tis­tic prac­ti­ces that the­ma­ti­ze such so­ci­al con­di­tions that re­sult from the eco­no­mic changes of the past few de­ca­des, or bear tes­ti­mony to out­lo­oks that root in ar­tis­tic at­ti­tu­des to­wards these changes.

In 1989 the so­ci­a­list count­ri­es en­te­red what came to be called the tran­sit­i­on pe­ri­od. Po­li­ti­cally, it­me­ant the adopt­ion of de­moc­ra­tic ins­ti­tu­tions, while eco­no­mi­cally it was a tran­sit­i­on from so­ci­al­ism to mar­ket eco­nomy, the ins­ti­tu­tions of a neo­li­be­ral ca­pi­ta­list sys­tem. Cur­rently, the post-so­ci­a­list count­ri­es are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a do­ub­le cris­is: one the one hand, the tran­sit­i­o­nal­mo­del en­vis­ag­ed twenty years ago seems to be un­succ­ess­ful, and on the other, the re­gi­on has still not re­a­ched the level of wes­tern mo­der­nity. The idea of com­mu­nism can be cons­idered a ra­di­cal vers­ion of­mo­der­nism,which­may have fai­led but still pre­sents a cul­t­u­ral and so­ci­al chal­len­ge when it comes to re­in­terp­ret­ing, re­form­ing or rep­la­cing the ins­ti­tu­ti­o­nal and be­ha­vi­o­u­ral ide­als it pro­po­s­ed. Art, a branch of the en­terta­in­ment in­dustry, is put into a dif­fi­cult po­sit­i­on by the cur­rent cris­is as the new in­vestment in­te­rests ha­ve­ma­de it som­eth­ing of a lu­xury ar­tic­le.

The ex­hi­bit­ion fea­tu­res ar­tist, fe­no­me­nons, prob­lems fro­mall over the re­gi­on, from the Czech Re­pub­lic to Ar­me­nia, from­Lit­hu­a­nia to the for­mer Yu­gos­la­via, ar­tists who red­raw the po­li­ti­cal map of Ea­s­tern Euro­pe: these are not the ea­s­tern out­posts of the Euro­pe­an Union, but a ter­ri­to­ry where sur­vi­val and pros­pe­rity do not fol­low the wes­tern­mo­dels, but was pre­dest­i­na­ted to go on a dif­fe­rent way.