RÜHM T on Toompea Hill
First published in Kultuurileht, 25 October 1996
When something ends up in a museum, it becomes institutionalised and
is turned into an object for art history to deal with. This is what
has occurred in the case of Rühm T: the sign of their having
become a part of art history is the fact that the final art history
examination of the Academy of Art contains a question about Rühm
T.
O for Obituary
Whether it is good or bad is not a question worth asking. It could be
regarded as the obituary of the movement, but that would not be a
tragedy. The members of the group do not need the spirit of
collectivity &endash;it would become an impediment. Membership of
Rühm T has largely become decoration, a brilliant, if heavy
jewel in the setting of their biography which needs to be reduced now
that they are experiencing the first pangs of independence. Anyway,
Rühm T is a movement the names of whose members will be
mentioned in Estonian art history.
Q for a Quote from the official history
In 1986 the dynamic Rühm T came into being. Its members defined
themselves in relation to rock music, and aimed at an audience from
among the younger generation. They distanced themselves from the
greats of Estonian art, "who reflected their own time, which said
very little to a younger generation". In their first manifesto, the
artists proclaim their identity with the technocratic world and
civilisation, declaring: there is no gift for creation, simply the
will to create... We look to the East, West, North and South and into
our selves... We are both cool and feverish...At first, performances
belonged, with paintings and installations, to parallel fields of
art, forming a whole. They became dominant in the 80s and early 90s.
Later, the integral trio of Rühm T &endash; Raoul Kurvitz, Urmas
Muru and Peeter Pere nonetheless profiled themselves as separate
"stage" artists. From Vappu Vaber's point of view, Rühm T has
been complex, manneristically paradoxical and pretentious. He has
described the more conspicuous Raoul Kurvitz as the demiurge who
rages, despite openly yearning for something sacred and
untouchable.
M for Movement
Movements spring from the desire to make a rapid breakthrough. As a
rule, the group in contemporary art has tended to be a microcosm
aimed at securing a place safe from the pressure of a hostile
society. In Soviet Estonia this used to have a somewhat different
significance. Artists behaved like their equivalents in the West,
aping them to a certain extent and beginning to act like those "in
the wide art world outside". This was the chief principle in the
1960s (e.g. the ANK, Soup and Visarid movements) and later, although
these were not the only impulses guiding the movement.
For a group in the West, what was important was making your name
known and achieving success in the eyes of potential buyers,
galleries and museums. In this respect, the commercial importance of
the Estonian movements was not particularly large. Here, what counted
more was the whiff of dissidence. From the point of view of the
establishment, and the art organisations linked to it, their
significance was largely a negative one. For the members of the
movement, the psychological support gained by belonging was of
particular significance.When considering membership of a movement,
the effect of belonging to the same generation should not be
underrated, nor the common intellectual current or the desire to
develop and be influenced by the others. Nor should we forget the
effects of working together as a group: specific characters and
talents were actively sought out, which led to the creation of group
awareness, an understanding of the role the movement should play in
the world of art.
Rühm T made its breakthrough at a time when communism was being
replaced by a developing type of capitalism, and this made its career
an interesting one. The group went through a number of important
stages from being an underground movement to being a circle of young
semi-celebrities. They represented, as was said apologetically,
contemporary ideas on art. They succeeded in gaining sovereign status
in local art life and even, to a certain extent, enjoyed
international fame both as a movement and as individual
artists.
P for Performance
Their activities are inextricably linked with the rise of performance
art during the late 1980s. This wave, in which Rühm T played a
central part, was linked with the major social changes taking place
as Estonia regained its independence. One could say that this gained
them appreciation from the general public; but even without the
collapse of the Soviet Union, their activities would still have
survived. They would simply have found other outlets.
Another Quote
The highpoint of Estonian performance art came between the years 1991
and 1993. In early 1991, Rühm T's A Guide to Intronomadism was
staged at the Tallinn Art Hall. On 15th February the programmatic
text Nomadistical Rituals... appeared in the weekly Eesti Ekspress in
which the author, Hasso Krull, terms their activities the
undertakings of desperadoes, the marriage of the Flying Dutchman.
Heie Treir characterises these performances as full of brutality,
with the title "Assault Troops Conquer the Art Hall!" and goes on to
describe them as a Vitalistic attempt to make ideal intellectual
processes immediately visible to the public and draw their attention
to their energy and the bionic field surrounding the artists. Ants
Juske regards Rühm T as "brutal dandies" in their work, and
"expressive decadents" as a group.In the course of the 17 days during
which the exhibition lasted, 20 performances were given, and their
initiators were mostly Raoul Kurvitz, Peeter Pere and Urmas Muru. The
ideas for three of the performances originated with Maria Avdjushko,
Tarvo Hanno Varres and Hasso Krull. The music and sound effects were
the creation of Ariel Lagle.
I for Imagology
Rühm T has, more than any other movement in Estonia, worked on
its own image. This has been done without relying on positive noises
coming from art historians or theoreticians. Furthermore, the
movement has attempted to engage ideologues from its own ranks, such
as Hasso Krull, but most notably Raoul Kurvitz and Urmas Muru have
also put pen to paper. Besides having managed to write everything
themselves, the trio have demonstrated marked arrogance towards the
reviews written about them. "No gratitude whatsoever! Not for being
mentioned in reviews, nor for longer critical articles!" &endash;
Such are the reactions of the people who earn their daily bread by
writing.
T for Toompea
Considering everything that has been written about them, and the fact
that they have been promoted quite energetically, this review of the
exhibition at the Estonian Art Museum is perhaps unnecessary. It
could be claimed, nonchalantly, that everything is OK since it has
now all been institutionalised, that there is nothing more to be
said.One could allow oneself to point out the relatively non-academic
air of the exhibition. For instance, no ten-year-old paintings or
rusty installations have been brought together here: the demand was
only for fresh, new things. We see no "legendary" works which can be
seen ad nauseam in the local art press, and of which endless author's
copies have been made which are immediately sold out.We can see that
Raoul Kurvitz, Ene-Liis Semper, Hasso Krull and others' manifestation
of their present-day existence is in no way despairing. Kurvitz's use
of concrete action, Semper's work refer to Bill Viola, and Hasso
Krull's hypertext, which was intended for the Internet, but is still
only a diskette, are attempts at constantly raising their voices and
not behaving like fossils. Nine video screens stacked together offer
visitors the chance of retrospection. Here we can see videos which
really are videos. There we see videos which are not really videos
but records of performance. But this can also be seen as a
provocative juxtaposition of images whose background and hinterland
one need not investigate in any great detail. This installation has
become one of the "objects" of the exhibition itself.
S for Summary
The time is not yet ripe for summaries.
RAIVO KELOMEES
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