Raivo Kelomees

“Screen as a Membrane”

Articles and criticism 1991-2000

Tartu Art College proceedings, 2007

Summary

The 1990s were an almost abandoned decade, but they have also been characterized as nosy. Each new decade longs for new definitions and heroes. The denying of previous decades is a part of finding oneself, whether it's the denial of an art decade, form of creation or generation.

The articles that this collection is composed of have been selected from those written in 1991-2000, although I have written articles before and after. The frame of the 1990s is a period in which phenomena began and developed to maturity. This era is interesting for close observation because changes were rapid and explicit.

What happened in Estonia in the 1990s was connected with global processes in a physical and virtual sense. Art and artists started to travel more. These changes grew out of the biggest geo-political upheaval of the 20th century, which had a positive effect on Estonian art. The fall of the Soviet Union changed the situation in technology, politics, economics and also art. In the 1990s media art developed into an independent art sphere and an academic subject. Digitalisation is its important background. A new landscape for creativity came into being almost instantly.

The elation at the beginning of the 90s had, in my opinion, to do with media art being discovered as a new continent of art, but at the end of the decade the perspective of experts started to clear: predecessors were found in earlier developments of art. The different combinations of the words “media” and “art” – to mark art, events, curricula, institutions and periods of creativity – spread as a global infection between developed countries. “Unplugged” countries added their own spicy paradoxes to the networked world, such as the exchange of mobile text messages between illiterate people in Africa.

In this collection of articles, the experience of an emotional “new” explosion is described, which even carries with it a smirk. It is comforting that it was not “new”only in a personal and biographical sense, but also in a wider sense. New media, besides video, arrived in Estonia during the 1990s. Video is probably the last international medium and art phenomenon which arrived “late” in Estonia, similar to earlier art tendencies and fluctuations (the first article about video art was published in the 1989 almanac “Kunst”, 73/1, written by the author of this article collection).

The event was minor though, as the boom in international events in video art took place in the 1980s. Though, of course, we did know of the actions of the predecessors of video beginning in the 1960s and of the teaching of media art in the University of New York starting in 1973, the decade of the spreading of video art is still the 1980s. The first conscious experiments of the formulation of communicative art and electronic interactive projects also took place in that decade. The themes of communication art came under renewed attention related to the Internet and software art in the 1990s; also, articles about net art are strongly influenced by the discoveries of the past decades.

At the beginning of the 1990s, new media were brought to Estonia in both an artistic and technological sense; Estonia was in a receptive position. It was a time of adaptation, and a time when the separation between “our world” and “their world” still existed. The situation may be characterized by the development of the French-Baltic festivals: these were one-man projects at first and started without Estonian participation. Estonia and the other Baltic states were one of the invasion destinations of French visual culture, in addition to Chile, Brazil and Argentina. Cultural colonialism, in other words cultural exchange, occurs in regions still searching for and shaping their identities, as was true with the art of the 1990s in Estonia. Estonian artists adapted fast and, though receptive to influences, did more than mull over their differences, which were explored in “Eesti kui märk” (“Estonia as a Sign”), an exhibition in 1996.

I see a clear distinction between the Estonian art of the first and second half of the 1990s, both in terms of art and attitude. In the first half, adaptation took place, the “us-them” polar world was left behind and harmony was achieved with Western art; the position of the “receptive Eastern European” was surpassed and the individual artist's new “self” was experienced. In the second half of the decade, a more sovereign self-consciousness appeared.

Step-by-step, non-material art – video and interactive media projects - became more important. At the beginning of the 1990s tension between “old” and “new” art was felt, which eased by the start of the second half of the decade. On one hand, there was a “new” found justification in the context of international art events and, on the other, it was maturing. “New media” lost it’s freshness internationally, capitulating to titles of crowded festivals or names of academic units of study.

This collection of articles is divided into three parts, though they are connected by the fact that most of the time the attention of the author is focused on new technologies.

I. The Changing of Approaches to Contemporary Art
These articles map “principal and revolutionary” changes and also the importing of new phenomena: breakthrough Estonian exhibitions, reviews of festivals and conferences (SKKEK yearly exhibitions, the Saaremaa biennale, the Interstanding conference, and the offline@online festival), the borders of a new attitude, and changes in mentality. There are also polemical stances on clashes between different world views.

II. Fast times and the non-escaping zone
This section deals with international events. Overviews of visited exhibitions, conferences and media festivals: ISEA 1995, WRO 95, Ars Electronica, Alien Intelligence, Viper 2000 etc. The texts range from free-form reflections of events and situations to documentaries and journalistic documentations. The overviews, which have been mixed with these impressions, also include discussions about the modern networked being and opportunities to escape (“Kiire aeg ja mittepõgenemistsoon” – “Quick times and the no-escape zone”, 2000).

III. The democracy of an image
This section concentrates on Estonian video art, reviews of video and mediaart, exhibitions and festivals in Estonia, and the arrival of multimedia. The article “Eesti videokunst” (“Estonian Video Art”, 1995), which is based on the preface of the 1994 French-Baltic video festival catalogue and in which an attempt was made to describe video art appearing in Estonia, appears for the first time.

IV. The Spirit of the Lost Era
This section deals primarily with “regular reviews” of exhibitions, events, and group exhibitions in Estonia. Media art and video are not touched upon much in this section. The criteria of the choices were documental quality, and articles on the basis of which one can remember what had taken place: “Eleonora”, a performance festival; “Hämaruse kristallid” (“Crystals of Darkness”), an exhibition by Para 89; “Mobil”, an exhibition of kinetic art; and “Persona”, dedicated to personality. There are also polemical (“Kunstiloba”– “Art Gibberish”) and historical themes (“Piilumisajastu vanglas” – “The Peeping Era in Prison”).

V. Dreams and new media
This was originally meant as an “educational programme”, attempts at delivering and wrapping certain information. In the article “Virtuaalne reaalsus kui metafoor ja praktiline rakendus” (“Virtual reality as a metaphor and practical application”, 1996), I deal with the definition of the word “virtual” and the fact that the notion can also be mentioned when “old” art is dealt with. The word “virtual” itself is one of the most frequently used clichés to describe non-material and digital art of the 1990s. In the article “Raamatu saatus raamatu kadumise ajastul” (“The fate of the book during the era of the fading of the book”, 1997), an attempt is made to bind the traditional and contemporary and to view the book as a medium of the “old” culture in a new electronic context.

VI. Papers and Emotions
This section is dedicated to Estonian and international individuals and groups. Some artists and critics have been paid more attention than others. The works of art of Jaan Toomik, Ants Juske, Kaarel Kurismaa and Mati Milius are dealt with in many articles. Reading “The Borders of an Artist”, I recall that, for Ants Juske’s exhibition “The Borders of Art”, we did a video paraphrase of Duchamp’s “The Fountain”, which is not likely to be found any more. Creating art was spontaneous: there was no planning nor filing of works of art. The exhibitions of Anthony Gormley, Irma Optimisti, Perry Hoberman, Ilja Kabakov, Raul Meel and others are dealt with, whether they took place in Estonia or in other countries.

The articles were chosen subjectively, relying on their essential value, interest and documental quality; the importance of the people or events alone was not defining. The collection contains about a third of the articles published.

I would warn a critical reader that some of the articles have been given a heading by editors. I generously kept the published version. At that time, I was amazed by the level of interference in the author’s text; presently this is more common in journalism. “Videokunst – noorte lõbustus, mis vanadele pole keelatud” (“Video art – amusement for youth which is not prohibited to older people”), “Loodusvaatlus kunstiteosena “Pro Natura Baltica” näitusel Ajalooinstituudi galeriis” (“Nature observation as a work of art at the “Pro Natura” exhibition in the Gallery of the Institute of History”), and “Siiralt ja süütult maalida pole vist enam võimalik” (“It is no longer possible to paint sincerely nor innocently”), published in the daily “Hommikuleht”, are astounding in their naivety. Though these were more colourful, pointed and in accordance with the standards of the then-developing journalism, the author’s outrage even caused the wish for a written amendment.

The basis for selecting articles was in relation to Estonian art or my own interest, and the texts are not merely a summary of impressions. It should be possible to re-enact reality or shifts in mentality. In the article “Europrix 99” there is a seemingly unnecessary listing of competition categories, but also a proposal to make a multi-media project about Viiralt, which has since been accomplished.

Several technological facts written about with excitement have since become dated, for example the information-handling possibilities of the Pompidou Centre library (“The fate of the book during the era of the fading of the book”, 1997) or “burning” a CD (“Kujutiste demokraatia: digitaalne pilt ja multimedia” – “The democracy of the image: the digital picture and multimedia”, 1995). Internet links have been checked during editing, and sites that had been moved have been re-linked. Some of the non-functioning links have remained, which should be understood as a monument to the temporality and relativity of a location in cyberspace.

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