Casa Popoului: "something that looks and feels like an open wound in the heart of Bucharest [...] a flaccid expression of communist absolute power, an empty interdiction directed towards the city, isolated from the life outside and folded upon itself in a megalomaniac entanglement of decoration, abuse and meaningless glorification. [...] It certainly belongs to a universal architectural freak show as one of the twisted wonders of late modernism. [...] The actualization of terminal megalomania, the product of a troubled mind which cannot decide whether to follow an inferiority complex or a superiority impulse. [...] Not just an edifice but also a colossal accretion of historical inadequacies and local paradoxes, of complexes, maladjustments and discontinuities, as well as a symptom of what is awfully wrong with past and contemporary politics. [...] a nightmarish Lego [...] imperial isolation [...] obscene violence [...] an entire area ravaged by communist urbanism." ---------------------------- Vali "Noble blood is an accident of fortune; noble actions are the chief mark of greatness." (Carlo Goldoni)
"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace." (Jimi Hendrix) http://www.museumofconflict.eu/singletext.php?id=9 Under destruction #1 The noise of Politics Christoph Büchel and Gianni Motti by Mihnea Mircan The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Bucharest, October November 2004 Published in Vector Magazine, Iasi, 2005 [...] Between 2000 and 2004, the Romanian government had launched a policy of cultural initiatives, viewed by some as incoherent, detached from cultural necessity and designed solely for electoral benefit. Among those large-scale projects, creating a museum of contemporary art attracted a considerable amount of public attention. The inauguration of the museum answered a question discussed sporadically yet always with a sense of historical urgency by successive cultural administrators. Should Romania have a museum of contemporary art?, they repeatedly wondered, while the usual arguments of historical delay and disconnectedness from the international scene were deployed. If the necessity of such an institution elicited consensus, various impediments arose along the way, primarily concerning location. The question of whether to build a space or convert an existing one proved a sturdy obstacle for years. The latter-day cultural benefactors decided that the museum should be located in the Palace of the Parliament, in an uncompleted wing that was scheduled to turn into a white cube roughly around the time of parliamentary and presidential elections. Needless to say that this offer did not include an alternative option. The initiative of the museum was thus not only conditioned but also contaminated by the political context. The museum was entrusted with two major tasks at the same time: to produce a viable program of contemporary art and to turn the Palace of Parliament into a plausible location for such an endeavour. I shall refer from here onwards to the building by its former name, more cynical but also more adequate in describing something that looks and feels like an open wound in the heart of Bucharest: the House of the People. The House of the People must rank high in some top 20 of difficult buildings to look at, come to historical terms with and digest culturally. It is a flaccid expression of communist absolute power, an empty interdiction directed towards the city, isolated from the life outside and folded upon itself in a megalomaniac entanglement of decoration, abuse and meaningless glorification. It, and the adjoining Civic Centre, gridlocked a sizeable portion of the city. I must confess I havent checked whether it still is the second largest building in the world, yet it certainly belongs to a universal architectural freak show as one of the twisted wonders of late modernism. The House treats the theme of political power in a style which is equally indebted to Baroque, Classicism and commedia dell'arte, looking like the background for some gigantic farce with scantily defined characters. In post-revolutionary years, it was the object of a significant perceptual shift: immediately after 89, the House was shortly opened to the public and Romanians enacted a strange political pilgrimage through its opulent marble halls. The healing potential of the act found its counterpart in the fact that many from the visiting crowds left very positive remarks in the guest book, expressing their admiration for the achievement. The uprooting of tradition effected by communist propaganda and architecture was thus welcoming back its offspring, a generation ready to concur to the loss of measure and ideas of national superiority. Then the House was closed to the public and taken into possession by the new powers, not in the least worried about ancestry. The displacement seemed unproblematic: taking over the symbol of power was a natural and rightful gain, expressing the new democracys solidarity with its electors. Because the House was no longer viewed as the actualization of terminal megalomania, as the product of a troubled mind which cannot decide whether to follow an inferiority complex or a superiority impulse, but, as the new reading proposed, as a manifestation of the constructive genius of Romanians, of their mythic potential for buildings things that last. Communist propaganda would not have disagreed, as the new reading meandered around all the hard facts and harsh conclusions of recent history and, moving in a loop, re-branded the House and closed it again upon itself*. Instated by a questionable political decision, the Museum of contemporary art was nonetheless the first step in mediating between the life of the city and the lifeless relic. As a first foray into the forbidden city, the Museum had to negotiate between freedom and control: artistic experiment was supposed to happen in the proximity of political life, in the ideal setting for performing the post-communist syndrome in all its intricacy. And this perfectly democratic story was supposed to premiere around the time of elections. As curator for the museum, I proposed for the inauguration a project in many steps titled Under Destruction, which takes advantage of the new location of the Museum to engage in conflict with the House of the People and what it stands for. Because the House is not just an edifice but also a colossal accretion of historical inadequacies and local paradoxes, of complexes, maladjustments and discontinuities, as well as a symptom of what is awfully wrong with past and contemporary politics. 'Under Destruction' proceeds from a fairly urgent need of vindication and seeks to propose strategies of repossession. For the first episode of the project, the invited artists were Gianni Motti and Christoph Büchel. The brief was obviously the blend of architecture and politics that the inauguration presented us with. The House in itself is a nightmarish Lego, further complicated by the political context and all these called for substantial irreverence. [...] P.S. While doing the famous SWOT analysis for Under Destruction and beginning talks with the artist selected for the second episode, a piece of news/ gossip (a difference always hard to tell in Romania) left me feeling dispossessed of the project. For anyone unfamiliar with the transactions between the Romanian church and state this might sound a bit puzzling. The new curatorial team, larger than the one assembled for the latest Documenta, is formed by members of the new government, in conjunction with high representatives of the Romanian Orthodox Church. Their new project consists in erecting, on the desolate lawn in the back of the House, an architectural object called the St Andrews Cathedral of National Redemption, something that belongs to the 19th century and certainly not to that part of city. This sounds like the nightmare of an over-budgeted Under Destruction #2, with Andrei Rubliov invited for a site-specific intervention and proposing a rather unsophisticated clash between good and evil where no one prevails. If the plan of the new government is to enlist the support of that segment of population which needs this cathedral, and meanwhile safeguard the imperial isolation of the House, then the project can work. If the plan is to cover the whole idea of urbanizing the House with a thick layer of ridicule, then the project is truly advisable. If the grandiosely confused plan is to build a sacred counterpart to the obscene violence of the House of the People, then the project is ill-advised. So is any thought that this might infuse life to an entire area ravaged by communist urbanism, or trigger the post-traumatic process. Anyway, the plot thickens. One possible outcome is that a museum of modern and contemporary politics, presenting in a natural-history style the ignoble precursors of democracy and public debate, might prove a more exciting alternative and a more valuable learning experience for local audiences and possibly to large crowds of foreign tourists.
