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project which took place in 1993. The primary motive for Transnacionala was to
organize an international art project to take place outside the established
international institutional networks, without intermediaries, without a curatorformulated
concept, and without any direct responsibility towards its sponsors.
In short, to organize a project as a direct network of individuals brought together
by a common interest in particularly open aesthetic, ethical, social and political
questions, all of whom would travel together for one month, exchange views,
opinions and impressions, meet new people in their local environments, and try
to expand the network based on the topicality of questions posed -
spontaneously and without any predetermineci, centralized aesthetic,
ideological or political objective.
The second methodological point of departure, also based on the positive
experience of Moscow in 1992, was to create conditions for a kind of
experimental existential situation. Like the one-month stay in an apartment at
12 Leninsky Prospekt, Moscow, in 1992, the one-month cohabitation of ten
individuals in two motor homes, in barely ten square metres of physical space,
also should have enabled a questioning of the myth of the public and intimate
aspects of artist and art - that is, of the split forming the basis of the system of
representation.
The next research-oriented point of departure was to analyse the problems
of the global art system; the system of values, of existential, linguistic and
market models contained therein. The aesthetic and ethical point of departure
was the very implementation of the project itself - an attempt to establish a
complex personal and group experience, the creation of a time-space module
living within the multitudes of linguistically indefinable connections.
On the surface, the Transnacionala project may seem yet another attempt to
establish or reaffirm the myth of communication. Its mission could be defined
as an attempt to bridge personal, cultural, ideological, political, racial and other
differences. It was in this positive, optimistic spirit that the first letters to
prospective participants and hosts were composed, and quite frequently such an
agit-prop discourse was also used in the process of establishing communication
with the public in the five US cities we visited. It's more difficult, however, to
define how and with what complications this communication really took place.
The success of communication by individuals largely coming from spaces and
times separate, as to both culture and experience, depends primarily on the skill
of the individuals and groups wishing to communicate - their skill at playing a
role within the structure of the dialogue. In the context of contemporary art and
theory, the role of the engineers of such a communication structure is largely
played by various international institutions, intermediaries who have
successfully maintained, for the entire centlllY, the illusion that despite cultural,
Cufer/ / Transnacionalaj A Journey from the East to the West; /139