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Der Drang nach Osten
(2010)
“Der Drang nach Osten – Parallels to Post-Colonialism and
Coloniality within the Central European Space” is a research
and exhibition project, which will take place in November/
December 2010 at the HIT Gallery in Bratislava, Slovakia.
The overall project consists of the actual exhibition at
the HIT Gallery, a published journal with theoretical texts
on the topic and descriptions of the exhibited artworks,
a small symposium with theorists from the fi eld of art and
economics and a workshop on the topic with the students
of the Ilona Németh Studio of the Academy of Fine Arts
(VŠVU) Bratislava and the PCAP (Post-Conceptual Art
Practices; Prof. Marina Gržinić) department of the Academy
of Fine Arts Vienna. All of the events will take place in
Bratislava.
Within some contexts, projects on the topics of
colonialism and post-colonialism are not as rare as
they used to be. Nevertheless, they are still infrequent.
They are limited to the areas/nations with a history of
having outlying colonies, which is directly connected to
the remembering of slavery and racism, and therefore
concentrated within Western Europe, the USA, and
within the spaces of the former colonies to a certain
degree. Post-Colonial Studies is a part of the Western
Eurocentric collective knowledge and history, controlled
and regulated by state institutions, which may be a reason
why the notion of a local history as a colonial one is nearly
nonexistent within the Central European context. Post-
Colonial Studies is taught at the Academy of Fine Arts
Vienna, for example, but diff erent reasons exist for avoiding
a wider context, such as confronting the local history as
such a context.
In the case of Slovakia, an imaginary independently
ruled state formation was made possible two times in
history: from 1939 – 1945 as the fascist Slovak state, and
from 1993 to the present day, through nationalism and
globalized neoliberal capitalism. The area was declared
a nation-state with its own political control, made possible
by geopolitical intervention or agreements from the ruling
superpowers. Therefore, the fact that this project takes
place in Bratislava, Slovakia is of twofold importance: fi rst,
Slovakia is a geopolitical region with a colonial experience
from the perspective of the colonized, however, with its
history elaborated with a populist-nationalist agenda; and
secondly, within the context of neocolonialism, through
a globalized neoliberal capitalist transition towards EU
membership. Slovakia and Bratislava are recognized as
a periphery to the West, towards Vienna within the Central
European context, for example, with the city proclaiming
itself as the old new center of the Central European space.
The aim of the project is, therefore, not to celebrate
the independence of the state or nation, but precisely
the opposite – to question the notions of independence
and democracy, to articulate these within the context of
coloniality1 and to, thus, think about the presence and
history of the region as a history of control and oppression
linked to capital, ideology, borders and the notion of
progress, and furthermore, to rethink the functionality of
colonial processes and consider their social consequences.
This does not mean examining those elements solely
within the form of foreign capital entering the area of
economic interest, but an analysis of the reproduction
of capital within colonized countries as an ideology that
legitimizes exploitation, social inequality, (social) racism
and its naturalization. Therefore, it would mean placing the
social and political “reality” within an extensive historical
context, dictated by economic and political interests.
The history of colonization within the Central European
space is not as black and white as described, however.
Historically viewed, it has been a space of ideological battle
and discontinuity, or rather abrupt ideological changes
through political and social experiments during the
Monarchy, the fi rst independent nation-states, National
Socialism, Communism, Capitalism and so on. It is key to
note the history of the Soviet Bloc from 1948 – 1989, in order to diff erentiate from the processes of subjugation practiced
by Western colonial superpowers. The occupation/
colonization of Eastern European countries by the USSR
was rather an ideological one, which did not carry with it
the characteristics of bottomless economic exploitation
practiced by the Western countries onto the „Third World.“
The internal colonization, i.e. in the case of the USSR, in
Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia, was more about controlling
the newly achieved territories and new national identity.
However, there will not be as strong of a focus on that
historical era within this project as it has become an object
of constant re-historization within the current ideology,
which has been subordinated yet again to the aspirations
of the market and of consumerism.
Nevertheless, all colonial practices were and are equally
aff ected by the logic of Eurocentrism, an ideology of one‘s
own superiority in terms of technological progress and
evolution, which presents subjugation and usurpation
as a helping hand in terms of civilizing “undeveloped”
areas, a process of many advantages (only proclaimed
advantages in fact) for local citizens, as a promise for the
near future. There is, thus, a production and practice of
racism or social racism, be it the Western European colonial
history, the German “Drang nach Osten” as a compensation
for the rather small colonized outlying areas (compared
to, i.e. England or France), the USSR with its idea of
a global communist revolution uniting the whole world
under the leadership of Soviet communists or the current
condition of neoliberal capitalist regimes of technological
innovation and individualism. Why then “Der Drang nach
Osten”?
“Der Drang nach Osten” (German for “Eastward drive”)
was a term coined in the 19th century to designate German
expansion into Slavic lands. It became a motto of the
German nationalist movement in the late 19th century. In
some historical discourses, „Drang nach Osten“ combines
historical German settlement in Eastern Europe, medieval
military expeditions like the ones of the Teutonic Knights,
and Germanization policies and warfare of Modern Age
German states like the Nazi lebensraum concept.
It was a conscious decision to use this terminology in an
art project about (post-)colonialism and coloniality within
the Central European Space. The reasons are manifold:
to refl ect the immense infl uence of German culture and
ideology on Central Europe, to regard language as the most
powerful tool in terms of ideology and its role within the
(neo-)colonial practices in the Central European space and
to consider the long shadow of the National Socialist past
within the area that is directly linked to the processes of
transformation and nationalism in terms of the context –
Germany and Austria are currently the two most powerful
investors within the region.
As the project takes place within an art context, the
main focus will be on how the art fi eld and (offi cial)
culture deal with the aforementioned topics. It should,
on the one hand, reveal processes that are meant to
represent emancipatory strategies, but which in fact
follow Eurocentric ideologies and thereby sustain the
current neocolonial processes. On the other hand, it
should dismantle these through strategies of refl ection
for rethinking possibilities of resistance towards market
and capital through those terms. This was the criteria
with which the artistic and theoretical contributions were
selected. They each deal with topics crucial for analyzing
the logic of capitalism, colonialism and their functionality:
capital/power, technology/progress, the gaze/control
over representation, history writing/ideology, and, as
mentioned, the use of language. While these terms are
listed separately here, they solely function as intertwined
with and through one another within the capitalist system.
Therefore, linking to critical theory is the only way to begin
resistance against such a system, in order to re-think and
question the dominant Western art history to de-link2 from
offi cial Eurocentric politics.
This project, therefore, aims to open a discussion on
capitalism and colonialism within the Central European
space, as two historical processes which are inevitably linked to one another. This is crucial because of the recent
collective shift towards right-wing policies visible in
nearly all of the countries of the region, which has lead
to an increased collective acceptance of proto-fascist
tendencies.3
Ivan Jurica
(1) Walter Mignolo and Mladina Tlostanova have extended the notion of “coloniality”
– originally coined by Anibal Quijano as the fundamental logic of modernity,
which inevitably leads to a logic of coloniality – based on the “colonial matrix of
power” that encompasses four interrelated domains: the control of economy (land
appropriation, exploitation of labor, control of natural resources); control of authority
(institution, army); control of gender and sexuality (family, education) and control
of subjectivity and knowledge (epistemology, education and formation of subjectivity).
See, for example: Walter Mignolo, Cultural Studies, Vol. 21, Nos. 2 – 3 March/May
2007, pp. 449 – 514.
(2) Mignolo defi nes “de-linking” as changing the terms and not just the content of the
conversation established by the modern/colonial world. While de-colonization did
not free the world from coloniality, delinking aims to criticize post-colonial notions
using the grammar of decoloniality for projects of de-linking from the colonial matrix
of power; see: Ibid.
(3) Here I use “proto-fascist” referring to Šefi k Šeki Tatlić, who claims that: “The result
of these two examples are that a proper democratic man learns how to be at once
a proto-fascist on one side, and an obedient, freedom-living citizen on the other.” See:
“Diabolical Frivolity of Neo-liberal Fundamentalism,” Reartikulacija, no. 9, Ljubljana,
2009; http://www.reartikulacija.org/?p=679
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Katalóg Galérie HIT
(2011)
I do not attend the openings at the HIT Gallery. It is cold there, I do not drink wine, they rarely have spirits and there are loads of people who make the exhibited works unapproachable and invisible. But I heard that Roman
Ondák was seen there, and Ilona Németh, Sandra Kusá, Piotrek Stasiowski, Denisa Lehocká with Boris Ondreička, Lucia Tkáčová, Lucia Gavulová, XYZ, Daniel Grúň, Edit András, Marina Grźnić and even some people from IBM. And
beside them, a bunch of other artists, acquaintances and obviously the family of „drosophilae melangoastri“. After all I go to see the works in the cellar, which seems to mean so much, some days after this parade. In spite of the
rather specific location “under” the AFAD, the gallery is by far the best thing that has evolved from the Slovak non-profit, non-commercial art scene. When I am there, I am always delighted in seeing high-quality exhibitions.
I am not talking only about specific works; it’s also how it is presented, and what is questioned. Each show is compiled according to the intrinsic logic going hand in hand with the profile of the gallery, and thanks to its
coordinators – curators Jaro Varga and Dorota Kenderová, they are distributed in an even rhythm of emerging and established artists’ presentations.
The catalogue, you are holding in your hands, is a summary of activities of the HIT Gallery over the last couple of years. The book itself gives testimony about the gallery as well as about the people involved in creating
it. It is nonintrusive, accordingly content and most of all beneficial. It contains photos from the exhibitions, and rather than including not-alwaysinteresting theoretical texts, you will be able to read emails from around
the time the exhibitions were born. Beside the fact that it is interesting and also entertaining reading, I also consider this publication being a manual of curating. Problems of creation, dynamics of project formation,
hurdles and bumps, all are revealed as if through another form of capturing the oral history, shortly everything what artists and curators encounter in
real life.
Through all those years that HIT exists, it has become an important organic component of the contemporary art scene. And not only in Slovakia! Ambitions of artists to exhibit in this (already – by far – not experimental)
space prove its expansion as well as its ability to get into the public awareness also abroad.
This gallery represents a strange, unique phenomenon in our culture. And analogously, it does not show the whole picture. For relevant reactions from our home environment we will probably have to wait. Still, we can rejoice,
that whatever happens in the future, the following generations will have in their hands the document. The document being a source, evidence and testimony
at once. Enjoy the riffling through the book!
Július Barczi
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Is the Future Boring?
(2014)
Editors collected textual and visual material from 42 artists from different countries who responded to problems related to the current role of the artist, his ability to project the future of art, artist and art institution, the future of artistic engagement and the future of communities, humankind, planet, cosmos. A little ironic title and objective of the project is testing determination of artists to participate in designing new utopias, or resign from this ambition and remain in the present, or turn to the past. The book attempts to trace the artist's perception of his own mission.
The book was supported by Intenda Foundation and the Ministry of Culture of the Slovak Republic.
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PARTYSLAVA
(2009)
Book edited by Andreas Fogarasi
in collaboration with Galeria HIT and students of Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Bratislava
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Revolution Without Movement PROGRAMME
(2014)
Ten days of discursive projects, performative lectures and yoga practice
18.11.-28.11.2014
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Revolution without Movement
(2014)
The project Revolution Without Movement brings together artistic practices that manifest and refer to the subtle forms of social non-movements and potential communities of sentiment.
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Dreams&Dramas. Law as Literature
(2018)
Dreams&Dramas. Law as Literature
Key subjects: Body, Citizenship, Property, Decision Making Process.
Area: Transdisciplinary reader: Visual Art & Politics & Anthropology.
‘Dreams & Dramas. Law as Literature’ reader introduces law in broad perspective as specific tool that creates social relations under its own principles. The law, as it were, distils fractions of reality to serve its purpose, and then assembles the elements, as if on a factory line, into a concrete picture, a parallel world.
The reader reveals law’s fictional character and dispel the myth: the law is the system based on facts. At the same time in order to present this complex and woven relation, the book tracks specific tools, used by law: cut, montage, indirect speech and legal fiction.
The publication is divided into four chapters where the concepts of body, land, property and community are presented so as to shed light and confer new meaning on one another. The reader contains different contributions remaining in a dialogue: visual and textual, the disciplined and the trans-disciplinary academics texts, but also short stories, interviews.
The big part of contributions were never presented in Europe as Colin Dayan ‘Law is a White Dog. How Legal Rituals Make and Unmake Persons’ or Karla Holloway’s ‘Private Bodies, Public Texts’, to name those two examples. The texts collection provides also the further reading what allows people interested in law as the part of humanities to undertake its own research.
Contributors: Carlos Amorales, Anca Benera+Arnold Estefan, Patrick Bernier, Ernst Bloch, Anna Bottomley & Hilary Lim, Colin Dayan, Kieran Dolin, Costas Douzinas, Marina Gržinić, Debora Hirsch & iaia filiberti, Ran Hirschl & Ayelet Shachar, Karla Holloway, Valerio Nitrato Izzo, Ivan Jurica, Agnieszka Kilian, franck leibovici & Julien Seroussi, Bruno Latour, Danilo Madič, Kathryn Milun & Geralad Torres, Evgeny Pashukanis, Rupali Patil, Agnieszka Piksa, Alicja Rogalska, Issa G.Shiviji, Kama Sokolnicka, Agata Stajer, Mateusz Stępień, Jasper J. Verlinden, Lee Ann S. Wang.
The book design: Kaja Gliwa
Edit: Agnieszka Kilian in collaboration with Jaro Varga and Joerg Franzbecker
Book design: Kaja Gliwa
Published by: HIT Gallery and nGbK
Released: December 2017
ISBN 978-3-938515-67-9
Price: € 12
Book preview: https://issuu.com/kaja.g/docs/d_d_issuu_2
