Interview conducted by Evantia BARCA
From Tate Modern, Centre Pompidou, or MoMA to the other end of the world, in Sydney or Jakarta, here and there, Dan Perjovschi places mirrors in which reality examines its blemishes, confronted with ideas by the artist, who dreams about an ideal world. Perjovschi’s walls disturb the silence of everyday life that has become flat and comfortable or the banality of streets on which there is too much entertainment and too little positioning. His drawings are editorials, analyses of the interactions between art and society, augmented by a discourse that maintains its humor even when delivering sharp political, social, or cultural commentary. It is a mix addressed to a global world, perhaps a bit unpalatable for those whose dreams are too beautiful, too clean. A part of the series of projects in the public space, the tram that crossed Timișoara last year, a mobile display surface traveling to and fro in a multicultural universe, is still a dense chronicle of the recent past. It evokes a series of symbolic moments to pose a critical question in the present: For whom was the Cultural Capital?
Connoisseurs fill up theaters or concert halls and museums, while some forms of art go and seek out their audience on the streets, in the street’s squares with their evocative names: Union – Freedom-Victory Square. The tram is not simply a painting that ran away from an exhibition, but rather a symbol of democratizing art, in the sense that “the tram is for everyone, for those who made the Revolution, those who forgot about it, and those who don’t care…”
Evantia Barca: Why do people still go out in the streets in Timișoara?
Your experimental, playful walls have become a mobile platform for Timișoara Capital of Culture. Does this dynamic have a special meaning? In recent years, the idea of leaving traditional institutions and going out into the streets has been recurring in all art forms, including that most conservative artistic universe, opera. Where are the visual arts going?
Dan Perjovschi: There are many reasons people take to the streets and the arts (especially opera) out of a need for an audience. It is not something critical, and it is not an institutional critique. It is mainly marketing. The festival is in full swing. If people do not come, we will go out after them. In a sense, it is nice, and we are redeeming a public space that we lost to barbecues and beer… There are special projects analyzing the public space specifically not just now, in the Capital, but for a while. As I have often seen in Timișoara, special works or political posters are cropping up in the middle of the square. In 1991, in Timișoara, I participated in the first visual art manifestation after the Revolution, titled Stare fără titlu [State without a Title]. There, we had performances in the streets. We were celebrating our recently won freedom. The body was radical and political. Now, it is spectacular and commodified.
You know, at first, in Sibiu, where I live, I really hated that section of the Theater Festival with street parades in the center, with puppets, samba, and so on… It felt populistic and untheatrical (in the sense of research). Now, I have reviewed my position. Many people do not have the money, time, or context to buy tickets and go to the theater. I once heard a neighbor over the fence reading the schedule of public events (the free ones) to a friend over the phone. I was impressed. The only thing I find off-putting is that there is too much entertainment and too little positioning on the streets. I will never forget that people died on this city’s streets so the two of us can now have a conversation free of censorship.
Artists aren’t flowers; we don’t adorn a city. We question it.
E.B.: On the exhibition tram in Timișoara, I saw a message that perhaps has a stronger impact on the older generations, those who once heard a certain speech from a balcony that has become symbolic. What personal story motivated you to choose this message, and how do you think it still echoes in the present? Is there still a chronic desire for freedom?
What does the ideal of freedom look like in a commercial society?
D.P.: The tram is for everyone: those who made the Revolution, those who forgot about it, and those who don’t care. That’s why my work moves on rails instead of being hung from one in the Baroque Museum. “Stați liniștiți la locurile voastre” [remain calm in your places] – it’s a pretty well-known phrase, and it’s still relevant because we’re still being told the same thing every day by other people from other balconies.
Yes. For me, freedom of travel and expression are fundamental. I try to remind the people of Timișoara of this, and, on this occasion, I also remind myself. I think there is no comparison between communism and capitalism. You referred to commercial society. But do you think things were free during communism? Do I need to remind anyone that you needed connections just to get your hands on some Frankfurters (that were three-quarters water)? But you’re right; we live in an age of commodification, obsessed with money and visibility. For me, freedom today means finding a space and an audience for your critical position, a space to call things by name. I found a tram.
The tram poses a few questions:
Why is public transport only a space for advertisements instead of an educational one?
What does an artwork mean in the 21st century?
Who has access to culture in terms of time and money?
For whom is the Cultural Capital organized?
Of course, there could be more. For instance, I have been promoting critical culture (recent art and history, intellectual debate, the Romanian language, multiculturalism, the open society, and the courage to look at ourselves in the mirror) since February… if Center for Projects were to pay to have this ad on the tram, they would have needed another Cultural Capital budget. That’s to answer your question about how you can short-circuit a society based solely on profit. But this is also a kind of freedom. In dictatorships, you don’t have alternatives.
Let alone trams.
E.B.: You traveled on this tram. What are the most exciting stories you have heard from others? People’s worries, discontents, or joys…
D.P.: The tram I drew is not an elitist tram. It’s a normal tram that runs a normal route. If you want to hear stuff, go with it. I didn’t get it. I never got the chance. I did two guided tours in February (too many people showed up for the first one, so I had to do an encore), and I didn’t listen to anyone, but I spoke for the entire forty minutes that one tour lasted. I told stories about how we went from censorship to revolution, freedom of expression, and the exaggeration of expression we see today. I talked about what happened to me and what I did. No fancy theories. I’m an artist who relies on direct experience, not texts.
As for people and what they’re going through right now… I’m going through the same things, and it’s enough to read a newspaper, watch TV, or scan social media to find out exactly what time it is…; […]*
*The interview can be read in its entirety in the first printed issue of Empower Artists Magazine available for purchase online here or physically in Cărturești and La Două Bufnițe bookstores.
Translated by Rareș GROZEA.
Cover photo: Dan Perjovschi. Courtesy of the artist.
