THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF CONTEMPORARY ART - AN OPEN RESEARCH LAB

Ruxandra Balaci, you are the Romanian curator with the most extensive international CV and, for over a year and a half, Scientific Director of MNAC. Where are we? The place can baffle someone not familiar with contemporary art, being at the same time extremely trendy, serious and "normal" for someone acquainted with art sites the world over.
We are at Kalinderu MediaLab, the first media Lab in Romania and one of the first spaces in Eastern Europe dedicated to multimedia creation and showcasing. We are proposing here a kind of "anteroom" to the MNAC-KML preoccupations, the multimedia nucleus of the Curatorial - Research - International Affairs Department until the inauguration of the spaces in The House of the People. Reserved to dialogue and interactivity, video or photographic experiment, installation and digital art, KML has adapted to very diverse projects, from the intense experience proposed by Calin Dan in Emotional Architecture, and the Romanian-Dutch colloquium which followed it, on the theme of Bucharest architecture and its reflection in the artistic mindset or in the collective mindset, to Remembering-Repressing-Forgetting, a project by Agricola de Cologne which approaches to the theme of violence and memory, generating a network of projects on- and off-line.
KML is also the place where we receive visits (and we organize workshops); visits - lately more frequent then ever, of international contemporary art personalities who arrive here at our invitation or because they have heard about the major project of a contemporary art museum in Bucharest. Over the last weeks I have presented this project to Nicolas Bourriaud, one of the most prestigious theorists of contemporary Art, Director of Palais de Tokyo, Paris, to Colin Ledwith from the British Council, London (the curator of the British Pavilion from the last Venice Biennale), to Marco Scotini, the Director of the Department of Contemporary Art from Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan and independent curator, to Philip Rylands, Director of Guggenheim Venice, to Martina Hochmuth from MuseumQuartier and to Georg Schöllhammer from Springerin Vienna. All promised their help and some projects are already materializing.
This is also how we co-opted the members in the international board, achieved on the basis of personal friendships, as well as on the very firm commitment of MNAC's new location in the Palace of Parliament, through which we convinced them to get involved in a project of such a scope in Eastern Europe. An inciting work in progress, but anytime susceptible (because of the Romanian situation) to become a work in regress. Let's try though to keep our optimism…
The board is a reference to obtain international legitimacy and to get access in networks of significant cultural cooperation. The board members, outstanding personalities on the international scene, will be supportive (in fact, they already are) and I hope that they will succeed to offer a "passage-way" for Romanian artists to the international contemporary phenomena. In fact, I see in this synchronicity our chance to finally emerge on the international scene (excepting those sporadic and isolated cases).

MNAC board

Who are the board members and to what degree does the Romanian public know them?
The members are: René Block (Director Museum Kunsthalle Fredericianum, Kassel), almost mythical international curatorial figure, the gallery owner who launched Beuys 30 years ago), Enrico Lunghi (Director Casino Luxembourg - Forum d'Art Contemporain and one of the founder members of Manifesta), Anders Kreuger (ex-Director Nordic Institute for Contemporary Art, now free-lance curator in Stockholm), Catherine Millet (director Artpress magazine, Paris), Nicolas Bourriaud (art theoretician, curator and Director of Palais de Tokyo, Paris), Ami Barak (curator, President IKT, Paris), Heiner Holtappels (video artist and media theoretician, Director of the Netherlands Media Art Institute, Montevideo Time-Based Arts, Amsterdam)… At the international level we are, as it seems, "bulletproof". At the local level, with its provincialism, it will be more complicated…The Romanian public it is not very familiarized with what is going in the visual field world-wide to answer, euphemistically, the second part of the question.
Coming back to the board, it is said to be for the first time when something like this takes place, and the successful outcome belongs to a large degree to me, as well as the heroism to dominate in a Romanian context the site of the biggest Museum of Contemporary art in Eastern Europe belongs completely to Mihai Oroveanu, who succeeded in overcoming the suspicions and endemic 'bad-faith' that naturally appears when something 'constructive' is undertaken. Believe me, you can only presume the meaning of something like this in neverendingTransitionlandRomania.
As you probably know, because there were enough exclamation marks in the press, of a more or less negative connotation, we are preparing to inaugurate a new location: the wing E4 of the House of the People, today the Palace of Parliament. The inauguration will take place around two-three international exhibits, coming from Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, Palais de Tokyo and probably Reina Sofia from Madrid, a series of site-specific interventions, which are addressing directly to the complicated history of the place, and an exhibit which I am responsible together with Mihai, provisionally entitled Romanian artist, and not only, love Ceausescu's Palace!?. The dubitative and exclamatory tone in the title comes from a multifaceted relationship that we have with this edifice of infamous memory, especially given the symbolic connotations that it provokes and their side effect towards unimaginable significations ab initio - during totalitarianism.
A large number of collaborators (surprisingly, the majority international) perceive our "move" as something extremely provoking and beneficial, for Romanian art as well as for the House itself, always isolated, either in blame, or in the exaltation of the local constructive genius. There is a lot of space, as I was saying, and we will have a lot to work on for it to become alive. Maybe we will succeed to exorcise the place … We hope that it will not only be about the material and physical dimension, but also the intellectual one. I consider this location a chance … and a very good idea of Prime Minister Adrian Nastase to situate MNAC there. The location itself raises the interest of foreign visitors, in a way in which Romanian contemporary art, isolated and touched by an "inferiority complex", couldn't do. It is an extremely interesting and provoking quality, but which can become a regrettable and conformist experience if the specialists will not be allowed to have their say.
For there to exist an open and flexible space, the museum will need institutional and financial autonomy in conformity with systems elaborated by similar institution in the world. We are far from this exigency - and here we need to speak about the cultural/museum legislation as well, that is currently extremely deficient here. We are contacted by foreign experts in the field, consulted vis-à-vis the standardization according to European legislation, and they can hardly believe the situation.

About the MNAC team?
The museum director, Mihai Oroveanu, is undoubtedly the charismatic personality able to realize this project in Romania. All that we can reproach him is an excess of decency in these days.
In the offices across the hallway, a few young specialists would give you two answers to the question about their profession: curators, what are they really, and 'museographers', what are they in conformity with the "still outdated" profession directory. These professions are quite different. What would be amusing, (if it were not so sad), is the dual discourse to which we always have to resort. As much as one would like to work in a western fashion (and let's say that 50% of the time you can), one can't liberate their conscience of the local distortions and can't always beautify the reality shown to the foreigners: the lack of the fundamental notions and the lack of depth, all these forms without essence.
We are an extremely united team, yet I wonder every day why my young and capable colleagues still come to work, why they don't leave the country permanently with the scholarships they receive, with the "indecent" salaries that they have. Sacrifices and a general feeling of senselessness make the Romanian curator a mystery.
Thus we are here about 4-5 "curatorial brains", each with a remarkable CV. Raluca Velisar, the coordinator of New Media Department will work as transferred specialist at Zenter fur Kunst und Medientechnologie, Karlsruhe, one of the most important new media centers in Europe. She also was the assistant curators at the Venice Biennale for the Calin Man project with Kinema Ikon. A project about which, here, at home, the ignorant malevolent spoke badly, but which marked a premier in Romanian art history, being subsequently presented by Centre Georges Pompidou.
Florin Tudor, artist and curator, earned a lot of international prizes of digital art (Viper Award, Switzerland) and is set to leave shortly for residency in Austria. Mihnea Mircan has recently organized an exhibition of Romanian videos in Milan in a prestigious gallery, in collaboration with Nuova Accademia di Belle Arti.
There are things which count towards the image of Romania at an elite level not at all negligible. Unfortunately, this fact is not to the liking of the wide and implacable local 'mediocrity'. And once again, unfortunately we are quite deficient at doing local PR. It is actually very difficult to convince the press to get their attention towards something else beside killings, dirt and scams. Generally, we do not have time to sing praises to ourselves (not forgetting that about 90% of what Romanian mass-media hails as a cultural phenomenon is obsolete, made by epigones and with no value abroad - and it is extremely difficult for us to convince them to do otherwise. Falsehood is overwhelming us: false values, false modesty, a culture of mediocrity, when we have all the possibilities not to be like this; and the absence of money…
A poor artist in the computer era doesn't work anymore, the romantic cliché is worn out. A poor university professor becomes automatically corrupt, a good Romanian curator must act abroad as s/he cannot survive financially here.
The sad concept "l'Ávenir nous quitte", I have found embodied in the exodus of young Romanians…, the horizon of the young people is somewhere else, and the condition of the young intellectual here is not worth commenting upon. Bearing this in mind, MNAC should be a provoking project, assuming the status of an institution of the present as well of the future, suggesting a different type of openness, and engaging the young segment of our audience.
About 10 years ago, the British Prime Minister raised the policy towards young British art to the level of state politics, generating enormous investments, and the phenomenon that he provoked is known to all of us… This could perhaps work as a model for us …

Do you still have time to write? In the Romanian press you are a rare presence. You don't like interviews?
I have very little time to write. I am taking care of MNAC presentation texts to the international partners and press and travel to conferences abroad to inform about the "emerging" Romanian art. I write almost exclusively in the foreign press. The public there is prepared for the type of discourse that I maintain and this is the case for my colleagues. Texts under press include: Whitechapel (on the hybrid relation curator-artist-public), a text in Anthology of Art edited in 3 West-European universities, in Tema Celeste (Milan) a text about the complexes of Balkan cultures. The last curatorial experience, last fall, at Fridericianum - in René Block's exhibit In den Schluchten des Balkans, patronaged by the Kulturstiftung des Bundes, resulted in a bird's eye view of Romanian contemporary art.
It should be mentioned in this context that we publish the magazine Artelier: we succeeded in printing no. 8, on the inflation of the Balkan exhibits that occurred lately, about exotic concepts and our confused marginality. The magazine was excellently received in the specialist circles, unfortunately quite narrow, in which we succeeded to distribute it.
Regarding interviews, the last that I remember were in Journal de Genève and Imago, Another European Photography.

What are the urgent problems of contemporary Romanian art scene?
Certainly, bits of answers are contained in the previous comments as well.
Probably the most important aspect is represented by the standardization of the deficient situation regarding the free artists and curators' circulation in other countries and by the emergence of a dynamic public, adaptable to changes, capable of a constructive dialogue with the artistic phenomena. Then, a different financial approach, which would radically change the acquisition system and the art market, the mentality of the Romanian sponsor and so on. There would be too many things to say and too many to change! Any good intention is inevitably misconstrued in a landscape in which helplessness and vexation are daily occurrences.
We have on one hand, the politicians (I am assuming that the majority of them don't even make the distinction between contemporary and modern art) and the Romanian public (in its majority retrograde in the visual area, less so the young generation), and on the other, a handful of specialists and artists internationally renown, less so here (they don't have a dialogue with the press, not to mention with television), who continue to "fight the wind-mills".
We hope to do our work at international parameters, not local, and in that consisted mainly MNAC's strategic direction nowadays: the creation of an international base for the realization of the project.

In what type of art is Romania investing? Who would be the Romanian artists internationally renown?
Unfortunately, Romania is investing particularly in epigone artists, completely unknown outside the borders. Who of the "great professors-doctors-painters" (sic!) of the Art Academy was, personally, as an artist, invited to exhibit in an important museum abroad or is on a first class western magazine? Even the titles of doctor painter is an abstruse local invention meant to legitimize the absence of an international CV. There are just a few names of artists who get in relevant international selections: Paul Neagu (London), Grigorescu Ion, Mircea Cantor (Paris), Tudor & Vatamanu, Perjovschi, Geta Bratescu, Calin Man, Kinema Ikon, Daniel Knorr (Berlin) and only two, three curators. How many of them do you encounter in Romanian mass media?
The painters of the moment for me? The list is subjective: some wonderful people who are no longer among us, Horia Bernea and Florin Mitroi. Between the active and likable: Batranu with the kitsch interiors, the representative of Romanian neo-Mexican style: Gorzo with the Balkans, Comanescu with Grand Prix Remix, then Benera with her painterly pseudo-manga, Setran with the dogs, Suzana Dan with the dogs as well…(lots of dogs…it is an older idea, of which I have not had time to take care of: the iconography of the dog in the transitional art! …without mentioning Király, with his memorable photo-dogs).
Video artists: Grigorescu, Tudor and Vatamanu, Irina Bucan Botea, Aurelia Mihai (Germany), subReal (Király, Calin Dan / Amsterdam), Mircea Cantor (France), Rasovsky, Marilena Preda, Mihaltianu (Germany), Patatics, Estefan, Alexa (New York).
Photographers: Király, Oroveanu, Graur, Jacobi (Germany), Cosma (London), Vanga (Paris), Knorr (Berlin), Nanca, Stan, Croitoru, Kavdanska, Gontz (Austria). These types are slowly seeping through, strictly because of didactical reasons, I am attempting here a classification. In fact, they are artists who work with concepts, regardless of the use of the medium, their proposal is idea-based, valid and interesting.
New coming clever minds in the field: Dediu, Tiron, Muresan, Costinas, Ernu, Rusu (Moldova) - are extremely valuable names, rarely circulated, as I was saying, by the mass media.
A few serious institutions which are promoting Contemporary art: Peripheric - Iasi, ICCA, META, ARTEXPO, TURA, IDEA - Cluj, the Festival East Zone- Timisoara, FAV, Tranzit Cluj.

The Contemporary Art and MNAC's role: the need for flexible structures

What would be, in conclusion, MNAC's role?
Contemporary art is research, idea, sensor of the epoch, is a process work and concepts network, prospective or introspective, of the subjectivity of the contemporary epoch, less so a finite result. A cognitive process reflecting the epoch dilemmas. It is a need of flexible structures, which would engross capacities that exist on the intellect market. Of young institutions, less predisposed to get stuck in the conformity that suffocate us. The Romanian public opinion should understand that contemporary type museum, especially the one of Contemporary art, is an open research lab, is a space for the art engine, not an exponent of ossified forms (not even the museum of Classical art is conceived like this anymore), a site of dialogue between ideas, a place staged by curators and artists, in permanent movement.
The legislation is taken to the absurd in the cultural field. The problem of self-financing is well known. Kalinderu MediaLab, having the advantages of a small structure, was 100 % self-financed last year. MNAC has made efforts to obtain major sponsorships. Beneficiary of a large sponsorship from Hewlett Packard, we recently became a part of their program of Excellence in Art & Science - the first museum of contemporary art ever included in this program, which numbers prestigious partners such as Louvre, Prado, Uffizi, Alinari. Too few people know that these sponsorships were obtained with difficulty. Even less known is the fact that a large part of the expenses of the official inauguration will be sponsored - and here I have to mention the special support of the French Embassy, of Ambassador Etienne, other embassies and foreign cultural institutions in Bucharest.
The international auspices are wonderful; the local ones are quite deficient. I believe I am already repeating myself.
The Romanian critics write in newspapers with a 20-30 year lag behind today's information, promoting obsolete figures and structures. We are struggling between the drama of a thick patriotism and the inferiority complexes of a second-hand culture, not through its potencies, which could be even first hand, but because of the hindrances that we put on one another until exhaustion, primitive and aggressive with what we do not understand. This small and poor community is eroded by egos and resentments. Far from the monolithic unity with which the Slovenian art, for example, has crossed with success the symbolic border between East and West (a still active border), generating one of the most interesting phenomena in the European contemporary art. We, in exchange, don't have the cultural cohesion of the common effort, even though the purposes are similar more often then not.
To all of the local detractors of the MNAC project (and I have to mention that, with one exception, they are in exclusivity Romanians, but this also wouldn't be very bad, because there do exist pros and cons, the comments are welcomed, demonstrating that the project is alive and a generator of polemics, as long as they are not exclusively libelous and malevolent) I would oppose them with nothing less then the enthusiasm and adherence letters of the international personalities co-opted in the board and of the others who subscribe and encourage the project as the only one in the Eastern Europe of such proportions.

How will the museum look after its inauguration in the Palace of Parliament?
We will propose more types of exhibitions, differently structured chronologically and conceptually, trying to contribute to the healing (or at least to the diagnosis) of the local climate and of our understanding of cultural dialogue, but also to the elucidation of the situation of Romanian art history over the last 20 years. The majority of the MNAC audience will be especially the one with a fresh mentality. The mistake that MNAC will not repeat is promoting compromises. That would get us nowhere. At least not in art…
It's a paradox, but unfortunately normal here at home, that a project that moves at an European speed is greeted with resentment and local hindrances, many times serving a nationalist retrograde complex.
We have imagined a tele-cabin that would carry grandparents with small kids from the welcoming center all the way to the MNAC gate … (similar to the Universal Expo in Hanovra. How amusing would something like this be in the gray insipid landscape of Bucharest. For the moment, it's pure utopia)… swimming-pools, coffee shops with media resource center and videos screenings in open air … an unlimited access for a reticent public who, maybe, will gradually become familiar with this culture of liberty in the palace of a dictator of sad memory…but not everything is possible given the budgetary and mentality restrictions with which we operate.
MNAC can seem a groundless and useless provocation in a helpless country or, on the contrary, can become a good institutional context - a desperate tentative to hold on to normality. Finally having the role to balance, perhaps, the perfidious discrepancy between a generous imagination and a hard reality …

Interview by Cosmina Ionescu