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Alexandra Pirici - 'Equestrian statue of Carol I'
(performative act)
13 tones bronze statue, erected in 2010, Hight: 13 meters
It's a kind of protest.
Against retardation in culture.
We are a simply retarded culture,
which always deals with the past
and with some kind of festivism.
And the second issue
which is related to this retardation
is the allocation of funds in culture.
There is money for culture,
but they all go to these sorts of
'MONUMENTALISMS'
'TRADITION, HERITAGE',
all these dubious, big words.
The National Center of Dance lost its office,
at that moment we protested,
we initiated some kind of squat action
in that building that was
next to being demolished.
Because all this attitude
of the Ministry of Culture
was coming with this very strong statement
that there are no money,
no money for culture and for arts!
Generally, this is the first section
where they cut the funding.
And this protest was more like an action,
symbolic and artistic in some way.
We got outside the theater
and copied the sculpture "Caragialina".
You probably know it,
it's very big and rich,
It's exactly in front of the National Theater.
And myself,
from good sources coming from mass-media
I understood it costed
almost 2 million euros.
For me, this seemed like a huge sum of money,
with this kind of money you could build
a completely new center for visual arts.
And this money should have been invested
far much better
and efficient.
And all this issue with contemporary art
and culture, and education...
because contemporary art
makes part of education,
even if some people like it or not,
but in the end its just
a cultural politics issue.
For me it was interesting that
all of a sudden
something huge can appear
in the middle of the town
a public monument,
and this term, public,
seemed kind of weird to me,
because it doesn't really ask the public
legally, there's a commission
of 10 to 15 people
who decides, ok,
we're gonna give 2 million euros to a person,
because usually a sculptor does the job of
doing this public monument.
Even more, most of the times,
these monuments are really ugly
it's my opinion...
and not mine's only!
When a statue stays in a certain place
for a long period of time
you can see it as urban furniture,
but, on the other hand,
always, a statue has some
ideological implications as well.
We are now next to King Carol's huge statue
in which i bet there were invested
millions of euro,
this other monument in the back the same,
the "Caragialiana" also,
Enescu Festival costed eight millions euro.
There are very much money for culture,
the question is how are they distributed
and why are they invested only in this
dead culture,
the one that doesn't provoke any critics,
any reaction or thought.
They invest only in patrimony,
money goes only to this snob old culture.
And the moment I got down like a horse
on the ground
and all the cars were passing by
and all the people were commenting,
it was like some kind of humiliation.
In the end this human's condition
in the public space.
People don't exist,
they are somewhere very low.
What exists are monuments and cars
and of course terraces...
and artificial grass.
That's what exists!
If you're at a terrace and you drink beer
for fiveů ten hours,
nobody cares, it's ok,
because you are part of something known.
You're ok, you consume,
you're in a well established logic
and there's nothing wrong with you.
But if you sit for two hours like this
you're dubious, you just loose time
and you don't do any service for the community.
I was also interested to produce a short circuit
in the city's visual logic,
especially in Bucharest,
where nothing usually happens...
We only have the beer festival
and we have commercials all over,
but nothing else, nothing different.
The solution is a revolution.
I don't know...
If they don't change their attitude
we will become more and more visible
and more incisive,
if they don't give us space or funds
for contemporary culture
then contemporary culture will come after them.
We occupy public spaces, we occupy spaces,
we go inside the Enescu Festival,
we go inside the National Theater,
we go after all this traditionalist snobbism.
This could be the solution!