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1.
What are surrogates, how we created it and what we wanted to do?
Surrogates are cardboards, 7 x 10 cm, printed double side, with text
and image. Author of the idea, the text and the concept is Pandalf
Vulkanski, while the images are creation of 24 Macedonian artists,
photographers and designers. They are packed in 6 different boxes,
around seventy surrogates each.
The front page of each surrogate gives the title (the theme) and one
proverb or saying from Marko Cepenkov collection. On the back page
there is a portion of text trying to relate both with the proverb
and the title.
The surrogates are hybrid mix of art work, plaything, public or
personal ad and educational or informative tool. They could refer to
coupons, visiting cards, miniatures, puzzle pieces, post cards,
false banknotes, flyers, ad cards, indulgencies, written amulets,
written relicts, praying leaflets, beggars' cards, wedding
invitations...
First of all, the surrogates came out from Pandalf Vulkanski
"reading cards". They derive from his habit to take notes from books
he found interesting.
The whole project goes on for several years, now, sometimes with low
sometimes with high intensity, and one of the idea is to create big
( and partly metaphysical) calendar composed from 365 small art
works - surrogates, one for each day.
We would like to accomplish several things with it. We like to
develop awareness about the medium through which one express
him/herself; "medium is the message", according to Mcluhan. Our
surrogate-card is a message. We also follow Bruce May advice: to do
metaphors. Every object has the ability to represent something else
than what it is.
So, our surrogates are everything: our art, our economy, our
presence, our existence, our history. With it, we relativize the
limits between the "real" and the "virtual", between the "original"
and the "surrogate". Our surrogates correspond with our wishes for
the authentic, for the common, for play, conversation, relation,
money, art, happening, aesthetics, belief, credibility, safety,
peace, love, hatred and so on. The surrogates are substitution for
all this.
On a more ground level, the surrogates are an attempt to draw the
features of a new, strong and united Macedonian cultural scene
represented through 24 artists, designers, photographers, many of
which turn around the Cultural Center Tocka.
2.
Assemblage rules; seed and soil
Our main methodological strategy was the strange but magnificent
endeavor of Walter Benjamin: "To transfer the assemblage rules to
history, i.e. to build the great structures by the smallest,
precisely shaped structural elements". Even in a broader sense
Benjamin is on of the main inspirers for the project. For example,
similar to Malarme passion to create "absolute book", Benjamin
wished to create book made from citations. On part of these traces
the countless legs of our surrogates ford.
Benjamin idea is holistic one: the whole dwells in the smallest
fragment. This was very important to us: the surrogate, from one
side, should look very simple and unpretentious, as coupon or token;
and from the other side, each one of it should contain the
complexity of the whole outspread project with its many ideas and
participants.
The mixing of things is, thus, the main idea of our project. The
creation of hybrids, collages, patchworks. But, what lies behind
hybridization is not only the simple drive to experiment with the
forms but the wish to join the things, and first of all the people,
with their different creative manuscripts. At this point, the
surrogates are not only radical artistic project, anymore, but a
kind of social experiment, an attempt to create scene with mixed
energies, an attempt to join the dispersed paths/pieces.
Another important thing: Are the surrogates individual project by
Pandalf Vulkanski or collective venture of a diverse group of
people?
We would say, predictably: both the one and the other.
Is that possible? We think it is, especially when on is walking on
the edge, when you are simultaneously in and out of the picture.
To explain this we would refer to the famous words by Wittgenstein:
My originality (if that's the correct word) is, according to me,
originality in the sense of soil, not in the sense of seed. (Maybe I
don't have a seed of my own.) Throw some seed on my soil, and it
would grow differently than on any other soil.
So, we create a soil for different seed, from which the wonderful
garden full of unbelievable flora and fauna flourish - our
surrogates.
Yes, Cepenkov is saying: Everyone can be father to born children.
But, another wonderful crank and scientist from 18th century, August
Blank says: There is no original specie which is not composed from
the remnants of the other ones.
In fact, the surrogates are maybe most strongly connected with
Baudelaire notion that genius should create a matrix. This is the
same thing William Burroughs says:
It can no longer be said that I am the author of this song, isn't
it? I only unlock the combination, some combination of letters on
some travel-bag, and the song would create itself.
3.
Are the surrogates art or advertising?
If the art still exist, (or, if it exist at all), one can speak
about the surrogates as an “art project”. This is completely clear
if we have in mind the ancient understanding of art as “techne”;
skill of creation and production. But when we speak about the
surrogates maybe even more important is the dimension or art, which,
through the creation of harmonious things releases itself from the
company of philosophy and technology. The Art becomes, ars (mixing),
when the produced things show magnificent communion.
On the other side, the surrogates are like small exercises in
graphic design and advertising: there are title, subtitle, textual
message, and visual motive. Even in their primary idea the
surrogates tackle the advertising, not just because an important
part of the authors have the experience in graphic design. Yet they
do it in a way to overcome the skillfulness to advertise.
So, when we speak about the connection between the surrogates and
the art of advertising we accept Wittgenstein advice: first use,
than overthrow the stairs which are given to you. If we flaunt with
instructiveness and manipulability of capitalism, with its seducing
strategies of amusement and spectacle, our project is actually
directed against the utilitarism and easy instrumentalization.
Through the slogans, through the playing with educational and fun,
through the actual fashion of the day and advertising strategies –
we have tried to distance ourselves from the slogans as well as the
pragmatism of the announcement.
4.
Cepenkov and the language
Marko Cepenkov (1829-1920), the old gatherer of folklore, instead of
some folksy moralist, became “the mystic authoritative basis” for
the whole project!
Stories, traditions, songs, legends, tales of places and other tings
I have written – whole mass; I shall print it, even though they are
not written by grammar, those things, I would create new grammar,
new language, pictographic, like this, like that, for the mute, for
the noisy, for the ancient, for the postmodern Macedonian, even he
himself comprehend as metaphor, as surrogate!
Let’s be serious, Cepenkov, with the freshness of his language, is
often so condensed, so pure and so abstract, in the most positive
sense (so as the surrogates must be: not to illustrate, not to
moralize not to give somebody a good line) – giving completely new
light to our contemporary use of our own language.
In that sense, of course, on of the most important intention with
the surrogates is to draw attention on the forgotten language
Cepenkov use, an inexhaustible source still able to refresh the
stagnant waters of the Macedonian language. The vitality of Cepenkov
language not only keeps the ties with the archaic and dialectic
Macedonian but often looks more contemporary (faster and wittier)
than the actual jargon!
This especially becomes visible when we take Cepenkov sentences out
of their original context and attach it in different units of
meaning, making interesting language collages.
Once more at the end: We started from little thing but than on the
distance we felt a substance for big story. As we kept walking (the
sea departed to drown in the river) we understood that the little
stories give great wisdom. That’s the Project: Surrogates.
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