An archipelago does not mean isolation but a connection
Mirror Land
It all began with a news report about a spaceship, which was spotted in Central Slovakia. A beekeeper from the village of Dúbravica built a beehive in the form of a spaceship to fly his bees to Mirror Planet (Mirror Land). This planet is quite similar to ours, situated on the far side of the Sun, and it is pristine and unspoiled. And to our surprise – the DBSP 01 spaceship (Dúbravica Beekeeper's Space Program) is real – it is open to visitors in the middle of the village. A man in a spacesuit can sometimes be spotted in the area.[1]This (and probably the last) ode to escapism is an ode to a justified escape. Or an ode to the work of beekeepers – tied to their bees, "stealing" their honey, protecting them and taking care of their families. To understand the bees and their behavior requires a calm and open mind.
This short story is situated at the crossroads between science fiction and an eco-dystopian vision of the world and it unravels in multiple present and future time zones. The narrative unfolds in the storylines balancing between reality and fiction. [2]It takes place in a kind of timelessness of space travel. It can be read as an internal dialog between the two protagonists – a journalist and an astronaut. The book has two independent and overlapping axes – the literary story and artwork. Both axes blend into one whole. The scenes link to the archaic and rurally anchored beekeeping values and are intertwined with the modern myth of a cosmic escape. Instead of the optimistic ideas of cosmic discoveries, the text teems with concerns about the fate of the bees, which are invisibly connected to everything we experience on a daily basis. However, attention also turns elsewhere: the story does not only warn us about the ecological disaster and loss of natural balance... It also invites us into the world where time flows differently. Once the astronaut removes his helmet, he hears a whole spectrum of sounds of the nature and is fully immersed in them...
As was the case with the exterior beehive with a library in Dubravica, even the two-meter object named Helmet (2016) – made of wood, plywood and canvas with the names of plants pollinated by the bees – was designed for physical entry and enjoyment of the humming of the bees. [3]Pilgrimage, travel, nomadism, exile and migration are strongly reflected in the creative work of Oto Hudec, and he also uses them to comment on the current social issues.
Exile, Migration, Wandering
The word “migration” in the proto-Indo-European languages has a meaning similar to the concept of change in the Greek and Latin word root (ameíbō, meo), which reflects a natural movement associated with the change of place. In contrast to migration, exile is a forced act, often associated with punishment. In his meditations on exile, Edward Said portrays yet another meaning of the word, in which love and home are intricately connected with the concept of loss. "Exile is based on the existence of love and attachment to someone’s birthplace. It applies to all kinds of exile: it does not mean that home and the love of home is lost, but this loss is inherent to the very existence of both."[4]Migration does not contain this element of loss of home and love, therefore, the words such as immigrant and immigration have so easily penetrated into our vocabulary as an unkind and derogatory designation burdened with collective prejudice. Migration is associated with voluntary or forced movement of population, overcoming of geographical and political territories and its consequences. In connection with the war in Syria, humanitarian crisis in Africa and the suppression of the Arab Spring, migration is constantly present in European politics. The Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev claims that the refugee crisis undermined the European idea of tolerance and put it to a hard test. Krastev considers the global mobility to be the cause behind the rise of populists who promise to defend their country against the undesirable global effects and consider the European policy to be a dictatorship, which must be reduced or completely overthrown. According to Krastev, the compassion of Central Europeans with other oppressed people in the world is virtually non-existent. [5]However, the layers of general disillusionment in our region hide the strong undercurrents with a rich cultural bedrock and multi-ethnic foundation of our contemporary culture, which gives us a chance to perceive migration as a natural phenomenon, and at the same time, as an invitation to rethink the fundamental nature of European citizenship, solidarity and humanism.
Therefore, the current crisis of European identity and the art projects by Oto Hudec may have a similar – but not quite identical – starting point. The focus on social issues of the Cape Verde archipelago by an artist born and raised in a continental country with persistent negative attitudes to the European migration policy, raises some questions. Oto Hudec's repeated stays in Cape Verde and the suburbs of Lisbon and the respective communities have become a place of his personal experience of the Other– the cultural differences, which might be termed “poetic relations” according to the philosopher EdouardGlissant. Glissant puts poetic relations in the context of errantry and not migration. "Errantry, therefore, does not proceed from renunciation nor from frustration regarding a supposedly deteriorated (deterritorialized) situation of origin; it is not a resolute act of rejection or an uncontrolled impulse of abandonment. Sometimes, by taking up the problems of the Other, it is possible to find oneself. Contemporary history provides several striking examples of this, among them Frantz Fanon, whose path led from Martinique to Algeria. That is very much the image of the rhizome, prompting the knowledge that identity is no longer completely within the root but also in Relation." [6]In this interpretation of meaning, errantry is a return (to oneself) as the Other – a rediscovery of (self) as the Other.
The Archipelago
The concept of deteritorialization by Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari contains two thought processes that led to the creation of the artistic project titled Archipelago (2015). Deteritorialization is used by these authors to refer to the processes of weakening the links between culture and its location and the transfer of cultural operators from a particular location in space and time. [7]Through the exhibited works, an artist articulates the relations of spontaneous creativity, collaboration and sharing of cultural habits that are moderated in two diametrically different environments. On the one hand, Hudec focuses on exploring the social environments, on the Other, he addresses the overcoming of dualism rootedness and exile. And Edouard Glissant adds: "Whereas exile may erode one's sense of identity, the thought of errantry – the thought of that which relates – usually reinforces this sense of identity."[8]
The imaginary idea of errantry communicates through establishing the relationships with the culturally different Other, and in Oto Hudec's work, it is rendered as an archipelago, which is also an intersubjective image of Cape Verde and the lives of the people who were born there, left the place and then returned. This intersubjectivity is based on immediacy and participation in the poetics of relations. A pair of sculptures of giant aquatic turtles is not only a reference to migration, but it is interrelated, and in a continuous voyage through time. It conveys the subjective notions of home and maintaining the relationship to home in a living culture. These relationships are then reflected in other, more documentary planes of the artist's work, such as the video from the immigrant borough in Lisbon. In contrast, these are also depicted in the murals painted directly in the gallery space. [9]The mutually enriching creative process is very important to Oto Hudec – his work emerges in direct cooperation with non-professional artists, craftsmen and children from the immigrant neighborhoods, and it is created by the principle workshops.
Cape Verde and the Slovak Countryside
Oto Hudec thoughtfully applies and cultivates the techniques of spontaneous children's creativity and skills of craftsmanship in his artistic expressions, which results in unlearned authenticity. His work, however, does not teem with site-specific exotism, which is being used so extensively as a tourist commodity. He understands the thin ice of artistic "exploitation" of the voluntary participation of people who have not been instructed by the artistic world. He wants the people to receive equally, though he is not always succeeding. It either turns into an experience (e.g. the ceramics workshop) – the generation growing up on Afro-American hip-hop culture experiences something traditional, such as pottery from the island of Santiago. This is the moment when the co-author receives a different value in exchange for his own work. The poetics of relations directs the participants, and consequently the viewer, to the ties to a particular location, language and work. It guides us to the paradox of economic prosperity, which has an averted side in the less developed parts of the world, and makes us think about solidarity and understanding between the cultures. The hand-made cars from Cape Verde, which were originally part of the exhibition Reset (2015) in Banská Štiavnica, are artfully incorporated into the fragments of the late Gothic ornamental decoration and highlight these timeless partnerships. [10]The pickup trucks used in Cape Verde as private buses are decorated by the residents with global brands and dialects of local creativity. Oto Hudec is consistently expanding his anthropological model of art and his installations lead to self-reflexive processes within our culture through the appropriation and deep understanding of the Other and Others.
The nomadic project Camper Van (with Daniela Krajčová) pointed to the underutilized opportunities to promote and develop the local dialects and ponder about the poetics of relations between the minorities and the majority society in their cultural manifestations. The Camper Van with equipment for non-traditional animation techniques traveled Slovakia in the summer months of 2012 - 2016 and mapped the environment in the Roma communities. The artists held several-days-long workshops for children that resulted in short animated films as a mirror to the everyday life of the Roma communities, settlements, villages and neighborhoods. [11]Although the project was not originally intended as art – its ambition was to interact with the underprivileged members of society, especially the young generation whose access to arts is significantly limited – it was presented several times at the exhibitions for the majority audience. [12]The public presentations also included other workshops and discussions. The project Camper Van gave the visitors an outside look into the functioning of the Roma communities through interviews with staff members in the community centers, primary school teachers and mayors. At the same time it revealed the specificity of the environment in each village and offered an insight into the local social problems.
Nadikhuno Muzeumos
The exhibition Nadikhuno muzeumos / An Invisible Museum (2017 – 2018), initiated by Oto Hudec, deals with the idea of establishing a museum of the Roma culture. The exhibition gathered the work of several authors and artists, which reflect on the Roma history and cultural production and problematic stereotypes. This work presents a partial view of the history, culture and contemporary Roma art in a concise form. The exhibition project emerged from the question of whether national identity or (uniform) cultural identity as a concept is even applicable to the Roma community, what the function of a museum as an institution focused on history is in this regard, and how meaningful would it be for the very members of the Roma community.[13]Is the concept of a "museum" based on the European culture and colonial principles even applicable to the needs of the Roma community? If so, how could it be adapted to not duplicate the negative stereotypes and predefined formulas, but on the contrary, be an institution that promotes social dialog? The homonymous installation by Oto Hudec is an open vision of an alternative museum, which would be focused not only on the past but also on the present and future. Together with other artists, community workers and members of the Roma community, consideration is given to the specifics of the Roma culture and outlooks on life, and what the museum should look like. In addition to the traditional ethnographic perspective, the museum is envisaged as an institution with the focus on the Roma culture, their current social and political situation and – last but not least – their history. Through the reflections, interviews and sketches, it is an open vision of a fluid institution dedicated to collecting the works and archival documents, field research, linking the academic world with the world of the Roma communities in the regions, and spreading their results through the community activities. The Invisible Museum takes the form of an incomplete plan as a collage of unfinished considerations for further elaboration and discussion. The framing of this project through art can create imaginary situations that would otherwise be hardly feasible in the current political and economic situation.[14]The hybrid form of this exhibition bears the expressive features of the previous works by Oto Hudec, such as the childish and/or non-professional artistic expressions and the blend of fiction and fact. Other elements are used as well, which the author uses to reopen the issues of ethics of participation and sharing of common values across the different social and ethnic groups.
Geopolitical Tools
The strength of one's voice may be in a whisper – in the quietly and clearly articulated word sounds. It happens ever so often that I pronounce these words myself in during a long walk through the woods, in the mountains – not only do I speak to myself, I also talk to the trees and stones. I don't even realize that I am turning my voice to the Earth in the same way the people communicated with the living and inanimate world since the prehistoric times. In a series of four videos titled Corn Bread Music, Oto Hudec acts as a street musician without an audience. His concert audience is a corn field in the USA, glacier in Georgia and a lonely pine in the High Tatras. The composition of four videos recalls the four stanzas in a poem, with the punch line in the last one: corn from the US, water from the glaciers and wood from the Tatras become the raw materials for the fire to cook a corn tortilla. In the final segment, the artist places the tortilla on a record player and turns it into music. The work refers to numerous environmental issues such as industrial GMO farming, disappearance of glaciers due to global warming, deforestation and forest calamities in Slovakia, with the origin of things as a fundamental all-encompassing idea. Each product, even the smallest one, is made from natural resources and its production results in environmental changes. The concerts devoted to corn, water from the melting glaciers and wood from the forest calamity become part of the final product. The corn tortilla carries the music played in all the songs for the individual substances contained in the tortilla in their original natural state.
Oto Hudec is an artist of solidarity who develops a relationship to places and the world at large in his work. He does so through songs, drawings, sculptures, writing, linking... His songs are geopolitical tools because they sound as a self-reflexive harmony with the planet and are a token of affiliation to the political emancipation and cooperation with the colonized forms of life on Earth and in the Earth.
Daniel Grúň, May 2019
[1]In 2014, Oto Hudec created a visual and architectural object for Peripheral Centers in Dúbravica to serve as a functional beehive with a library. It was an artist's contribution to the topic of Fruit of Art, which Peripheral Centers continuously work with – it connects art with agrarian work. For more information, see: https://perifernecentra.com/dbsp-oto-hudec/
[2]The book by Oto Hudec titled Mirror Land was published by tranzit.sk in cooperation with the Apart Label team and designed by Magdaléna Scheryová. http://sk.tranzit.org/sk/publikacia/0/publication/oto-hudec-mirror-land
[3]The Man who travels with Bees, Gandy Gallery, 2016. https://www.gandy-gallery.com/exhibitions/bratislava/2016-oto-hudec/
[4]SAID, Edward: Reflections on Exile and Other Essays. Cambridge – MA: Harvard University Press, 2002, s. 148.
[5]KRASTEVIvan: What comes after Europe? Will the European Union lapse in a similar way as the Habsburg monarchy? Bratislava: Kalligram, 2019
[6]GLISSANT, Édouard: Poetics of Relation. Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997, p. 18.
[7]DELEUZE, Gilles – GUATTARI, Félix: A thousand plateaus. Prague: Herrmann & synové, 2010, pp. 434-435.
[8]GLISSANT, Édouard: Poetics of Relation Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997, p. 20-21.
[9]Súostrovie / Archipelago, Kunsthalle Lab, Bratislava, 2017.
[10]RESET 2015 / XI. Triennial of Small Objects and Drawings, Jozef Kollár Gallery in Banská Štiavnica, 2015.
[11]The project Camper Van by Oto Hudec was held for several years (2012 - 2016) during the summer months in tandem with Daniela Krajčová and in cooperation with the relevant community centers, primary schools and extracurricular clubs for the Roma community. https://www.projektkaravan.sk
[12]Exhibition project Devoted to Change (2014) http://sk.tranzit.org/sk/vystava/0/2014-03-28/odovzdan-zmene
[13]See the interview for the Milan Šimečka Foundation portal titled Invisible Museum: Oto Hudec and Emília Rigová in a dialogue. In: https://www.multikulti.sk/rozhovory/neviditelne-muzeum-oto-hudec-a-emilia-rigova-v-dialogu
[14]Nadikhuno muzeumos / Invisible Museum (29.11. 2017 – 27. 1. 2018), exhibition in tranzit.sk gallery in Bratislava, authors: Paula Ďurinová, Marcela Hadová, Oto Hudec, Daniela Krajčová, Emilia Rigová. For more information, see: http://sk.tranzit.org/sk/vystava/0/2017-11-29/nadikhuno-muzeumos
