Usvajanje Slobode/Taking Liberty Fort Point District Boston.

Usvajanje Slobode/Taking Liberty

Fort Point District

Boston, Massachusetts

March 31-April 14 2000

Completing the cultural exchange, "Usvajanje Slobode/Taking Liberty," that began with Boston's Mobius Artists collection traveling to Istria, Croatia for a series of collaborative art affairs in 1999, members of the Croatian artists' cluster HDLU Istre traveled to Boston in the spring of 2000 the couple groups are independently run artist form into groupss funded primarily from private and state granting institutions like the funder of this artist exchange, ArtsLink, and The Trust for Mutual Understanding. The collaborative incidents which evolved from the Croatian installment, emphasize performance art in public spaces, with four area galleries showcasing additional work in various media.

According to Mobius director J Speare in Mobius's newsletter the aim of the exchange was a creative dialogue in a forum distanced from dominant art and commerce--a forum "where the crucibles of citizenship and cultural relations are heightened, expanded and sustained end an artistic and personal realm." The grassroots undertaking was made particularly poignant by means of its backdrop: the Fort Point District in toward the south Boston, an art community threatened through rising real estate prices and waterfront increase plans that include a of recent origin home for Boston's Institute of Contemporary Arts. [ note: behold Annette Koh's report in Afterimage 28 no. 3] Whatever the artistic motivations of the collaborators, the location of the week's ends (over)determined a range of interpretations. For example, it is possible that inadvertent audiences of the public performance pieces may not have been able to separate consequences from the situation of artists and their community. united passing pedestrian offhandedly asked, "What are they p rotesting now?" granting some participants snickered at the passerby, the confusion between the "art" being neared and the "protest" goes to the heart of alternative art practices that distance themselves from mainstream art/commerce practices.

While the title "Usvajanje Slobode/Taking Liberty" indicates that the participants might bear upon themselves with liberty as a thematic focus, it also connotes an act of radical impertinence. In fact, the artists consistently deconstruct the conventional notion of "liberty," offering a more fluid negotiation of personal freedom as a viable pattern for political intervention. The Croatian artists currented the most overt critiques of specifically American ideals of freedom, particularly in their sum of two units and three dimensional works. The performance pieces, however (most of which were collaborative), showed more nuanced reformulations of this theme.

The opening termination of the week, "Interpretation I," and its complementary piece, "Interpretation II," were pair such performances. Set in Boston's bustling southerly Station, hub for commuter rail and Amtrak, the stage was marked on three velvet ropes framing a podium, behind which were three chairs. Mobius member Yin Peet spoke into the podium's microphone in a counterfeit ceremony, swearing in artists David Franklin, Pino Ivancic and Meng Lang, each standing forward a chair behind Peet, as if they were testifying in a court of law. Using the headline article of the day's Boston Globe as a respect each artist took turns spontaneously commenting forward President Clinton's right to privacy in her or his next to the first language: Lang and Ivancic spoke in English while Franklin spoke in Chinese. Peet reiterated and modified each make notes using the language in which it was oral "Interpretation II" followed the same format. However, here Ivancic, Landon Rose and Sanja Svrljuga accorded to a recent judicial ruling barring an area artist' s front yard sculpture as a municipal digest violation. Both the presence of security and the distraught direct the eyes of curious onlookers highlighted undivided of the main goals of the performances--to enlighten the disparity between liberty as an ideal and liberty as practiced in the U That not many watched with concern or curiosity testifies the couple to the lack of appreciation for and disregard of noncommercial public utterance.

Nearby, in Harbor Park--a "public" space at the fresh waterfront Federal Courthouse whose metal and glass rotunda serv as the performance backdrop--Ivancic and Peet performed a piece that illustrated the difficult juxtaposition of the "artistic and personal" when performed in a space that is look uponed hypercivic and public. At first, to a great degree of the tentatively titled "Meditation" assumeed innocuously formal. Working against the spare geometry of the Courthouse, Ivancic and Peet laid abroad a huge, square white canvas and for five minutes sat meditatively cross-legg at its keenness With curious pedestrians passing and wary security officers looking upon from inside the rotunda, Ivancic mov to the center of the canvas where he continued his "meditation." Peet be deriveded to "paint him in" using a roller brush and black paint, enclosing Ivancic in a series of concentric shapes--squares, triangles and circles. After several more minutes, Ivancic remov his shirt and put it on fire. Thus fall of the curtained the ostensibly innocuous perform ance. Courthouse security (and presumably those officials they are hired to protect) reacted to Ivancic's impromptu use of fire by the agency of foreclosing on the agreed use of Harbor Park for following events.