GENERAL REMINDER, January-February
2000

Sugar Janos, Leiderman Yuri

January 11 – February 10

A joint project by Janos Sugar and Yuri Leiderman "General Reminder" developing in time and transforming from place to place, was presented in Budapest (1998), Gdansk (1999) and Zagreb (1999). In the spring of this year it will become a part of one of the group exhibitions of East European art organized by the Exhibition Center Jeu de Paume, Paris. The exhibition at Art Media Center "TV Gallery" includes both installations which had been shown earlier, and original ones. The idea of the project emerged spontaneously, it does not belong to the authors, moreover, one of them was absent. Actually, this very thing made Victor Misiano, Moscow curator, feel the necessity of Yuri Leiderman’s participation in the talk which he had with Janos Sugar and Cathalin Nerey, Ludwig Museum’s curator, in one of the Budapest restaurants. Russian and Hungarian curators decided to initiate an art dialogue between the two artists of kindrid spirit and method. They met for the first time in 1996 at Rotterdam Festival of Contemporary Art Manifesta 1 where both of them took part. Afterwards the artists continued their dialogue in letters.

"Do you think we should choose nonsense as a theme?"
Janos Sugar began his letter of 30.10.96 to Yuri Leiderman with this suggestion. Practical art development of the concept "nonsense" which has been fixed in their correspondence during almost two years, became their author comment to the project and was included in the catalogue. What is initial, an idea or a word? A concept or a thing? Where do universals originate from? Is their source thinking or sensual phenomena? John Salisbury, a medieval conceptualist, had declared this question open, as he came to a conclusion that it was impossible to give only one answer to it. From the subsequent to the foregoing, from a posteriory to a priori and vice versa. Communication between the author and the viewer is similar to a pendulum. The abstract and the empiric are not the extreme points of the amplitude of its movement; they are the forces making pendulum – like consciousness do its work.

Yuri Leiderman says that all expositional meanings had been given to the artist and the viewer beforehand. Under these conditions it seems that the maximum program for the artist could be their ingenious recombination, a pure speculative operation. Therefore, the art space primordially appears discredited. To overcome this situation, Janos Sugar offers to transpose the work of art, more exactly, its realisation in the viewer’s consciousness, mainly with regard to time: "Just the fact that it isn’t necessary for the work of art to be understood at present, but it can be understood only in future, becomes the cause of conflict for many people. The work of art has got plenty of time, unlike kitsch, it is in no hurry". In this case, what becomes the subject of art? Sugar to Leiderman, "If you say that you’d like to deal with something more essential, then I would add, and with something more concrete. Something that is very simple, like the models of the world". In the 60s the ideologists of art declared art to be post-philosophical activities. In their opinion, the crisis of misunderstanding had to be solved by the practice of discreditation of the methods of conceptualization of reality functioning in society.

Postconceptualists J.Sugar and Y.Leiderman, basing on initial for conceptualist method depriving of conventional meanings, do not confine themselves to destabilisation of concepts, they go further and dynamicize the structure as a whole and renavigate the logic of development or comprehension of the art phenomenon. In Y.Leiderman opinion, the functioning mechanism of the latter is hidden in certain "apparatuses" which have nothing to do with industrial machines. "These are just structures or events affected by several forces different in their nature. Only in this case the surface of distinction between two various environments can appear, and also visual traces, calligraphy of forces, temporal effects on the surface." Every work of art possesses its own topology in time and space. Its drifting territory spreads with regard to three moduses of time, but it requires its assimilation always in present. An obvious fact requiring proof. This is a problem of cultural valorization, the sphere of institutions’ applience. Then what is the difference between transience of art and transience of kitsch? While the first one produces history in every act of its realisation, the second one REproduces history, making imaginary models of the world stereotypical. "At the present moment the creation of the model of nonsense seems the most productive to me" (J.Sugar). The artists’ task is deconceptualization of history being realized in every object. History requires heroization, it needs every hero to be mentioned by name. History is constituted by names, they mark the time. This is why every name has its own history, getting involved into a mad dance of time which is going on at the carnival of the present "here and now". The intrigue is not in recognition, but in loss of what is being sought for. Going down and deheroization, recreation and appeal to the future, murder and death of one’s own free will, this is reality of art, realism of art.

Is it the death of the heroes or the death of the names? Hit by spears and arrows, ancient heroes give their names to electrons. The hero is a target, the signs of his wounds serve for navigation through time and events in Y.Leiderman’s "Trojan Dances". "Unemployed Ariadne" in the person of Janos Sugar behind the wire, the ball of it falls to her lot now. J.Sugar, "Are you aware of my method?" – yes, these method of arranging mass shows have been well-known to the circus and church for more than 2000 years. The memory of "The Lost Team" is configurated by Y. Leiderman in the columbarium’s cells. What does "Big Yes and Big No" by J. Sugar show, the measures of the positive and the negative? or the place of the sentence between agreement and refusal? The way to the outcome is through "The Bridge of Eisenshtein-Rosen" by Sugar and revealing the idea of COrrelation of all possible models of reality.

Curated by Tatiana Gorucheva

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