Chișinău - city difficult to pronounce

Regia: Pavel Braila

Camera: Radu Zara, Radu Balan

Montaj: Denis Bartenev

 

Chişinău – city difficult to pronounce face parte din proiectul Odyssey MD-2010, o documentare a vieţii zilnice din Moldova pe parcursul unui an. În urma unei cercetări la Arhivele Naţionale, Pavel Brăila a descoperit că de la prăbuşirea U.R.S.S.,  în Moldova nu s-au mai colecţionat sau produs materiale vizuale care să documenteze noua istorie a ţării…aproape ca şi cum Moldova ar fi încetat să mai existe. Titlul filmului a fost dat de diferitele variante de a pronunţa şi scrie numele oraşului Chişinău – francezii îl numesc ‘Schischino’, germanii ‘Shizinau’, ruşii ‘Kishiniov’, iar românii ‘Kiʃi’nəw’.

Cosmin Nasui

 

Pavel Brăila: Material Poetry

 

On his passage out of state socialism the eastern European subject soon learnt the necessity of updating the mask that his body exhibits in the public sphere. Little performances occur everywhere: in televised revolutions and in street protests, in advertised privatizations and in trade-union strikes, in changes of political regimes and in bazaars where merchants sell smuggled western products. But mastering the body was also the new objective for global capitalism, in its march towards the total submission of subjectivity. Capitalism organizes a whole apparatus which addresses the body and its senses, traversing the organisms’ critical functions: from the immune to the nervous system, from the digestive to the reproductive system, it advances implacably-aesthetically. One item functions as a connective operator between the public mask of the performer and the capitalist aesthetics: the glass surface. The surface of the TV screen, for example, which feeds new fabricated role models; or the surface of the mirror, which reveals the immense distance between what is shown in its reflective surfaces and what has been publicly appropriated as the new ideal selves. The glass then links the public performance and the aesthetics of consumption, which leaves the East European artist with little choice: he himself must be a performer. But out of his precarious living, her/his performance-art operates inversely. The artist too begins to have her/his own intimate relation with the glass surface - the glass of the camera lens, which is mirror and television screen at the same time. But in the performance-art occurring in the East of the last decade, the looking glass aesthetics is politicized. The body of the artist becomes a public place unto which antagonistic world-views and ideologies are inscribed. S(h)e is, so to speak, a public good which everybody is invited to consume.

 

What is fascinating about Pavel Brăila is exactly this: that his aesthetics are contextually politicized; that his body speaks from the midst of the nineties to the present; that his art has a modesty which is addressed to everybody. Pavel is an engineer of political poetry. And it is no wonder, since he is a self-taught explorer of artistic potentialities. Pavel will always remain a performance artist, regardless of the means of expression that he will choose. But out of all his attempts to transverse territories, it is the relation between his performative self and the glass-image that constitutes the essence of his flight. In his image everything performs. People and objects alike accelerate the spin of the world: this is why his poetry cannot but be connected to the political. As scissors of various sizes, shredded white paper, and personae in junk-and-paper outfits pass in front of the camera (Servicii speciale, Pioneer, Unde Undeva) Pavel retains something of the infant’s ingenuousness when discovering the world and believing that he is its master. But there is also something counterbalancing this simplicity: the insistence, for example, on the working hands of peasants, railway workers or his mother (Handmade Song, Shoes for Europe, Homesick Cuisine) or on the shape and light of precarious environments (105_7, Road, Work). The complementarity between simple gestures and the context which becomes symbolically politicized organizes the whole hierarchy of objects that define the image on screen. In Pavel’s earlier works, large surfaces of white colour and light paper prevail, either separate or in conjunction. But around them the image reveals the desolate landscape of an eastern European village, with its uneven geographies, fences, roofs, plants, animals and people (Work). Or, again, the white dust of chalk that writes against a black floor, unto which Pavel crawls and spins, organizes the analysis of his memories, as they are spelled and erased, repressed and recalled (Recalling events). Then, gradually throughout the years and throughout his works, situations complicate. It is as if the artist discovers all of a sudden the impotence of metaphor when it comes to politics: one needs to concentrate on the actual printed paper, the printed and stamped paper of the passport, for example, which concretely, un-metaphorically, manages our entire lives and our freedom of movement. Opposed to the white paper, the written and stamped passport is real and ideal paper at the same time. It is real as material to be touched and ideal as fetish. By pondering the latter against the former, in a joyful moment which deconstructs our political idiosyncrasies, the artist subverts the official document by stamping on its front cover the twelve stars of the European Union (Welcome to EU). This effective deconstruction operates further in his recent works. Here, the image that multiplies onto several screens - as within Shoes for Europe, Baron’s Hill or Definitely Unfinished - has become Pavel’s signature. Multi-screening defines an economy of agglomeration-dissipation. Like the eye, the camera lens is immersed in multitudes of people and objects and is invaded by details. It insists onto moving wheels of the trains (Shoes for Europe), onto public buses, elevators and facades (Chisinău), onto train corridors and diffuse faces (105_7) or onto furniture curves and kitsch paintings in the gipsy houses of Soroca (Baron’s Hill). Pavel Brăila‘s work becomes a material poetry of everyday life, into which reality is re-signified exactly because it exhibits its smallest insignificant parts.

 

Last September I met Pavel Brăila in Chişinău at the site where he exhibited a one-evening installation. Agglomeration and dissipation were articulating this work where performance and the glass-image met once more. Backed up by the hymn of the European Union, Pavel re-performed Welcome to E.U., this time in the presence of Moldovan authorities. Again, he got away with it. But then, there was also a screen invading the eye with expressionless faces of TV news presenters on the verge of speaking (Fresh News). On display, thus, an agglomeration of public masks standing by the threshold of redundant language, but not quite there yet. They were coming one after another at such a speed that there was no time for something to crystallize behind them. The mask is all there is, this whole charade of what-you-see-is-what-you-get is all that our contemporary politics is. The body, the face, are mortified. The screen frustrates and when facing such a sight, one refuses to see and runs away. But a whole array of air fans roaring like airplane engines was dissipating the tension, transferring it to the viewer. Thus the artist is the catalyst: Brăila sets in motion molecules of disagreement, speeds up their collision, incites attitudes and provokes the refusal of the world we live in. In this part of Europe where after two decades of post-socialism the body is physically exhausted and the subject still doesn’t feel at home, this is equally his only possible call and his incontrollable compulsion.

 

 

                                                                                                                                                                                                   Vlad Morariu

Pavel Brăila: Material Poetry

On his passage out of state socialism the eastern European subject soon learnt the necessity of updating the mask that his body exhibits in the public sphere. Little performances occur everywhere: in televised revolutions and in street protests, in advertised privatizations and in trade-union strikes, in changes of political regimes and in bazaars where merchants sell smuggled western products. But mastering the body was also the new objective for global capitalism, in its march towards the total submission of subjectivity. Capitalism organizes a whole apparatus which addresses the body and its senses, traversing the organisms’ critical functions: from the immune to the nervous system, from the digestive to the reproductive system, it advances implacably-aesthetically. One item functions as a connective operator between the public mask of the performer and the capitalist aesthetics: the glass surface. The surface of the TV screen, for example, which feeds new fabricated role models; or the surface of the mirror, which reveals the immense distance between what is shown in its reflective surfaces and what has been publicly appropriated as the new ideal selves. The glass then links the public performance and the aesthetics of consumption, which leaves the East European artist with little choice: he himself must be a performer. But out of his precarious living, her/his performance-art operates inversely. The artist too begins to have her/his own intimate relation with the glass surface - the glass of the camera lens, which is mirror and television screen at the same time. But in the performance-art occurring in the East of the last decade, the looking glass aesthetics is politicized. The body of the artist becomes a public place unto which antagonistic world-views and ideologies are inscribed. S(h)e is, so to speak, a public good which everybody is invited to consume.

What is fascinating about Pavel Brăila is exactly this: that his aesthetics are contextually politicized; that his body speaks from the midst of the nineties to the present; that his art has a modesty which is addressed to everybody. Pavel is an engineer of political poetry. And it is no wonder, since he is a self-taught explorer of artistic potentialities. Pavel will always remain a performance artist, regardless of the means of expression that he will choose. But out of all his attempts to transverse territories, it is the relation between his performative self and the glass-image that constitutes the essence of his flight. In his image everything performs. People and objects alike accelerate the spin of the world: this is why his poetry cannot but be connected to the political. As scissors of various sizes, shredded white paper, and personae in junk-and-paper outfits pass in front of the camera (Servicii speciale, Pioneer, Unde Undeva) Pavel retains something of the infant’s ingenuousness when discovering the world and believing that he is its master. But there is also something counterbalancing this simplicity: the insistence, for example, on the working hands of peasants, railway workers or his mother (Handmade Song, Shoes for Europe, Homesick Cuisine) or on the shape and light of precarious environments (105_7, Road, Work). The complementarity between simple gestures and the context which becomes symbolically politicized organizes the whole hierarchy of objects that define the image on screen. In Pavel’s earlier works, large surfaces of white colour and light paper prevail, either separate or in conjunction. But around them the image reveals the desolate landscape of an eastern European village, with its uneven geographies, fences, roofs, plants, animals and people (Work). Or, again, the white dust of chalk that writes against a black floor, unto which Pavel crawls and spins, organizes the analysis of his memories, as they are spelled and erased, repressed and recalled (Recalling events). Then, gradually throughout the years and throughout his works, situations complicate. It is as if the artist discovers all of a sudden the impotence of metaphor when it comes to politics: one needs to concentrate on the actual printed paper, the printed and stamped paper of the passport, for example, which concretely, un-metaphorically, manages our entire lives and our freedom of movement. Opposed to the white paper, the written and stamped passport is real and ideal paper at the same time. It is real as material to be touched and ideal as fetish. By pondering the latter against the former, in a joyful moment which deconstructs our political idiosyncrasies, the artist subverts the official document by stamping on its front cover the twelve stars of the European Union (Welcome to EU). This effective deconstruction operates further in his recent works. Here, the image that multiplies onto several screens - as within Shoes for Europe, Baron’s Hill or Definitely Unfinished - has become Pavel’s signature. Multi-screening defines an economy of agglomeration-dissipation. Like the eye, the camera lens is immersed in multitudes of people and objects and is invaded by details. It insists onto moving wheels of the trains (Shoes for Europe), onto public buses, elevators and facades (Chisinău), onto train corridors and diffuse faces (105_7) or onto furniture curves and kitsch paintings in the gipsy houses of Soroca (Baron’s Hill). Pavel Brăila‘s work becomes a material poetry of everyday life, into which reality is re-signified exactly because it exhibits its smallest insignificant parts.

Last September I met Pavel Brăila in Chişinău at the site where he exhibited a one-evening installation. Agglomeration and dissipation were articulating this work where performance and the glass-image met once more. Backed up by the hymn of the European Union, Pavel re-performed Welcome to E.U., this time in the presence of Moldovan authorities. Again, he got away with it. But then, there was also a screen invading the eye with expressionless faces of TV news presenters on the verge of speaking (Fresh News). On display, thus, an agglomeration of public masks standing by the threshold of redundant language, but not quite there yet. They were coming one after another at such a speed that there was no time for something to crystallize behind them. The mask is all there is, this whole charade of what-you-see-is-what-you-get is all that our contemporary politics is. The body, the face, are mortified. The screen frustrates and when facing such a sight, one refuses to see and runs away. But a whole array of air fans roaring like airplane engines was dissipating the tension, transferring it to the viewer. Thus the artist is the catalyst: Brăila sets in motion molecules of disagreement, speeds up their collision, incites attitudes and provokes the refusal of the world we live in. In this part of Europe where after two decades of post-socialism the body is physically exhausted and the subject still doesn’t feel at home, this is equally his only possible call and his incontrollable compulsion.

 

Vlad Morariu