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Abstract
This essay explores the work of at artists from different generations who have dealt with restrained public spheres, counteracted by their work: Russian Ilya Kabakov (b. 1933), Czech Kateřina Šedá (b. 1977) and the collective digital platform Harabel in Albania. Many artists who worked within the Soviet Union were subjected to extremely demanding conditions. All the same several found ways of collaborating in collective strategies, as in the case of Ilya Kabakov, who ‘defected’ in 1989 in New York. In the west the reception of Kabakov´s art has to a large extent been reductionistic in the sense that it was initially culturally biased, tied directly to biography and nationality rather than understood as fundamentally multifaceted. Šedá’s situation is a very different one, working within a social and conceptual conception of art. She has repeatedly engaged a variety of local societies in combining city planning, daily life, politics and the private sphere in her art. In Albania a younger generation of artists has created communication networks across geographic boundaries with a main focus on digital platforms. The question the essay revolves around is the following: How does one conceive of artistic approaches to the collective in the aftermath of totalitarian systems?
Highlights
Awareness of different public spheres and how they are changing seems relevant in societies that have been subject to totalitarian regimes where the economic and social reality is quickly changing
The starting point is the work of Ilya Kabakov, with the everyday life and political system of the Soviet Union as background
I present the platform Harabel in Albania’s capital, Tirana, which has made a digital archive of artists and exhibitions in Albania, and at the same time forms a public sphere through its activity: presentations, discussions, workshops and interdisciplinary work
Summary
Awareness of different public spheres and how they are changing seems relevant in societies that have been subject to totalitarian regimes where the economic and social reality is quickly changing. Too the narrative as strategy was crystallized out These illustration tasks were done in accordance with the official Soviet style, and this was not where Kabakov developed his artistic ideas. He had to appeal to his public as as possible At the same time children’s books in the Soviet Union were a genre where elements from Russian avantgardism could survive, and an openness towards playfulness and absurdity could be tolerated In this case links between image and text were to a certain extent ‘safe’; the children’s book had a relatively independent status The image was undermined by Social Realism with accompanying texts meant to explain the ideological message, without necessarily any agreement between words and image
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