Rustaveli
Avenue, the main fare in the centre of Tbilisi, has always
been the target of transformation, and the place where changes
in policy and history have been made physically and symbolically
visibile. The former Vice-Royal Palace, of elegant classical
architecture, became at the time of the Soviet Union the Pioneer
Palace; now it is called the Youth Palace. This is a transformation
of functions, but first of all of Symbols, which happens in
the same place and in the same building. The (now called)
Youth Palace will see in October 2007 one more of its many
transformations.
It
is an oblique kind of transformation: no a change of name,
not of function … but a subtle diversion in the Palace
history; a tension created against its strong standing for
“status quo”.
Let me discuss a little bit this point.
“Status quo” is a Latin expression to define the
state of things, the reality created by the balance of powers
… for instance the “system” at every level
one wants to look at it. It is a shared belief that the Status
Quo has an almost sinister strength, and it is able to defend
itself at all costs. Not second to other strategies, representation
of power is very important in keeping power. That is why,
therefore, representational buildings have always been important
to the Power. The Palace of Youth having changed names and
functions several times – and always at critical, tragic
times – retains in itself authority. All these changes
of use of the Palace have been risky for its own survival
… surely after the Vice-Royal period there have been
people requesting the demolition of the Palace. This has already
happened many times elsewere: the change of use or demolition
of the Royal Palaces in Paris after the French Revolution
is among the most dramatic examples. Thanks to this diverse
and risky history, it is as if the building – which
from now on I will refer to as the “Palace” -
has freed itself from the duty to represent this or that …
it has won through hard resistance the right to stand by itself.
It has won authority.
Flavio
Favelli has already worked in rendering a meaning to dilapidated
places – places which have lost their original function,
like the vast group of installations in the Dormitories of
the railway station in Bologna; or the group of sculptures
mimicking fittings and pieces of furniture in a former Church
in Venice. In parallel, he has confronted the meaning of places
still in function, like the installations and performances
he has created in shops, corporate offices and cafès
in Turin, Venice and Rome. In these apparently opposed series
of works, the trait d’union is the pietas that is to
say the compassion towards the place, and the heritage of
human memories it retains. But this pietas does not prevent
him from challenging the antique and the new meanings of the
place and to suggest new ones.
In
October 2007 in the calm, marble-lined halls of the Youth
Palace, a new and different threat to the Status Quo is posed.
The Palace is not ready for this challenge which does not
come from rioting crowds, war time crises, or the immensely
disruptive “change of hands” from the Communist
to the so called Liberal system.
All these were alterations from the outside: like when a castle
is besieged.
And the Palace is ready to resist this. Instead, this is a
change from within.
Art is making its appareance in the Palace. It is not that
innocuous representational kind of art … the art fitting
in with the institutional role of the palace … like
the big gold-framed historical paintings of Georgian medieval
heroes hanging in the half darkness of the salons of the Vice-Royal
palace … or black and white framed photographs of dusty
smiling faces labouring in mining fields, or of white, well
lit rooms where young engineers plan Electric Factories, at
the time of the Pioneer Palace …
Flavio
Favelli will work with materials sourced locally, using them
to construct an engaging dialogue with the location and the
history of the Country. Part of his work will be “ready
made”. Using old maps of Georgia, and Caucasian Countries,
he will relocate lakes, will double cities, will displace
borders, will cancel entire chains of mountains. As making
real one of the possibile disruptions played by History. But
while doing this, he will avoid a direct confrontation with
Power. That’s why I have defined, above, his work as
being oblique. It is the obliquity of metaphor. A strategy
coming from the awareness of the comparative weakness of contemporary
visual art towards all the dominant media languages, leads
the artist to use instruments of art criticism as artistic
tools. Description, de-construction, re-construction of “art
objects”, that is to say “art”, become a
metaphor for description, de-construction and re-construction
of ideas. So ideas get a body through art, through this body
they get the chance to penetrate the place of power –
the Palace – to actually stand in its physical centre.
Metaphorically, it is like when in old times the centre of
the palace was entered by the enemy warrior: which was the
very moment in which the state of war was decided, and a new
Status Quo established.
No,
this kind of art does not represent power, it talks by itself.
This art is like a worm which feeds itself with Meaning …
and it is a subtle but dangerous worm because its eats from
inside. The Meaning which the Palace bears is the memory of
its too many names and functions. Of too many triumphs and
delusions; hopes and disasters.
All
that is gone; now the Palace, enjoying the fictitious tranquillity
of Democracy, stands for its own history; an history as usual
written by winners, through an endless chain of events, all
of them becoming significant only when they manage to challenge
the status quo …
But
art - and Favelli’s pensive kind of art – is not
interested in that …
Art reverses the table and starts over again by playing according
to new, different rules and meanings.
Supported
by:
Embassy of Italy in
Georgia
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