Museum of Tetovo area is organizer of “The First Biennial of Mini prints in Tetovo 2001”
This international manifestation is arranging in very difficult conditions, when the war which has happened for many months created a climate for impossible working.
Such an idea to organize project like that in our city, in these days, means grate courage. We had additional problems like organizers with the place of performance. Galeria in the complex of "Arabati Baba Teqe" is still insecure place to work.
There is a few reasons, becouse we resolved to persevere up to the end in organization of the Biennial and they are:
- This is unique cultural performance in Tetovo which is happening to us this year in the war time, when all other projects of the Museum are broken off.
- Support of the minister of culture Miss.Ganka Samoilova - Cvetanova, who provided financial resources to encircle organization of the Biennial whenever.
- More letters of the partakers - painter artists, which contents did not give us possibility to break off.
Creator is resisting to apokalipsa of destroying of cultural - historical monuments wounding and killing, only with his creation.
- Debt to all Macedonian who belive that only one defeat doesn't means the end that the life must go on.
Maybe somebody will think that is demagogical and unhumane to organize performances of such a character in the time when thousands off people are displaced.
People who lives throgh centuries on this area are forced to leave their native pleace's and to wander like trampes in their own country.
But sincerely we hope that like swan who is dancing his last dance before going to south, hoping that will returne on spring time, and people will returne at home and will hear there life song again.
On this Biennial will take part 118 artists of 37 countries with 485 creations.
Indeed it is just a bridge of artistic communications, exchanging apparently opposite ideas, but they are creators who seriously create a miraculous symbols, magic signs full of artistical creation.
In this days which are not too much fulfilled with happines and joy we expresse our great gratitude to all participants who gave us that chance to communicate with their creations full of secret
emotions, erotic charge and expressive to Lorka, Borhes, Lalic and Janevski.
Velimir Cvetanovski
The Otherness of the Other
The present unstable war/post-war image of the
I will try to paraphrase briefly Walter Benjamin's fascination with it. He interprets Klee's
Angel as the angel of history whose face is turned towards the past and all its catastrophes and horrors. The Angel wishes he could stop and wake up the dead in order to put together that which has been broken, but he cannot. Saddened by the sight he leaves behind, he prepares to fly into the future with spread wings, carried by a storm sent from Heaven.
In spite of the strong urge to forget the sight that Klee's Angel leaves behind, to remain silent in the face of horror and cover up the traces of human violence, we cannot ignore the fact that the idea for the realization of the First International Biennial of Mini Prints in Tetovo was born in an unstable environment. As the pressure of war accumulated, the spiritual resistance in the organizers increased; in the past months it was encouraged and supported by a large number of participants from abroad. In the beginning of this millennium, amidst destroyed cultural and historical monuments and damaged paintings and collections, the staff of the
The problem of local or global totalitarianism usually hides behind economic, class, cultural, ethnic, religious, racial or military violence. The general hypocrisy that is permanently promoted with the slogan peace through war continues to be practiced with all its cynicism and force in the new millennium in various parts of the world. The pressure of one political elite over the masses, of one large group over the smaller one, or of the smaller group over the larger, of I over the Other or of the Other over the Different One is a problem that will persist as long as the Earthling refuses to accept the inevitable and necessary difference and show respect for the Otherness of the Other who is not radically Other or Different, but is the Same as I. To take upon yourself the responsibilities of the other, to give the other precedence over yourself (E. Levinas) is a great challenge that is not only a religious but, above all, an ethical act for each every human being strives. I needn't blame the Other for my handicap or defect or interpret It as the Other's violence against me which I must fight with counter-violence; on the contrary, I must channel my destructive energy in another direction and replace it with creativity.
The present context spontaneously imposes the philosophical hetero-ontological principle, i.e., the principle of the Other as the necessary prerequisite for its understanding. As at all international gatherings, at this Biennial, too, Otherness is present a priori, it is taken for granted and is accepted with love. It is implied in the banal example of the entering of the participants' names in the catalogue in alphabetical order, as much as in the distribution of awards.
If the Other were absent, it would make my presence impossible, it would hinder it and negate me as a subject and my differentiation and identification within a local or global context. The Other is my Narcissist mirror without which I cannot survive, cannot see or recognize myself or admire myself/the Other. Therefore, the presence of the Other and Otherness is necessary, above all, because of my egoism, identification and survival as a spiritual being. It is precisely
such international events that confirm the indispensability of Otherness because without the Other, there is no interaction, no exchange of differences, no progression of the subject, no
The primordial source of the print and its generation can perhaps be sought for in something Different, that is, in the impressed archaic image (of the palm), of the carved, inscribed or printed grapheme, in the system of writing. Unlike the oral, ephemeral, ethereal message, the trace of the grapheme may have been initiated by the cryptic, fixed message that strives
towards a long-term transfer of knowledge. It is has been addressed to the Other, to the unknown and abstract one since eternity. Unlike the grapheme and its later prehistoric and historical transfer and development into the exact word, sentence or text (that could be cryptic and accessible only to the few elect ones), the cawed, impressed or inscribed image, though
mimetic and direct, has always been characterized by its wider freedom in the expression of the message; and yet, it has always remained cryptic, inaccessible and mysterious. Its trace left on a variety of materials -from which various media and techniques as part of other concrete media were differentiated in the recent cultural and historical periods - speaks of a primordial, genetically encoded and insatiate need for a spiritual communication and exchange with the Other.
As opposed to the other classical media of visual art, graphic arts have, to some extent, an advantage over the other disciplines within this field. The possibilities that graphic art offers for production and reproduction include the technically less complicated options for distribution and communication. In addition to the democratization of art, the graphic medium has made possible, in an indirect way, the cultural decentralization and demonapolization of art through the biennial and triennial events organized by the cultural mega-centres in different parts of this world.
Regardless of the technique in which a print is executed in the process between the design of the original plate and pulling of the proofs, the required skill of the artisan and the alchemy are always accompanied by a sophisticated and invisible erotic principle. Every graphic work is followed by a binary opposition, the sensory relation between I and the Other and the link between the male/ productive and female/reprodtrctive principles. The body of the plate/matrix stands for the passive and subdued maternal and generative principle, while the avtistlinitiator stands for creative power. With the instruments/tools used for carving, scratching and etching of the body of the plate (the future matrix), the artist as the dominant and active paternal principle initiates the necessary and reversible emotional erotic current through creative manipulation and its articulation. The simultaneous and reciprocal revoking and emanation of the energy of the print depends on the culture and power of the artist's skill and mastery of the technique and on the density of the Eros and
onto the future work of art. Before the eyes of the recipient, the mirror is the artist's double that reflects the face of hislher Other, protegee or traitor.
This Biennial presents 118 graphic artists from 37 countries. Their work are executed in a variety of techniques that range from classical to digital; they exhibit various stylistic and conceptual levels of expression and emanate various cultural backgrounds and different creative discourses. Generally speaking, they are permeated with the invisible, and yet present and comprehensible idea of creative self-identification, dialogue and exchange of spiritual energy with the Other/Same. It is the Others, i.e., the public, that finish the work as its recipients, since every work of art simultaneously emanates its author and generates its observer/observers.
In wishing the Biennial longevity and a different humanistic and cultural environment, I would like to quote the words of the French theoretician Tsvetan Todorov that seem particularly relevant to the circumstances in which this Biennial was organized. In his study We and the Others, he states the following: "A well-balanced humanism could protect us from past and present misconceptions. Let us put an end to easy associations: the demand for the legal equality of all human beings does not imply at all a decline from the hierarchical scale of values ... the freedom of the individual does not oblige us to reject every solidarity; the consequence of the acknowledgement of one kind of public morality is not inevitable regression to the time of religious intolerance and the Inquisition, just as the demand for being in touch with nature does not mean that man will return to the caves."
Konca Pirkoska
