“GastARTbeiter,” 2000

Luchezar Boyadjiev

Sofia, December 1998

Well, I was both angry and depressed after Stuttgart. [1] For many reasons, but it’s not easy to explain now. Basically, I had the feeling that I am a “cultural gastARTbeiter” (I am not sure this is the correct spelling in German, but you know what I mean…) who for some reason should be very, very careful now not to be considered a “sell-out” or a compromising asshole, or a neo-liberal at worst. And I think I am just working very much. It seems to me that now I have to actually “hide” my CV – both from my critical art practice friends (that’s you, [2] but you are so nice that you will forgive me this statement, OK?), and from my Net.Art friends who are after new contexts as if the Net is not already heavily infected by power art games as well… And I am so proud of my CV – it’s not so easy to do all these things. Maybe it would be more decent for somebody like myself if I just went after Art and Galleries, etc.

You know, after Stuttgart I did a small calculation based on this CV of mine. The background is (and please keep this in mind until the end of these few sentences) that right now I have only the fee from Stuttgart to my name, as they say in the US. So, I calculated roughly that for all these years after 1989 (or rather after 1990-91), when I started traveling to the so-called “West” because of what I do professionally – for shows, temporary media labs, conferences and all sorts of events, the amount of money which “the West” has spent on me is incredibly high. In terms of geography I have “covered” the ground from California to Brazil, to South Korea, Turkey and St. Petersburg and everything in between. So, I started counting roughly all the costs – tickets, hotels, per diems, visas, fees, honoraria, stipends, residencies, catalogs, texts, translations, installation help and so on which the organizers of the events have spent on me. Because the truth is that I can think of only one occasion when I have actually paid my own way to a show and that was in a private gallery in Munich in 1993 (but then again I could do it because at that time I had a Getty Grant in the US). I came up with a rough estimate total of upwards of $130 000 or even $150 000 – can you believe it?!? And, nonetheless, there is nothing left in my pocket now, no property of any sort, nothing…

So, I said to myself, I must be a valuable commodity somehow, although in terms of symbolic rather then market exchange… The important question however is – was it all worth it if we still can’t agree on many things?! And here by “we” I mean people from West and East in general, not just you and me. Maybe, I said to myself, it would have been more honest and definitely better for me if all this money had just been given to me to spend here in Sofia – it would amount to $12 000 or $15 000 a year – a nice sum by all counts, don’t you think so?

In any event, I think that in Stuttgart there were people, although all of them great, of far too diverse backgrounds in order to come to terms about what it actually is that we should discuss. I think that the Eastern Europe background is no longer so valid. Now it is either the “art world” or the “e-world,” the power games or the critical art practices, the galleries, museums and all that “white cube” aesthetics or, as they say, the new “context” of the Net. The unfortunate thing is that even the Net is already a power game in a way. I still think that there is a need to talk but there is no common language outside of either Art, or Politics, or Economy, or the Net, etc. And the common language I am thinking about should somehow embrace all these. Or we should just talk about very specific things – such as gender issues, for instance, or “opposition in the East.” So, misunderstandings now come from the context(s) which individuals prefer to operate in rather than from the EE vs. WE (and USA) issues and experiences. I don’t think there is any moral legitimacy left that might come from the fact that people are either from the East or from the West – we are facing the same choices and/or compromises. And I don’t necessarily think that for an artist coming from EE the choice of a career is such a bad thing.

Notes

[1] Conference “1st Congress about Art and its Mediation in Central and Eastern Europe,” 20-22 November 1998, IFA Stuttgart, Germany.

[2] Marion von Osten, artist/curator; at that time curator at the Shedhalle, Zurich, Switzerland.

CV – Luchezar Boyadjiev

1957 – Born: 12 October in Sofia, Bulgaria; 1975-80 – National Art Academy, Sofia; 1980 – M.A. in Art History and Theory; 1983 – “How to Draw and Paint” by Henry Gasser, NY 1969; – “Don’t Get Taught Art This Way!” by Theodore L. Shaw, NY 1967; 1986 – “The Simon and Schuster pocket guide to Drawing,” NY 1982; – “The Simon and Schuster pocket guide to Painting in Oils,” NY 1982; 1985/88 – Post-Graduate Student, Institute for Art Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia; 1992 – Works in Kunsthaus-Horn with a grant from KulturKontakt – Wien, Austria ($2270); 1993 – Works in New York with a grant from The Getty Grant Program, CA, USA ($10 000); 1996 – Works in Wachtberg/Gars-am-Kamp, Austria with a grant from KulturKontakt ($1000); 1997 – Works in Wachtberg/Gars-am-Kamp, Austria with a grant from KulturKontakt ($1000); – Works at The Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia, USA with an Artslink grant from The Open Society Institute, New York ($8500).

One Person Exhibitions:

1999

1998

1997

1995

1994

1993

1992

1986

1984

Group Exhibitions:

2000

1999

1998

1997

1996

1995

1994

1993

1992

1991

1990

1989

1987

Curating:

1992

1991

1990

1989

Conferring:

1999

1998

1997

1995

1994

1992

1991

1990

1989

1988

Lecturing:

2000

1999

1998/9

1996/9

1995/6

1992

Awards:

1998

1989

Member: Institute of Contemporary Art, Sofia (founding member) <http://www.bar.bg/ica>

TOTAL = $ 111 236

(on the basis of the currently available information)

Address: 8 A, Victor Grigorovitch Str., Apt. 13
Sofia 1606, Bulgaria
tel. ++359-2-952 2104
fax ++359-2-986 2795; ++359-2-46 89 46
E-mail: <luchezb@cblink.net>

* forthcoming exhibitions and projects

(C) catalogue published

Sofia, January 2000

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