Planets of Unlimited Opportunities
The Plamen Dejanoff project in Veliko Tarnovo, in the artist’s native Bulgaria, is very simple in its basic idea and at the same time perfectly clear, precise and ingenious, as well as, after all, his other projects to date are. This time, Dejanoff, once again as artist / manager, plays with the relationships of Western European capital and cultural power and latently manipulates the hangovers of cultural hegemony tendencies and neo-colonising cultural aspirations.
In the 1990s, the artist bought up, for rather reasonable prices, seven not very large houses in the conservation area, historical nucleus of the picturesque capital of medieval Bulgaria. These are the local buildings of the typically vernacular residential architecture: the houses have a simple floor plan, fairly small dimensions, which in the lower part usually allow for some commercial activities, residential quarters being located on the upper floors. During the following few years, in collaboration with various (of course, well-known and established) European architects, Dejanoff plans to renovate and remodel the existing buildings. For each individual house, the artist will collaborate with prestigious (western) European institutions, which would in this manner obtain annexes in the heart of the Balkans (that is, in the area between Romania, Yugoslavia, Macedonia, Greece and Turkey).
But what does the foundation of this kind of attractive contemporary art point in a little Bulgarian city actually assume?
Today, on the advertising Internet portals of Bulgaria, the uninitiated information-seeker will regularly come upon several potentially interesting cities, such as Sofia, Plovdiv, Melnik, Sandanski, Varna and so on. Here also, but not in the front rank, Veliko Tarnovo is found. One of the oldest of all Bulgarian cities, Bulgaria’s medieval capital, today is subjected to branding as a desirable tourist spot with the slogan:½ Where the future meets the past½. It can be assumed, however, that Tarnovo will experience this kind of encounter in the fullest sense only after the conclusion of the Plamen Dejanoff project, that is, after the long-term construction of artistic micro-centres is completed. Of course, this kind of long-lasting project provides an equal amount of time for ongoing promotion: the construction and inauguration of each individual building will be naturally accompanied by a meticulous marketing strategy that is ultimately bound to attract new partners for the future. Hypothetically, this kind of concatenation could extend on into infinity, because the presence of a powerful and elite institution like MUMOK, for example, will certainly be a draw to other institutions, aiming to compete for their own section of visibility and prestige in this part of Europe. This kind of targeted action and the channelling of public attention will probably easily achieve high visibility and, in the best-case scenario, will perhaps have an impact on the inflow of other kinds of content and capital to the Bulgarian town. In any event, we can at least hypothesise that in the next few years, when all the institutions that Dejanoff is counting on do actually get their own branches, Veliko Tarnovo will become one of the most attractive Bulgarian destinations for visits of tourists always desirous of all kinds of attractions, as well as high-flying cultural products.
According to the current plan, the MUMOK House should be completed for the artist’s solo show in the institution in spring 2006. After the vernissage, Dejanoff will hand the building over to the museum, which will thus obtain its own “shop window in Eastern Europe” as Edelbert Köb puts it. The building will be reconstructed according to the proposals of one of three architects, or teams of architects, whose projects presented in this publication might well indicate the visualisation of some unusual interpolation of the most contemporary architectural imagination into this picturesque and drowsy little place. This kind of amalgam is a priori attractive on account of its very forms as well as on account of its future contents, which is of course not a unique case, but certainly is the first of its kind in the area of the “New Europe”.
Constantly working on the branding of his own name and phenomenon, with adroit manipulation of marketing strategies and the use of market tools for the purpose of his own increased reputation in the art milieu, but not in it alone, Plamen Dejanoff has today, to a large extent, a special status. This kind of strategy may well be, it is true, dislikeable , especially if we do not discern the fact that in this whole network of relationships Dejanoff copes so well, literally amusing himself with the big names, big money and big power, as if it were just a matter of putting together brightly coloured Lego blocks. What makes the Dejanoff project in Bulgaria so very free and easy is the fact that this is a ludic and completely unencumbered use of quite simply different elements in the fitting together of the unpredictable jigsaw puzzle the economic or public importance of which might be quite appalling. This project, that is, notwithstanding its major dimensions is above all quite a lot of fun, because it contains the element of the (im)possibility to anticipate whether it is going to succeed or fail. Of course, the fascination inherent in this somewhat megalomaniac idea is grounded not only in this playfulness and unpredictability, but also in the realistic possibility that it might really be pulled off. Dejanoff, it would seem, gets a lot of fun out of each of his projects, which might be still more ½irritating½ to the observer, considering the facility of the handling of selected complex elements. Such a facility certainly tickles either the vanity or the moral and ethical feelers, or perhaps the still live idea of what an artist should be like and what he should do. Plamen Dejanoff in all these processes is a deliberate but still casual and buoyant conductor of the action, the role being completely natural to him: it suits him, because he sees his field of action as a proving ground for infinite combinations and the virtuoso linkage of incompatible elements. The network, that in his work to date, he has created with such adroit juggling will this time be used for his most complex and most far-reaching project to date – a project in which he himself at the same time practically shapes the hybrid role of only-begetter, manager, coordinator, curator and so on. What it is that remains of the artist here is, it would seem, quite beside the point. The coordinates of his work are actually sketched out in the overlapping of everything stated in an artistic prism moderated by an intriguing combination of the tools of neo-liberal capitalism. We might say that in the case of Tarnovo, however, it is primarily a case of an excellent idea that few other people in the world of art anywhere would have been able to realise with such elegance and directness. All at the same time, a monument is being erected to art (and/or its institutions), to the cultural outskirts, and last but not least – to the artist himself. In any event, the consequences almost certainly cannot be bad for any of those involved. Finally, perhaps it is precisely in this fact that the ultimate ironical if not actually subversive idea of a new art centre in a little town in Bulgaria inheres: Dejanoff can, quite simply, pull it off, and hence, why shouldn’t he?
Antonia Majača
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“Collective Wishdream of Upper Class Possibilities” as an Individual Experience
The first time I held the April/May 2002 edition of Flash Art in my hands, I was somewhat amazed. The cover showed an aerial picture of a new office building in downtown Berlin, over which floated a logo in the form of a futurist-style comic-strip bubble with the following wording: “New Address: Plamen Dejanoff, Hackescher Markt 2-3, 10119 Berlin”. What was curious was that on the one hand it was a highly unusual and interesting piece of architecture, and that it was not entirely clear whether this was just a whimsical fiction or whether this was really Dejanoff’s new abode in Berlin. On the other hand the cover looked very like an advert, which could hardly be the case, as this was after all the front cover of an art magazine. A look inside the magazine provided an explanation. The text by Nicolas Bourriaud, and further photographs of the building, adorned in the same way with the same logo, showed and described the most recent long-term project by Plamen Dejanoff entitled “Collective Wishdream of Upper Class Possibilities”. At that moment I was not fully aware of the project’s complexity, nor that I was to become involved in it.
But we should really start at the beginning, in spring 2001. Dejanoff moved into a duplex in Hackescher Markt 2-3, in Berlin’s “Mitte” district. The mixed-use building had been designed by Berlin architects Armand Grüntuch and Almut Ernst, and it is considered one of the most interesting and most successful examples of contemporary architecture in Berlin. Sited carefully in a void surrounded by late-nineteenth century edifices, the building soon attracted international attention and commendations.
Dejanoff used his apartment as studio, and, with his own artworks, designer items and the works of other artists, created in it a space that wavered between advertising surface and “three-dimensional still life” (Dirk Luckow). Thus for example a table-tennis table was used as a desk, its blue surface thus taking on the colour of the light filling the imposing lobby and stairwell. The muted shine of the Tolomeo table-lamps, made of pale aluminium, echoed, almost unnoticed, the vast curved windows’ aluminium frames. To these were added the Marc Newson’s green “Felt Chair”, more a sculpture than an armchair, lamps by Jorge Pardo and much more. Thus functional, creative and sculptural factors were considered at each step of the well thought-out, economical arrangement process.
Dejanoff advertised the moving to and inhabiting of Hackescher Markt with a series of ads and magazine covers, which he produced in collaboration with various international art magazines. Over a year, the artist published only photographs of various views of the house, all furnished with the aforementioned “New Address” logo. Dejanoff had commissioned the logo from French design agency M/M, and it provided the project with a unique, unmistakeable corporate image.
In the months after setting-up his studio, Dejanoff carried out a variety of projects and held exhibitions there. In collaboration with JRP Editions / Geneva, a selection of their editions was shown, with the studio partly turning into a presentation and sales area for the Swiss publishing firm. At the same time Dejanoff’s one-man show in the Palais de Tokyo in Paris was taking place. Instead of presenting his work in Paris, he shifted the exhibition to his Berlin studio. In this extraordinary project the artist challenged many of the parameters of institutional exhibition practice; it was unusual for a French museum to finance a project that could not be seen in the institution itself, but only in a foreign city. The artist’s studio, usually a place of production, not accessible to the outside audience, became a public exhibition space. Not only this, its opening times were the same as those of the Palais de Tokyo, the invitation cards and the labels of the works imitated its corporate design, the visitor was met by French-speaking staff, and so on. In short, the entire framework resembled that of the Palais de Tokyo. During the project, Dejanoff’s studio turned into a temporary annex of the Paris museum.
In one of the following projects, which began in September 2002, Dejanoff was for a year an employee of the Swiss firm TOMATO Financial & Treasury Services S.A. As an employee of this firm, he signed a contract, received a salary and had the right to paid leave, but it is true that he did not, as is usually the case, have to render productive services to the firm. The only task given him was to represent the firm to the outside world. Above all it was his studio which allowed this, with its impressive interior, looking more like an advertising agency or a start-up business premises.
These examples show how Plamen Dejanoff discerningly illuminates and explores the systems “art” and “economics”, and the interface between the two. In his projects their individual structural parameters are tested out and their aesthetic codes are adapted, the integral components of the systems being purposefully transmuted from one to the other.
Dejanoff created one piece for each project. Thus he transmuted, as it were, the M/M logo into a wall sculpture of acrylic glass coated with cream paint. The high-gloss surfaces, and the convex letters with the mirror in the background, reflected their surroundings and helped the sculpture to attract attention in the space. Dejanoff rearranged the existing sculptures and objects at irregular intervals and/or supplemented them with works from other artists from his collection. The studio was less a place of production than a living presentation environment, which was constantly being changed and which at each visit offered the opportunity to discover something new, to experience the space in a new way. Hence the studio constituted a spatial embodiment of the so-called “platforms” which Dejanoff made his name with in the mid-1990s – architecture as arena for the artist’s very diverse sculptural interventions.
At this point I became a player. After working for more than a decade as a curator, for almost a half of this time in a museum, the Leipzig Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst (Museum of Contemporary Art), in spring 2003 I decided to quit the institutional world and open my own gallery.
I asked Plamen to come up with a project for an exhibition with which to launch the gallery – one that would reflect the complex structural, intellectual and organisational goings on, the tasks and decisions, involved in the foundation of a new gallery. Instead of an exhibition project, he proposed that his studio and the infrastructure that he had built up at Hackescher Markt be used for half a year, before the gallery opened officially, elsewhere, in autumn 2004. This enabled me to get down to my work even before the official opening and, like an overture, to give an insight into the future work of the gallery. This led to the project “Collective Wishdream of Upper Class Possibilities” being extended to an additional level – the structure which had been created and to date exclusively inhabited and used by the artist, was handed over to the gallery owner, who filled it with new material, emancipating it one more time from its original role.
The long-term project entered its final phase with Plamen moving out and me moving in, in September 2003. I moved into the apartment with little more than a single suitcase, and left the original arrangement untouched, the artist’s various works in their places, as relicts of the previous projects. In this sense, then, the setting served not only as a presentation platform, but at the same time as archive of the projects that had been created here in the previous two years.
The launch exhibition in October 2003 brought together for the first time the various parts of the “Collective Wishdream of Upper Class Possibilities” project. Alongside the complexity and multiplicity of the ideas, the visitor is made aware of the various parallels and overlapping functions of the one space – studio, apartment and office for Plamen Dejanoff, short-term showroom for JRP Editions, temporary annex of the Palais de Tokyo, as well as Berlin branch of TOMATO, then gallery and apartment for Jan Winkelmann, and archive for the “Collective Wishdream of Upper Class Possibilities”.
Before moving into Hackescher Markt, I wondered what life in such an artificial and tightly coded setting would be like. Naturally, and above all else, I thought that it would be wonderful to live in such a spacious and well-furnished apartment, surrounded by numerous works of art. This, by way of compensation for the absence of everything that surrounded me every day in my Leipzig apartment, my furniture, books, personal memories and so on, promised to be an exciting experiment. Many questions came forward out of my abstract thoughts, to be answered every day – questions such as, “To what extent does one surrender to such a clearly defined alien structure?”, “To what extent does it take away one’s sense of self possession?”, “What is it like to live as part of a complex art project in an alien environment?”
The answers to these questions were extremely interesting to me, and I have to say that it is much easier than one first thinks to live without all the things we believe are indispensable. At the same time, new questions came from the visitors: “Do you really live here?”, “What’s it like to be part of an art project?”, “Doesn’t it bother you that every day complete strangers stomp through your bedroom?” Interesting enough, I never considered this a problem, because the diverse functions of the premises were allocated into particular times of day. Outside opening hours, it was just my apartment. From 11am to 6pm it became a gallery, and everything private vanished into the great fitted cupboards. The borders between private and public were not the entrance door or the (non-existent) door to the bedroom, they were the doors of the fitted wardrobe. The space became a surface that disengaged from me as a person, like a stage on which private matters do not belong. Accordingly, it did not seem unusual when the visitors stood in the middle of my bedroom looking at the Plamen work “Made in Bulgaria” – a vast floor-work consisting of 17 oval blue lamps of blown glass. Grouped all over the floor, their long white cables wound like the line of a drawing on the floor between the lamps. During the day a sculptural installation, at night it plunged the whole area into a blue light.
An exciting new challenge was given to me by the further presentations of works and projects of other artists whom I represent. Following Dejanoff’s additive principle, by the time I moved out I had realised three projects – with Tilo Schulz, Stéphane Dafflon and Katarina Löfström. In this manner a further interplay with the location was once more achieved, and its boundaries further expanded. For me, looking back, as well as the many aforementioned levels of meaning in the project “Collective Wishdream of Upper Class Possibilities”, the most interesting aspect was the simultaneity of the various functions of a single space. In this sense, Dejanoff’s most recent long term project “Planets of Comparison” represents an immediate continuation of the Berlin project. During the years to come, in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria, the artist’s home town, a new studio will come into existence. A complex of several buildings is in fact envisaged, consisting of new buildings and conversions of existing houses. The building project which Dejanoff, in collaboration with young architects, has initiated and planned, seems certain to become a unique meeting place of contemporary art and architecture, its reputation certain to spread well beyond the borders of Bulgaria.
Jan Winkelmann
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The introduction of some of the elements and manners of functioning of everyday life into museums, art halls and galleries is an artistic strategy to which Plamen Dejanoff possesses no exclusive right. But no one has brought this in as radically as he has, in such a way as to impinge so much on the sore points of the practice of art.
In spite of the character of art as commodity, its freedom (and independence of museums) is defined above all by its attitude towards politics and economy. Although it is clear that these are symbiotic and not distinct systems, or precisely because of it, the idea of pure art is indignantly defended by its self-appointed guardians. The acceptance of economic forces becomes, in this view, equivalent to the endorsement of them. Not even total assumption of economic models into artistic practice can be accepted as an explanatory exacerbation in the progressive process of undercutting, but is interpreted as mere cynicism, as a method for getting rich quick.
This happened to Svetlana Heger and Plamen Dejanov in the Dream City project because of the way they worked with BMW at the exhibition of the Siemens culture foundation. This is, it is true, quite the same thing as belittling the artistic intelligence of the protagonists, but it incalculably contributed to the degree of their recognition.
Today Plamen, now Dejanoff, works alone, but his position has remained the same. His conception of himself as an artist is complex, largely breaking up the traditional image and marked with constant changes of functions. In his most recent project in Veliko Tarnovo, Dejanoff has at the same time consistently taken on the role of heir, collector, buyer, lessor, investor, patriot, project manager, curator and constructor; according to the avant-garde, all roles are the roles of the artist. This artist is a universal man; he is the mediator between art, life and other disciplines. He is the supervisor, the creator of syntheses in the world of limited specialists, in a world in which in art nothing truly original can be created, the new being created only by connecting and joining, with new combinations of the already existent from all areas, not only the artistic, but also from the social and the cultural. It was not for nothing that Dejanoff studied with Michelangelo Pistoletto.
The further principle of Dejanoff’s work is the abolition of the division between the world of life and that of artistic production. The inception of the Veliko Tarnovo project was a happy event in which the artist’s family had gained back several buildings, classified as ancient monuments, in the picturesque centre of a historically significant town. Veliko Tarnovo was for a long time the capital city of the European part of the Ottoman Empire. The question of the connection between life and art is in this case unexpectedly posed inversely. Is it possible to translate this new and unexpected situation in life into some artistic context, for it to be economically mastered as well? Before this, the question was of providing for oneself as artist a fairly normal life within artistic praxis.
Further history of the project up to this day is shown tersely and in acceleration. As well as the restored houses, some new ones were bought, all in the centre, and at that time very reasonably. The whole of the old town, one of the most important tourist spots in Bulgaria, is protected as an ancient monument. Collector Dejanoff thus added to his collections – international art of his generation and selected designer incunabula of the fifties onwards – the collection of buildings in Veliko Tarnovo. These collections are of course not just an aim in themselves, or the result of a blind passion for collecting, but a shifting jigsaw puzzle of a single great unit, of an ambitious cultural network, which at base is not subject to any constraints of either space or content.
The difficult assignment of Dejanoff the networker inhered in integrating Veliko Tarnovo, or his own seven buildings, into the system of conceptual Western art, in which the artist had already made his name. For this reason in the way already tried and tested, he made use of the institutions of the system. He did not come on as a petitioner, or as one of the privileged, or as the recognised recipient of support, but as an established negotiating partner. His suggestion to museums, persons in the field of culture, galleries and libraries was a proposal for an enlargement of their work and influence. It was a request for communication, new contacts and linkups, for new networks. At the same time it was also a trust in new experience, experiments, perhaps even adventures.
The first contracts have been signed, with, among others, the Museum of Modern Art, the Ludwig Foundation from Vienna. These are contracts concerning the use, rental or leasing of the artist’s buildings, the conversion and remodelling of which, to serve artistic purposes, will for a certain time be financed by the contractual partners. Plamen Dejanoff is at the same time project manager and curator. He suggests to the institutions the architects, and to the architects again the artists who will make their creative contributions at the interface of art and architecture. These are international architects and artists, mainly of the artist’s own generation, who guarantee a contemporary cultural input. This will be of particular topicality in an environment in which – because of the political and economic conditions – it seems as if time has stood still for decades. This implantation of contemporary artistic creativity into the collection of ancient monuments, in addition opens up the issue of new building in an old environment. These are issues that are posed before the unprepared countries of the former eastern bloc in a particularly demanding way because of the current economic development. Plamen Dejanoff hopes that he will be able to address some of these issues in his project.
As an ancient town of culture, Veliko Tarnovo has an art academy, an architectural college and a distinguished literary university. Dejanoff’s art project is therefore switched into a culturally and geographically appropriate environment in order to be able to develop the communicative and mutually stimulating activity to which it aspires. It would require too much space to cover all the complexity of the artist’s thinking, which constitutes the essence of his project, even the numerous large and small steps that seem to guarantee success at the outset.
At this point, we will refer to the house that will, for an unspecified period of time, be used by the Museum of Modern Art as an outpost of its own. This is the largest of all the houses, one in the best condition, and the only one newly built, for too little of the original material of the historical building was preserved to be capable of remodelling. This, then, was a very special architectural challenge within the framework of the conservation of monuments. In the context of the artistic work of Plamen Dejanoff it is possible to talk of a piece of sculpture by two creative artists, the visual artist and the architect, and at the same time of a part of the artist’s collection. It is being created under the patronage of the Museum of Modern Art, which will show the genesis and context of this “art building” at an exhibition entitled “Collecting as Art Strategy”.
The one-sided artistic orientation of European museums along the line of latitude leading from Los Angeles via New York to Central Europe, along the lines of globalisation, and above all on those of the great political new order in Europe, has become clearly questionable. The outpost of a Viennese museum far to the east means stepping off the beaten track and at the same time considering the historical links the revival of which need not be left only to insurance firms, banks and holding companies. Hence then the display of the Museum of Modern Art in Veliko Tarnovo, which, we hope, will come true as a communication centre and information forum. (Edelbert Köb)
