“Missing Originals” – artist talk with Ștefan Sava at PAVILION center
On the 16th of May, 2013, PAVILION center held an artist talk with Ștefan Sava under the title: “Missing Originals” about the artistic practices related to the Holocaust.
The problematic of the Holocaust is a theoretical space of reflection strewed with several lacunae and areas of uncertainty. This uncertainty begins at the clear-cut referent of the historic event, not with regards to its facticity (the ‘it did or did not happen’ dispute) but to the way in which this particular event can be absorbed into a much larger cognitive system. The idea itself of an unitary meaning given to the historical event suffers a series of permutations: what represents a mechanism of the process of knowledge easy to infer – a piece of information that tracks the classic layout from the transmitter to the receiver, subjected to the labour of being integrated to a certain type of thinking – is hijacked to alternative tracks of interpretations. Moreover, the tentative of assimilating the subject to the sphere of knowledge is clogged by the necessity of a continuous reconfiguration of the rapport between concepts.
Therefore, the theoretic space brought up by the subject is in a permanent state of movement and is unstable, whilst the performance of key questions at a discursive and analytic level becomes more important than obtaining revealing answers. What may stand as a fundamental feature for modernity can be in fact found in every conceptual sequence of the analysis on Holocaust: the dialectic, pendular and transactional dimension of the way in which the subject is placed in the intimacy of the rapport between present and past, between the lived experience, history and imaginary, between the interior and the exterior of the trauma experience, with consequences that reflect even into the artistic practices that deals with this subject. Consequently, the lecture will be structured around the artistic practices which hold meaning to the Holocaust problematic and will, gradually develop towards other situations in recent history.
Ștefan Sava (n. 1982) lives and works in Bucharest. He holds an MA from the Photo-Video Department, UNARTE Bucharest where he is currently enrolled as a PHD student. His projects combine photography, video, performance and object and are based on a long process of theoretical reflection and research. He is particularly interested in the subject of recent history and in the way in which the history can be visually reactivated through an analytical approach. Among the exhibitions he took part in: From the Backstage, Salonul de proiecte, Bucharest (2012); The Inside-Out of the Wall, Ivan Gallery, Bucharest (2012); Here and Then, Club Electroputere Craiova (2011); Atoms and Void, Galeria Posibilă, Bucharest (2010). Stefan Sava is one of the artists participant of the present exposition curated by Eugen Radescu at Pavilion “Common Nostalgia”. He was selected for the group exposition Europe/South East. Recorded Memories which will open on 24th May at Museum of photography Brauschweig, in collaboration with the University of Art from Brauschweig and the Goethe Institutes from the region.
Photo: Bianca Soare
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