Aleksandar & Branka Davic on Mon, 1 Sep 1997 09:59:48 +0100 |
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Syndicate: Miroslav Mandic / The Rose of Wandering |
[this is a text by dragica felja about the multimedia artist miroslav mandic and his ten years long project "The Rose of Wandering". last three years he is realising his project in yugoslavia, because of well known reasons as embargo, visa, money etc. whoever may be interested in his work or project "The Rose of Wandering" can send a message, observation or text to my e-mail address. branka] Miroslav Mandic and the Rose of Wandering His Life Miroslav Mandic is in his forty-eighth year. His strong features lend him a rough look. He definitely looks. He is dressed in blue, wearing sneakers and a backpack. He can often be seen reading on the move. He also wears his glasses on those occasions. In a catalogue, he once wrote the following about himself: 1949 - 1969 - Child, a boy, fatherless. Not too extreme poverty. Football. Yearning for justice. Fire inside my head. Film. Efforts towards finding taste. 1969 - 1971 - Art flew straight into me. Revolt. Beaming. Charisma. 1971 - 1981 - Abstaining from art to the point of pain and dissolution. Punishment and guilt. Prison. Lostness, until freedom. Not-knowing. Non-humanity. Spirituality. Eradication. Astonishment. Mysticism. 1981 - Art again. These fragments, this outline may be expanded by reading Mandicâs works, which tell us the following... He was born on the outskirts of Novi Sad. His father died when he was eight. His mother was cleaning up offices, hence the ãnot too extreme povertyä. Lunch eaten from newspapers. Cutting shoes open when his feet grew too large for them. Slightly rotten apples. Bread and margarine. He used to play football in the junior team of the ãVojvodinaä Football Club and according to the words of local football-freaks: ãHe would have made a significant career if he had continued to play football.ä In 1970 the twenty year old Mandic became involved in art as the founding member of the art group ãKODä, which was, along with the Slovenian group ãOHOä, the representative of Yugoslav conceptualism. Feeling the need for a more profound experience, he ceased his artistic activities after a year and his last, farewell article, published in the ãòJ SIMPOSIONä literary journal got him sentenced to nine months in prison. ãI was and have remained guilty. However, my guilt is much greater than my sentence. That is why I write, in order to scream, so that I would scream one day. Until then I want to sing, because if not for music then why was I in prison?ä (No, I Donât Believe This Sentence Cannot Be Heard - the book he wrote thirteen years later about his prison days). Having served his sentence, opting for not knowing, non-humanity, patience, sluggishness and shame, he spent ten years in anonymity and asceticism. During that time he ãdevotedä himself to beating carpets, working in a potterâs workshop, at a building site... Finally, in 1981 he got involved in art again. According to the words of film director Dusan Makavejev, Miroslav Mandic is the ãcreator of new trendsä. He is by all means one of the most influential figures for young artists. Working with film, the visual arts and literature, he uses walking as his chief method of expression, in other words, working with all art forms, he leaves behind a large number of creations. Complete devotion, according to him, is the ãeveryday involvement in a perpetual present.ä In reality, he seems to be weaving a single imaginary, virtual thread through all of his creations, which also include his own self. Ever since he got involved in art and started to exercise the ideal of the unity of life and art, this still being a constant in his life, these two fields can no longer be distinguished from each other. This conscious and constant pushing forward of the limits of personal freedom reminds us of the following: ãI want to make my life into a Henry David Thoreau poem or one illustrating Witgensteinâs sentence �Tell them I have lived a wonderous life.âä His Work Mandicâs work as an artist began in 1970. Besides his early engagement in the group ãKODä, his chief work consists of the following: ãA Manä - Taking photographs of his own face once a month until the end of his life, which, according to him, sprang forth ãout of a supposition that wonder lies within myself, that instead of waiting in expectation of a wonder I shall simply wonder and produce wonders.ä Mandic created his first ten-year project ãLeaves - The Tree of Lifeä between 1975 and 1985. A total of 3650 sketches make up a complete picture whose size is 2.7x20m. A picture, which is the affirmation of: affirmation, the invisible, repetition, creation through time. He started making use of walking as a form of artistic activity ever since his 1983 performance titled ãA Road to America or the New Life of >>the Indiansä. It consisted of eight hours of slow walking along an eight-meter long path, accompanied by eight centuries of music from the 12th to the 20th century, selected by M. L. Pashu. ãFour walks for poetryä were to follow. The first walk in 1984, from Radicevic to Njegos and Presern. Strazilovo - Lovcen - Kranj. The second walk, from Presern to Friedrich Hšlderlin. Kranj - TŸbingen. The third walk from Hšlderlin to Rimbaud. TŸbingen - Charleville. The fourth walk >from Rimbaud to Blake. Charleville - London. ãThe Twelve Copied Novelsä (1985 - 87), twelve pictures (size 50x70 cm), were created by transforming words into pictures, by copying twelve novels by Yugoslav authors to the letter, thus producing an energy of admiration. In 1987, in The Museum of Contemporary Art in Belgrade, as a part of the performance ãThe Writing Manä, he spent nine months publicly writing a novel. Two manuscripts came to life as a result of this experience: ãScenes from the Museumä and ãThe Writing Manä. The year 1989 saw the performance bearing the title: ãA Public Cleaning of the Public Lavatory in Banja Lukaä - dedicated to Mahatma Gandhi. He started his second ten year project ãThe Rose of Wanderingä - ten years of walking across Europe in London, from Blakeâs grave, and he is currently engaged in it. His Books Mandic wrote his first book, I Am You Are Him between the springs of 1981 and 1982. The first sentence of the book ãI am springä starts a series of sentences, each written in a single day, ending it with: ãI am a budä forming a circle (of light). According to Mandic, it is a book about the ãaffirmation of the divine Selfä. Ten years after that, from 1991 to 1992, he wrote Kaja or I Am You Are Him II. The books I Am You Are Him and Kaja are the first two in a cycle he is planning to write in 2001 - 2002 and in 2011 - 2012. Warsaw, ãa sack-book, a beggarâs sackä was written in the course of a single night (between 10.15 p. m. 28/12/1986 and 7.06 a. m. 29/12/1986). No I Donât Believe This Sentence Cannot Be Heard, (1987) is a book about prison. ãSinging gently into the readerâs ear.ä Four poetry walks yielded three books: Walking for Poetry (1988), A Child a Boy (1991), The Innocent Path (1992). So far, the project titled ãThe Rose of Wanderingä produced five out of ten volumes of the book The Rose of Wandering. A diversity of form and ways of expression in his books and works make Miroslav Mandic a unique artistic personality, to whom classifications and subdivisions into aesthetic genres are of no importance whatsoever. Let us quote the author himself: I am a poet because I write poetry because by writing beguide (seduce and lead) the world. I am a poet because for a poet the whole world is but a tiny poem. I am an artist because an artist creates out of nothing and nothing seen. I am an artist because an artist gives birth and that which is created lives in eternity. I am a philosopher because I only observe and by doing nothing I safeguard the world with wisdom. I am a fool because I am free and beloved by God. I am a fool because I utter that which others dare not. I am a wanderer in order to commend myself unto Godâs arms. I am a wanderer for I do not even seem to have myself. I am a beggar and I beg so that others wouldnât reach bottom. I am a beggar so that I could beg and beg for others, so that I could say thanks and praise others. I am a monk because I am beatified not only by my life but also by my birth and my death. The Rose of Wandering - Ten years of walking across Europe ãThe Rose of wandering is for me the most exciting project of which I know at the moment... Ten years of one manâs life transformed into ten years of art. Such an abundance leaves one simply breathless, augmenting the feeling of being lost before the edge of infinity. However, Mandicâs wanderings, that network of wanderings which will eventually interconnect the whole of Europe in a real - unreal way, restore the feeling of safety to us and renew the sense of things. Mandicâs Rose is a magical rebirth of a long-lost unity, a path towards serenity.ä David Albahari The best way to start the story of the ten year project ãThe Rose of >>Wanderingä is with a section from the book No I Donât Believe This Sentence Cannot Be Heard written in prison: I reach out towards the sky and I say: That is art. Why? Because no one has seen it. Having spent almost three years in its preparation, Mandic made the first step of ãThe Rose of Wanderingä from Blakeâs grave in London on September 9th 1991. Since then he has walked 20 km each day which, in five years, adds up to about 35,000 km. Until the end of the project in 2001, the trail of the blue virtual rose will be 60,000 kilometers long. In the course of his everyday walks, Mandic compiles his poetic notes which are published every year in the form of a book. Apart from that, his pencil leaves a trail of sketches, one each day, depicting herbs, which will make up a cycle of 3650 sketches under the title of ãThe Herbs of Europeä. His solemn Sunday walks, ãMonuments to the Anonymous Forces of Loveä and ãI Ask for the Passport of the Man on the Moveä are in fact sub-project of this ten year project. Pausing from his walks in cities, Mandic has given two series of lectures during the fifth and this, the sixth, year of ãThe Rose of Wanderingä. Mandicâs three basic symbols are the road, the rose and wandering. He defines the road as follows: ãThe road is the largest man-made structure in this world. Manâs greatest achievement. Unlike houses, which eventually fall into ruins, roads last forever. I have had some little experience of its tolerance and wisdom. In ten years, I think I shall become an excellent student of its.ä To Mandic, the rose is: ãA world of non-violence. Non-violence takes the greatest courage of >>all, and that is why the rose is a hero. I think of the rose as a future teacher of harmony. The rose is food for the soul. He says the following of wandering: ãWandering is inevitable, that is why I accept it. Wandering is the best way of living and reaching certainty. The wanderings of The Rose of Wandering are dedicated to all those who have been and still are searching, all those who search and seek for others.ä Wandering is association, analogy, metamorphosis, metaphor. Wandering is a quest for oneâs own self. Wandering gives birth to the wandererâs luminous essence. Wandering is the reliance of oneâs essence on wandering. Wandering into a million-year-old past preparing ahead for a million years of future. Wandering is a book that is being written, painted and walked along. Wandering is a church. A mobile shrine. Wandering is discovering the center. Wandering is the worship of the periphery. Wandering is the Homeland. I shall wander - because ãThe Rose of Wanderingä is my admiration of beauty on European ground and it is also the incorporating of that beauty into Earthâs cosmic future. - because ãThe Rose of Wanderingä is for me a mythological journey towards a new form. Ten springs, ten summers, ten autumns and ten winters. - because ãThe Rose of Wanderingä is a prayer. A prayer to the beauty of the rose, the wisdom of wandering and the sensuality of wandering.ä The Rose of Wandering is on course. We can learn about this blue flower which springs out of European ground by walking along with Miroslav Mandic, picturing a virtual flower sprout from human footsteps, visualizing the joys and experiences of this great wandering which is reminiscent of Homer or Joyce, or reading the volumes of ãThe Rose of >>Wanderingä which are defined by Mandic as a novel, poetry, a journal and a religious text. ãPoetry is beauty and gentleness. A novel is humor and music. A journal is wisdom and sincerity. A mystical text is freedom and the divine.ä These books give us the opportunity to wander ourselves, to read them in a countless number of ways and adopt parts of it. For instance: 67. Walking The lives of women and bridges along and over the Rhine. I get lost in big cities like bread-crumbs do in a whirlwind, and the smell of all those, who, like myself, crawl along this Earth clings to me, so much so that, whether I want it or not, I am a man. This means that in some years I shall disappear, along with everyone else, from the face of this Earth. I am calm, I am here now. My groin feels warm. My soul is getting warm inside my body. I hurry across the tracks in front of a streetcar. Along the street, across the street and along the other side. It is so wondrous simply to be. Kšln, January 24th 1992 Text: Dragica Felja Translation by Kristof Karolj Bodric