COURAGE

connecting collections

Gábor Klaniczay traveled to Paris for the first time in 1967, when he spent one year in the city. This journey was followed by more. During his travels, he collected an array of different material: leaflets, proclamations, and posters about alternative cultural life and student movements. These documents reveal the kind of ideas, trends, performances, and exhibitions he was interested in at the time. This particular item is a leaflet of Bread and Puppet Theater’s performance in Paris, entitled “Notre résurrection américaine.” 

This brochure is one of the few publications printed in exile which dealt with cases of national opposition in the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic (MSSR). It illustrates Mihnea Berindei’s interest in the oppositional movement developing in Soviet Moldavia and seems to indicate that Berindei had some connections with the editor of this booklet, Nicolae Lupan. Lupan was one of the most well-known oppositional figures in the MSSR. After his deportation from the USSR for “Romanian nationalist activity” in 1974, Lupan settled in the West (first in Belgium, then in France) and was active in placing the case of his native MSSR on the map of anti-Soviet dissent and anti-regime opposition. The booklet purportedly reproduced a letter that Lupan had received in August 1982 from a mysterious group called “The Young Bessarabians,” but it might have been written by Lupan himself. In any case, no such organisation is known to have existed in the MSSR at that time. The brochure focused on the arrest and trial of the Usatiuc–Ghimpu–Graur group (National Patriotic Front), the most important oppositional movement which emerged in the MSSR after World War II. In the preface to the letter, Lupan emphasised his personal connection to the Usatiuc and Ghimpu families and to the entire organisation, also referring to another emblematic case of national opposition “from below” which had occurred in September 1970, when two young women, Asea Andruh and Lilia Neagu, wrote over forty “anti-Soviet” slogans on a number of public buildings in central Chișinău. Lupan further stated: “One pays dearly for national resistance in Chișinău. Just as for the word “freedom.” The freedom to express oneself, the freedom to write, the freedom to be silent… Yes, even the freedom to be silent! For, if someone never wishes to speak at the propaganda meetings, this person is viewed as suspect and treated as an untrustworthy element.” Lupan claimed that the original of the letter was written in Romanian, while he only published a French translation of the original, “strictly abiding by” the text’s content. The letter provided a detailed description of Usatiuc, Ghimpu, and Graur’s trial and the reaction of the public to their condemnation. The description of the events was fairly accurate, with the unknown author emphasising the “rabid anti-Romanian propaganda” which had been pervasive in Soviet Moldavia “for a number of years already.” Interestingly, this letter also mentions Petru Lucinschi, the future Moldavian party leader and post-Soviet president of the Republic of Moldova, as a “typical example of the traitor that the colonisers call ‘a national cadre.’ He Russified his name, he married a Russian woman and he has devoted himself, body and soul, to serving the interests of Soviet imperialism.” The author then inveighed against Russian domination in Moldavia, focusing on the lack of national rights and the various forms of persecution and injustice suffered by the local population under Soviet rule. After narrating in some detail the individual fate of the National Patriotic Front’s leaders as of 1982, the brochure also referred in passing to other cases of repression against “Bessarabian patriots” that had occurred since the 1960s (including Gheorghe Muruziuc, Mihai Moroșanu, the Andruh–Neagu affair etc.). The strong-worded conclusion stated: “the Russian authorities pursue their plan to annihilate the Romanians of Bessarabia, a fact that can be qualified as genocide without bloodshed.” The natural solution to the Moldavians’ plight was, not surprisingly, “reunion with the Mother-Country – Romania.” This text, coupled with several other works by Nicolae Lupan to be found in Mihnea Berindei’s library (e.g., Bessarabie, terre roumaine, published in Brussels in 1982) proved that Berindei displayed a constant interest in the Moldavian case, possibly also helping the few exiles from the MSSR who had settled in the West to present their views to a wider audience.

This documentary was filmed in 1990, in the context of the collapse of the communist regimes in Eastern Europe. While former members of the underground opposition were celebrated as heroes of the fight for freedom in countries like Poland, Hungary, and former Czechoslovakia, in Romania – a country where only a few intellectuals had dared to stand up against the Ceaușescu regime – the most troublesome question was: “Why did we not have a Havel?” In other words, why was dissent in Romania weak in comparison to any other country of the Soviet bloc. Romanian intellectuals found themselves socially compelled to formulate a convincing answer to this question, and argued that the Romanian secret police, the Securitate, was so efficient that it destroyed any attempt at organising an opposition movement. This documentary was among the first to challenge this interpretation and thus trigger an ongoing public debate, for it argued that the feeble criticism of the former communist regime was rather the effect of co-optation than of oppression.

The director Benny Brunner focused on an interview that he conducted in Munich with the founder of the collection Michael Shafir and the late dissident Mihai Botez. Images depicting Romania during the 1980s support the arguments of the two interviewees. The main assumption of the documentary, which both Shafir and Botez had previously developed in their works, is that Romanian intellectuals were co-opted by the communist regime and became an instrument for the preservation of political power. In this respect, the regime used, on the one hand, financial incentives and career opportunities and, on the other, the manipulation of the nationalist discourse. The case of the poet Adrian Păunescu was given particular attention, for he represented the most striking example of a talented young intellectual who nonetheless submitted himself willingly to the communist regime. He started his career as a nonconformist intellectual in the late 1960s, only to end up as a pillar of Nicolae Ceauşescu’s cult of personality in the 1980s and a manipulator of the underground culture of the young generation.

A project based on the extension of the correspondence with Ray Johnson

In July of 1979, Artpool got Ray Johnson's mail address from Romano Peli in Parma. At first, they didn't get any replies to the letters they sent him.

In 1982, Ginny Lloyd, who knew Johnson personally, was visiting Artpool and found it strange that Ray hadn’t answered the letters. Galántai then decided to make one last try with a postcard action: he made twenty postcard-collages and mailed them one after the other over the course of twenty days.

The answer arrived soon, the first “send to” letter with drawings, asking that they send it to Wally Darnell in Saudi Arabia. The drawing or the letter? The request wasn’t clear to him, so he decided not to deliver the letter passively, but instead to become a part of the action, so he photocopied the drawing.

There were four numbered Fan Club stamps on the drawing, with four characteristic “bunnies.” He decided to rearrange them to allow for further additions.

A new decision was made. For the upcoming “Artpool's Ray Johnson Space,” he decided to invent a background institution, the “Buda Ray University” (modelled on the Buddha University).

Copies were made of the modified drawing and then sent first to all of Artpool’s mail connections and then back to Ray Johnson.

October 13, 1982 - Johnson mailed the second drawing with the “add to” stamp on it.

November 3, 1982 - Johnson mailed the third drawing.

December 22, 1982 - A letter arrived, referring to the second drawing with the inscription “Thank you for all your communications” and a Dora Maar Fan club stamp, and finally, a letter with a Yoko Ono Bunny stamp closed the year.

September 28, 1983 - the fourth drawing's inscription “Thank you for yaur” refers to the former letter (after nine months), and continues with “send to Peter Below,” and the drawing: a duck in a cloud with the inscription DUCK CLOSE and with a ball-point pen OH BOYS ALWAYS THE SAME STYLE.

The Buda Ray University gained more and more participants through the continuous posting of the first four letters. The University published a book in 1985 that contained a selection of the letters that had been received up to that time.

February 13, 1986 - Johnson mailed the fifth drawing “BILL de KOONING'S BICYCLE SEAT” which arrived enclosed with a catalogue of the Nassau Museum, in exchange for the Ray Johnson Artpool Book.

The fifth drawing was the most successful. Many replies came within a short period of time. There were too many replies to include in a single a book, so Artpool had to use another form of publication: the exhibition.

The Artpool's Ray Johnson Space was shown 14 times in 8 different countries between 1986 and 1993, either as part of other events or sometimes as an independent program.