Only For Art's Sake

There is no such thing as post-industrial heritage in Romania - although, paradoxically, there is a post-industrial patrimony.
In this country, there is no concept of "re-using" the national post-industrial heritage either, although, paradoxically, industrial giants are covering large areas in most of the Romanian cities. And there are no documentary studies on these deserted and more and more ramshackle buildings; no projects to develop at least a possible story on recovering - from the national, cultural perspective - the depressing apartment buildings that break the landscape's horizons or give some more sordidness to the urban view.
So, we still have to bear depressing post-industrial images on and on.
To think objectively, in a constructive manner about the former post-industrial works and present metal offal is a quite difficult thing to do because, sometimes, our mind is getting bleak, overwhelmed by other wastes also real, present and gigantic. First of all, it's about the physical repulsion rendered by paying attention to things that have generated intellectual dysentery in the near past. The communist ideology seems to be embodied by these heaps of scrap iron and simply the sight of them unleashes an instinctive reaction of rejection. On the other hand, even considering this first level stoically passed, there is a particular Romanian atmosphere that suffocates from the very beginning any intention of cultural, patrimonial recovering of these abandoned cemeteries. Bureaucracy, finances, mediocrity, corruption, nepotism - possibly politics?! - etc.
A bit of emotional detachment and all of these might sound like a story or a gossip.
Otherwise, a positive perspective, cause from this point of view the situation doesn't look that painful anymore. It sounds to me like a novel on a spiritual drama: pages of anxiety, apathy, invented and unsolved complexes. An exhausted, soften hysteria, overwhelmed by suicidal thoughts therefore I guess that rather then a writer, the story of the national post-industrial cultural heritage of Romania would need a psychologist and Xanax.
In the alcove, where everything is mentally more natural and healthier (and that is because things are presented in their true colors) some are considering the aesthetical exploitation of the national post-industrial heritage in a way which I find romantic. We are talking about an unofficial action that obviously won't push the Romanian post-industrial patrimony to the official top of the national heritage land. And this is very romantic since it is based on a non-conformist idea that dashes heroically into sordid places; suicidal mission financially speaking, because, obviously, it will not get us not even a trace of a treasure; obviously a waste of time since is exists only for art's sake and it doesn't aims to any acknowledgement from the authorities.
We are talking about a series of non-documentary photographs of the foundry-works from the former "Apaca" factory. A long trip, not necessarily pleasant, to the suburbs of the Romanian capital in order to take some black and white "atmosphere-pictures". In the halls. The halls - former foundries of maximum productivity, where three or four men are still working for an employer who owns a garden-furniture business. And where several students from the sculpture department of the Art University create their works that are going to be cast in bronze.
This could be a brief history of the building and its equipment. But the photographs don't document the story and don't investigate the situation either.
They are just images of a huge, hot, dusty, rusty and deserted place. And of a grey atmosphere. Very grey - as grey as only these photographs on a very high quality paper could bear; as grey as only this format - not small, not big - could suggest; as grey as the object-photograph only - by its appearance, its odour, its materiality - could tell.
I find this thing to be very romantic. … palpable photographs, objects loaded with one of the most trivial and sad stories: grey atmosphere, dirty windows, over-used rubber, several years old propagandistic posters and the story of some feelings of safety and trust towards some faces of famous politicians.
Somehow, these are things belonging to the antiques-shop, to the curiosities laboratory that preserves the image of an époque that had no idea about the high-tech, post-modernism or virtual realities. Nostalgia and lots and lots of good literature. For instance, the series of the four photographs having a plaster Venus as a subject, graceful as ever, but also with a little too much of a belly, this series is, at least in my eyes, the climax of the whole narration. Pre-eminently the symbol of Fine Arts and Humanism, Venus-Aphrodite has a story of her own too: rendered in dialogue with the mobile and the still objects in the hall, but also with her author, the statue seems to be perfectly integrated into context and perfectly ready to become a piece of garden-furniture. Sordid, sad and fascinating is this chapter too, the one that tells us the kitsch story of Venus. Loisir, connaisseurs. Bon gout. This is where Dip's photographs are leading me to.
Playful-ironical, typically post-modernist vision on the near past, ego-others, modern-post-modern, topical-revolute - several terms to put into the critical equation of a typical, elitist and ultimate article on these photographs. But, since there is no need to subject the material to the critical-theoretical, deconstructive tortures, we will stick to fatidically and harshly continuing the story of the "atmosphere photographs" in black and white.
Since they haven't been taken for documentary purposes or for some exam in the National University of Arts in Bucharest (where the author attends his third year of study), the photographs won't be exhibited - neither in the University, nor in private galleries. They will remain in their envelope till another occasion of conversation and gossip discussions on the post-industrial Romanian heritage and the way in which it is or it is not culturally and aesthetically capitalized will show up.
…Still, I do believe in the romantic side of this vision of the rusty and deserted cemetery from the "Apaca" works. Especially because it is likely to remain an unique type of photographs in Romanian Art, since these closed works and factories become storehouses, while their equipments turn into scrap iron.

Ina Cazan

Translated by Alis Vasile