by Al Paldrok
Featured image Artemis Beasts at Grace Exhibition Space, Sept 2022
Baltic Art @ Baltic Art Big Apple Action Art Festival was highlighted in cooperation with the AnarcoArtLab @ NYC Anarchist Book Fair Art Festival September 10-11,2022.
New York Anarchist Book Fair – Noam Chomsky:
“The fate of the world will be decided in the next two months.”
The annual NYC Anarchist Book Fair brings hundreds of anarchists, anarchy supporters and curious visitors together in New York City (on Lenape land). It hosts over 60 exhibitors, including publishers, writers, designers, artists, musicians and other activists, and related events offered a space for the anarchist community — prioritizing work by anarchx-feminists, activists, scholars, workers, immigrants, queers, trans, artists and multi-racial individuals. It also offers an opportunity for the curious to learn about anarchism tradition, philosophy, praxis and the anti-capitalist struggle.
The 2022 New York Anarchist Book Fair took place on September 11-12. This year, the artistic program was produced by the New York Anarchism Art Festival, and was organized by AnarcoArtLab and Adriana Varella. In addition, Baltic artists were highlighted in cooperation with the Baltic Art Big Apple Action Art Festival, organized by Al Paldrok. The slogan and goal of Varella and the anarchists is cooperation and solidarity.
On the festival’s virtual online virtual platform, 94-year-old Noam Chomsky said that we have only two months to save the Amazon, and with it, the whole world:
“Time is critical, hyperbolic. It seems mad, crazy, but it’s true: the next 2 months are the most important for all humanity in history,”
warned Chomsky, noting the upcoming presidential elections in Brazil.
“Without exaggeration, they will determine the future course of humanity — whether it will last or not. If the current president, the destroyer of the Amazon, Balsonaro, is not removed from the leadership of the country, we will simply watch the mass destruction of the Amazon forests, the deaths of the Indigenous people and the catastrophe of Brazil and the whole world. The Amazon rainforest will soon not be able to produce enough moisture, and will turn into a savannah. Recent studies have shown that this is a direct, immediate process, illegal deforestation, forest management and agrarian expansion and mining have brought the situation to a tipping point from which no return is possible. Of course, not everyone will die tomorrow, but this process is irreversible. It’s all too far away for most people, somewhere in South America, in the third world.”
Still, if there’s one thing we’ve learned during the pandemic, it’s that humans need to experience genuine closeness in person, not through a flickering computer screen. This whole situation was addressed by the Non Grata action art group in their performance, creating a completely different reality than the small park in New York City. Lighting fires with spray accelerants, it sucked out all the oxygen from the room so that the audience was forced to either pass out or run away.
It begs the questions: when the world runs out of oxygen, where are you running away to? The Musks and Zukenbergs have oxygen reservoirs and a space rocket headed for Mars, but ordinary citizens have to settle for just a wet towel. Fortunately, everything was still safe in the white cube, and everyone could calmly return to their normal daily lives. No one dies yet.
In the East Village La Plaza Cultural Community Garden, a group of Estonian artists completely turned the locals around performing their usual Nordic ritual. The scandalous Marta Vaarik used an ax to break up bundles of wood for firewood and burned the results, against the background of Artjom Astrov’s subconscious storytelling and the sounds of a giant DJ set, burying a small green oasis in the middle of Manhattan’s artificial jungle in a thick cloud of smoke. “See me in smoke!”
Sadly, it was too much for the administrators of the Community Garden. The fire was extinguished, because they could not catch an artistic image that was in sync with the clear-cutting and sub-farming of the Amazon, the poisoning and commercialization of humanity.
In general, it seems that all sarcasm, puns, and irony are starting to disappear from interpersonal communication. There are no filters and generalization skills, everything is experienced at the level of oneself as an individual: how does it affect me? The situation calmed down after the explanation of the symbols until a new shock: Arvo Sailev plowing the park grass with desperate double thrusts on water skis, hindered by thousands of plastic strips, as assistants removed his clothes.
Tearful over the water turned into wine, he rushed through the suffering to the top of a pile of mulch, he stood there wearing a beanie and a striped scarf, a tag around his neck reading “We wanna hire YOU!”
Plants must also feel discomfort when artificial strips hang from their trunks. Grass does not like the smell of smoke, and flowers shrink at the sight of imperfect beauty. If plants are all such sensitive living beings, why is vegetarianism so important? As Peeter Allik once wrote and drew in his carnivorous exhibition, when will the abuse of plants end? And what’s the deal with eating these happy animals these days anyway? It could be that you’d rather eat an unhappy cow than a happy free-range chicken. One has lost hope anyway, he doesn’t want to exist anymore, free him from his suffering — but look at this happy, nice creature, a free soul, I’ll eat him! Oh the self-centeredness…
Uniska Wahala Kano, a Black performance artist, who has gained fame with street actions in New York, arrived at the community park in adult diapers. As she put on a Trump stocking mask and a Santa Claus beard, she launched into a series of rhetorical questions. First, she cursed the previous performer, yelling “what the hell is this gathering of white people here?”and wondered why, “as the only Black person, why do I have to shut up when that white boy performs there?” On her ex-boyfriend: “Oh, now you want a baby when I’ve started my career, I’m doing performances, I’m going to be famous.” My musical entourage: “Are you playing anything too? Why my microphone doesn’t work? You want to silence me because I’m Black?” And then she directed her ire at the audience: “Why are you teasing me? Teach me! Teach Me! TEACH ME how to become a perfect slave…who took my diapers? I have to cover up my vagina, I have to cover up my vagina.”
She chained herself to a thick hemp rope, which she said she “stole it yesterday from Grace Exhibition Space, damn galleries,” and Latvian Ieva Naglina artist dragged her around the lawn, over people, and plants. “I just want to be a perfect slave, why won’t you let me be, a perfect slave,” she wailed. People, of course, felt enormous guilt, tried to help, picked up her diapers, cushioned her falls, tried not to look at her exposed vagina and urine pool, and then it all started again. It was public intervention at its best: physical presence, verbal self-expression, manipulation of crowds both mentally and physically, it was dead serious and terrifyingly funny, shocking and yet entertaining.
The performances were backed by a cacophonous soundscape, performed by saxophonist Marcin Steczkowski, noise musician Joseph Sledgianowski, and cellist Jacob Cohen, (also known as Rabbstravinsky), who have all been playing live sound for Non Grata and all others for at least a decade The latter have perhaps undeservedly fallen into the background. Against the background of visual and aggressive action art, the highly talented performer-musicians created such divine, magical masterpieces of sound art with their self-built instruments. The importance of energy exchange in the performances and the much-needed transformation of reality is impossible to overestimate.
Experimental electric cellist and instrument maker Cohen earned an MA in improvisation on New York subway platforms and street corners. His willingness to react, to be close and present is enviable. There is no environment it cannot manage, no context it cannot engage with. Cohen also accompanied Non Grata and AnarcoArtLab’s joint protest in front of the Russian Consulate in New York on the second day of the Ukrainian-Russian war. He tours New York for a change in Europe and the US. He notably never contacts art institutions, preferring to perform on the streets and meet people across generations, nationalities, races, backgrounds, real people who never end up in galleries, rich and poor, beautiful and ugly. Cohen was recently banned for life from working in US prisons for helping to free an innocent incarcerated man while holding workshops there.
The Baltic, Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian axes of the festival also runs through the cultural-historical context, as each Baltic country is also represented by at least one well-known world name. Contemporary composer Arvo Pärt’s musical event (with Mart Lille and Toomas Velmet) in the Hall of the Writers’ Union of the Estonian Socialist Soviet Republic from the fall of 1967 comes from the early years of Estonian contemporary art. Lithuania is represented in the same category by George Maciunas (Jurgis Mačiūnas), the creator of the legendary Fluxus born in Kaunas and the author of the manifesto, and Mark Rothko (Markuss Rotkovičs), a great figure of world painting from Daugavpils, Latvia. Ieva Naglina dedicated her interactive performance “Surrender” to Rothko, while blocking the main entrance of the Anarchist Festival.
She used a red paint to draw a line separating people, and then connected them intimately by transferring fresh color from person to person, from hand to hand, from face to face, from soul to soul. An artist uses himself to create art. His whole life is dedicated to art, and he is an instrument for creating art. Imprinting oneself on another symbolizes complete surrender, altruism, which is necessary for creating art.
Sledgianowski has a background in Boston Museum School, an East Coast performing arts educational center. His sound is delivered through his hand-built modular synthesizer, and occasionally he works with tape and cassette machines. He goes through many sound experiments, trying to take time abstractly, compensate for repetitions, represent feelings and constant mental disturbances. Almost all of his music and sound recordings are analog. His disabilities are a primary focus of his work; Sledgianowski has undergone several failed brain surgeries, and as a guinea pig at the mercy of the medical establishment, his life is in an unsustainable constant state of alarm. Every concert can be interrupted by an ambulance, every conversation by an epileptic attack. Despite this, he is always there, always ready to act, always bursting with creativity. Constant stress and anxiety about life is the foundation of continuous life, not a disorder.
“Last Pagans” by Vilma Petkeviciute Duplantier referred to the Lithuanians as the last pagans in Europe. Their king Mindaugas united the country in the 13th century and did not convert it to Christianity. Contrary to common perceptions of the smallness of the Baltic states, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, Magnus Ducatus Litvania, was the largest country in Europe by area in the 15th century. For the culmination of the anarchism festival, Duplantier, wore pigtails that were collectively braided with symbols of Baltic history as she led an audience of nearly a hundred people, embodied as demonstrators, into the streets.
She was accompanied by the sounds of Non Grata and AnarkoArtLab’s megaphones, as a genuine feminine Jesus.
From the final scene of the performance in Tompkins Park, a crowd of people with high tree branches and burning human heads hanging from them came to the rescue of the fire brigade and the police, from whom, when retreating, weapons and crosses, a burned language book, a Ukrainian flag, a hook, a pentagon, the symbol of the Soviet Union, and Euro money disappeared from the braids.
At the night video screening of the Anarchist Festival at the Grace Exhibition Space gallery, Estonia was represented with video works by Jaan Toomik, Marko Mäetamm, Jüri Ojaver, Kiwa, Pilleneeve and Non Grata, Latvia by Ieva Balode, Ivars Grāvlejs, Mārtiņš Ratniks, Elīna Semane, GolfClayderman, Arturs Virtmanis and Daniela Vetra, and Lithuania by Evaldas Jansa and Monika Dirsyte.
Edited by Meagan Fredette
Photos: Charles Mallison, Arvo Sailev, Taje Paldrok.
