I listened tonight at a conference organized by the Romanian Cultural Institute to a Romanian artist, Alexandru Antik, famous especially for one action (performance) that was considered as one of the most important [artistic] acts against the communist regime (his 1986 performance in the underground space of the Pharmacy Museum of Sibiu) when members of the Securitate had intervene but not for the outrageousness of the work itself but for the effects it had had on the public, two had fainted. At no point, someone questioned the artistic state given space as the already marked context of all this art. Antik himself said tonight his work was done for the [defense of the] freedom of expression. They were all members of the UAP/the “younger branch” – Atelier 35 and had all finished the Artistic Universities’ classes. Their fights were with the artistic system per se, and not with it as a representative of the totalitarian regime. The thorough analysis of what this system meant is still lacking as is a questioning of the state given system (art academies and artistic /state/ unions. To be further discussed: the state artist in the afterworld
