RETARD

 by Kinga Santus (1)

Those artistic statements, which in correspondence with the manifest of Emergency Room, comment on current themes and debates in the omnipresent flood of news in our contemporary reality, are divided in to two categories: artworks that are created currently, are shown on the white scene and these incarnate movement, change, activity and life, whereas those artworks which are shown on the left when entering the room are relics of the past events which have happened on the white scene. Those visual statements, which are existent on the wall and the area around, constitute an archive called RETARD.
RETARD is a dead body: a dusty accumulation of visual traces form yesterday, traces which constitute a corpse that incarnates death, stagnation, entropy and anachronism.

RETARD indicates a critical reflection about the term contemporary art, formally as well as conceptually, as the archive preserves artistic statements from yesterday and hereby visualizes a delayed cacophony from the echo of the past, an echo that is maintained and continues to last in the present moment. The white scene is, in contrast with RETARD, a vital body functioning as a tool to realize a potential process of transformation and this scene will remain empty in case of an alarming silence occupying Emergency Room when none of the many artists invited wish to express their view of current debates in the flood of news emanating from the mass media, on the day in question.


(1) The text is written in light of my involvement with Emergency Room at Nikolaj, Copenhagen Contemporary Art Center from April to June 2006, and in light of conversations with Thierry Colonel. It expresses my interpretation of Colonels concepts: retard, passage and topicality, and can be viewed as an attempt to create an initial theory for Emergence Room, all though a theory which is rudimentary and open for modifications as Emergency Room is a process in continuing development.September 2006