Cocoons

When you wander around in the streets do you still have the time to look on the walls? The answer to this question, although apparently innocent, can establish you as a pragmatic man or one who still possesses the gift of gratuitous regard/looking. Answering this question you can also discover that many Romanians do not wander anymore but they only walk/circulate. When you wander, although you are active, the regard is much more important than walking.
If you enjoy wandering around Bucharest and you are looking forward to each sunny summer day in which the heat makes a welcoming human selection, I invite you to look at the walls of some city buildings. You will see them embellished by some cocoon-like infants. They are called “coconi”/ “cocoons” by their father - the artist Dumitru Gorzo who is from Maramures County. The cocoons are plaster cast baby-form objects colored in an indecent cyclamen. They were glued in an illegal manner on the honest and grey walls of some central buildings in Bucharest. The project has some of the postmodern symptoms that are now classic: the cocoons are acting like a parasite and they posses an ironic touch. The main reason for this artistic undertaking was to try to overcome the boundaries of the classical way of exhibiting art – museum or gallery, and to try to take the object of art out in the street. Also another issue in this undertaking, assumed by Gorzo & Co, was to try to mutate the usual manner of looking at objects of the common citizen of Bucharest by forcing him to look up to the walls of his daily living. Usually people from Bucharest are looking down, focusing much more at holes in the pavement and garbage on the street, than are looking straight up. The cocoons have a total effect. The bright cyclamen is making them obvious in any possible combination. Moreover, the bred – like oval form draws the sense of touch in the equation as well. The second mutation envisaged in this artistic experiment is focusing also on the reactions of the heard – citizen. More precise, why couldn’t we succeed with those kind of objects to modify, even if briefly, the baneful/ ill fated habitudes of the crowd by replacing the common man into a world were is possible to wonder even out in the streets of the city. Nothing can excite the imagination more than the sudden emergence of the unfamiliar. The cocoons are looking strange even in a well established world of graffiti with whom the people of Bucharest are now accustomed. Having an accentuated silhouette, they surpass/transcend the graffiti pattern of parasitizing the city and they aspire much more to the status of ornament in a post-pop art living.
The reactions of the people towards the cocoons were sometimes of stupefaction or amazement that finally became creative wonder. Some people were simply rejecting the objects, others remained stuck in amazement, but most people were trying to tame the unfamiliarity of the cocoons by launching/ put forward some explanatory conjectures. They “detected” a propaganda reason that motivated the action – it’s a new religious cult that is trying to “advertise” itself. Others found that it must be some sign of a movement against the abortion. Or is the other way around? / Or for the liberty of choice of motherhood? Or maybe it’s an ironic logo of some firm of preservatives. Another creative misunderstanding was that of mistaking the cocoons with the red circle that used to be placed on the buildings that are in danger of collapsing at the first major earthquake. As you can see, the unfamiliar is producing lots of creative hypothesis which I called ad-hoc mythologies. This is exactly the kind of reaction that each artist is expecting from his public. In fact, this is what happens inside the museum or art gallery. When we enter a museum we are bracing ourselves with a specific way of looking at things “as if they are art” and we are making conjectures about those objects. What do they represent in order to be art? When we exit the museum or art gallery this specific way of regarding comes to an end.
In a dialog with a famous conservative intellectual who is continuously unhappy with the lack of firm rules detected in our artistic post modernity, I was trying to convince him that the objects of art by themselves can still awaken some dynamics of the imagination even in postmodern terms. Well, this is an example! Gorzo’s Cocoons are obtaining a specific art effect beyond any classic custom of reception. At first you don’t really know that is an act with artistic claims because it takes place in the street and it doesn’t draw attention in that direction. The next step is the emergence of wonder in the hazardous spectator. The explicative conjectures follows. They became ad hoc mythologies that enrich the pattern of meaning of the cocoons. At the opening of the exhibition “Prophetic Remix” at Kalinderu Medialab I was surprised to witness an amusing dialog between two artist concerning eight cocoons applied on the museums frontispiece: “Listen, who made those pink worms outside?” The answer came abruptly: “I did.” If the art amateurs are getting friendly with the cocoons only after a period of wonder, it is clear that the artists are immediately drawn to this project. Quite powerful this little piece of plaster!
There is something to say after the first session of parasitizing the sad and honorable occidental centre of our beloved capital. After 2 AM Bucharest becomes a no-man’s-land. It is time for the artists to take possession of it. It is really sad to hear endless lamentations about the lack of exhibition space in Bucharest and to observe in the same time that so many grey walls in the city are neglected. In those transitional confused times it seems that artists are only making quiet art. The cocoons were glued in a single night by a team of eight people. Their faith was photographically documented and it is full of martyrdom. Many cocoons were suffering atrocious mutilations – they were disfigured, their heads chopped of, they were even discolored by people not in love with bright colors. One of them, somehow much more brave, found his place on a statue that symbolizes the Union of the Romanians. He was treated with ferocious “patriotic” hostility. He got multiple wounds and a footprint on his face. You don’t joke with a man with a double axe in his hand! Just like the early Christians or Communists some of the cocoons were adopted by some firms more sensible. It’s no wonder that all the art galleries that received the treatment of the cocoons were submissive and let them to enjoy the sun. Gratefully, Gorzo & Co applied another two or three inspiring one curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art to say: “If they are allowed they multiply”. Following this idea, Gorzo is planning another session of invading cocoons – one thousand this time- They will invade the houses of our good Samaritans that embraced the idea and they are looking for new places to dwell as well. Sign up while you still can.
In a chat with Gorzo I, the undersigned, much more enslaved to the word than to the image, was trying to find some intelligent associations to this artistic endeavor. I found connections between the cocoons and the ancient matrimonial idols. There you are: an angel of plaster, wrapped up like a mummy in a diaper that smother any signs of vitality, with shy regard and sensual lips, that’s the angelic profile in an Alexandrian world. Gorzo was inviting me to shut up. For the sake of regarding with wonder let’s do that.