The invitation extended to Irwin in 1992 to open, within the framework of the APT-ART project, the first NSK Embassy in Moscow came as a sign of the beginning of a new phase. It seemed that the time was approaching, when, after a decade of polemics with totalitarianism, we would enter into dialogue with one another as individuals. We believed that by exchanging experiences with our Russian colleagues we would be able to better understand our past, and that together we would be able to foresee at least some of the features of our common post-socialistic future.
Under socialism, where every talent was subordinated to the static parameters of ideology, the only possible way of developing one's personal potential and advancing in one's vocation was to organise communities of counter-ideology.
In the early 1990s, the direct experience of organising such counter-ideological social structures was the basis of the common identity of the living cultural potential of the new East. In our circle, this experience was labelled "the difference". We tried to enlighten our Western colleagues by making them realise that someone else lived at their side, someone who was different. Someone who was trying to speak the language of modernity, but was able to do this only by simultaneously developing the awareness about the social and historical difference that had been separating Europe's East and West for seventy years. It seemed perfectly logical to us that after the collapse of socialism conditions would be established for a new "International Cultural Movement" which would take into account the social difference resulting from the long period the ideological division. We expected that the Western art world, whose intellectual upbringing was largely based on the fundamentals of Marxism, would be interested in knowing what the strategies of preserving the philosophical foundations of Marxism in conditions of its perverted reality were like. We were convinced that we could offer the Western art world answers to a number of questions that had arisen, through the development of its theories and value systems, in its parallel social reality. We believed that a direct exchange of experiences would lead to the formation of some new, common strategies in the future. For the East, contemporary art was one of the fundamental weapons in its struggle to shape individualised communities, and we believed it was leading us toward the fulfilment of our personal vocations; a philosopher toward philosophy, an artist toward art, a critic toward criticism, a theoretician toward theory.
In the 1990s, the Eastern post-socialist societies we live in suddenly found themselves in the middle of wars and learning about the most basic forms of market economy and its legal system. And obviously, they are not interested in buying the social structures of counter-ideological individualism. The Western art system has accepted the definition of "difference" as a strategic side effect of artistic practices which can be sold, in conditions of capitalism, under precisely defined rules of game. Unsatisfied with the moral and intellectual proceeds of this sale, we got involved in small wars and entered a battle whose outcome is yet unknown to us. By persisting in the position of Eastern artists, by proclaiming the difference, we have segregated and found ourselves in isolation.
In June 1996, following the unexpected turn of events at the opening of the Interpol show in 1994 , immediately after the opening of Manifesta 1 in Rotterdam, and only six months before Alexander Brener's artistic action in the Stedelijk Museum , we set out for a journey across the United States of America organised within the framework of the Transnacionala project2. But our attempts to extend the membership of our Ljubljana-Moscow group of artists to West European and American colleagues were unsuccessful. Isolation became the artistic theme of the project. The journey across the United States gradually turned into a journey in our own selves, in the traumatic dimensions of the East, which shattered our personal illusions. In our daily conversations during the trip, we were forced - often through conflicts arising from differing personal and world views - to face the fact that our ideal of approaching our basic vocations, that is, of constructively organising our individual selves, is the most costly product and the most carefully protected privilege of Western democracies. It turned out that in terms of capital, an action, especially a subversive one, is much cheaper than reflection and argumentation. The need to reflect upon social and historical differences, which would also justify the right of pursuing our personal orientations, requires a system that may, paradoxically, consist of the sum of individual vocations; philosophy, theory, practice, production, distribution. Our collective story is caught up in "catch 22." Constructive solutions require reforms in the way of thinking. One such constructive solution is undoubtedly the present issue of "Moscow Art Magazine". What Eastern societies need is reflection based on their own experience. Not to isolate themselves once again in the myth of their heroic past, but to be able to participate in the predominating symbolic exchange at all, to make the colonisation they are exposed to less dangerous.
The Interpol project3 , which was one of the most outstanding attempts to set up a direct dialogue on the difference between the basic social and aesthetic concepts of Western and Eastern art, gathered, on the initiative of Maurizio Cattalan, an Italian artist, ten thousand dollars to be awarded to the best art project of the year. This award was at the same time Cattalan's artistic project, some kind of homage to the Nobel prize. The jury granted the award to French journal "Purple Prose". In the morning following Brener's and Kulik's destructive actions at the opening night, when Brener destroyed the artistic work of Chinese artist Wenda Gu and Kulik bit a couple of visitors during his performance, we had a discussion with Michael von Hauswolf and Wenda Gu. Wenda Gu was assuring us that he understood Brener's gesture and that he was not sure whether he would file suit against the organiser seeking indemnity for the damage done. We suggested him to do so and to donate the money he would receive in such a way to Viktor Misiano for his journal. But in an article published in Flesh Art, in which Wenda Gu explains his views on the event, he scoffs at our suggestion.
The conceptions and value systems of Western artists and institutions are based on the premises of some modern thinkers who claim that space no longer determines us. Our experience is quite the opposite. An individual is not defined by space only if he constantly follows the flows of capital. Outside these flows, he or she is equated with space and therefore cannot participate in the exchange systems of contemporary art. Apparently, Wenda Gu does not intend to show his art in Russia and that's why he finds it unusual and unnecessary to send his capital there.
Our experiences in this last decade indicate that the institutions of the Western art system could not establish fully-fledged communication with us, as declared representatives of "the difference", as the other, because our East European institutions - production, and intellectual backgrounds - are not capable of integrating into the existing capital flows.
The Transnacionala project is conceived "as if" the institutions of the Western art system have already established fully-fledged communication with representatives of the "difference." And not being part of the organised capital flows, it acted "as if" it wanted to stage this circulation in a somewhat more primitive way - by circulating in two recreational vehicles.