Time to Think in Bucharest

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Jan KOPP is a visual artist, born in 1970, in Frankfurt, Germany. Lives and works in Paris, France.

Since 2003 he presented solo and collective exhibitions, performances, public works and collections in New York, Paris, Lille, Rennes, Nancy, Reims, Bordeaux, Lyon, Barcelona, Singapore, Moscow, Zurich, Basel, Köln, Guangdong, Canton – China, Salzburg, Innsbruck, Maastricht, Helsinki, Tyr –Liban, Berlin,

He collaborated with Alain Buffard, choreographer Marco Berrettini and the Melk Prod* Company.

He was artist in residence at théâtre Pôle Sud, with Marco Berrettini/Melk Prod*, Strasbourg, France; Atelier d’artistes des Arques (Musée Zadkine, Paris), Lot, France, and PS1, New York, USA (AFAA).

His works are presented in public collections like: Im Treibhaus, Collection Neuflize Vie ABN/AMRO; Quelques mouvements cycliques, Collection publique d’art contemporain du Conseil général de la Seine-Saint-Denis, France; News from an unbuilt city, Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France. Currently part of the permanent collection in MOCA Lyon, France; Drawings for “No Paraderan”, Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France; Taming the Alien/Final Races, Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France; Westlich, Fonds National d’Art Contemporain, Paris, France; Amoco, Frac Ile-de-France, France; Monstres (rep.), Frac Ile-de-France, France; Nowherelands, Frac Champagne-Ardenne, France.

I very gladly accepted the invitation to join Teaching the Teachers, during the eXplore dance festival, an invitation to take “time to think”. I very gladly came, since, as a visual artist, the world of dance represents for me a very specific source of inspiration. I might look at dance as being visual art. What interests me under that aspect is the absence of any other material than what a performer installs within a given time. It is the unstableness and the economy of means that activates our imagination. For me dance can be seen as a realisation of the minimalistic demand considering “less is more”: Less material substance for more intellectual and sensitive space.

Knowing Jennifer Lacey, Jan Ritsema and Bojana Cvejic from other moments and meetings, Valentina de Piante Nicolae was a new encounter for me and her presence allowed us to connect quickly to the question of dance education in Bucharest, which was of precious help.

Very soon it became clear that it was not so much an exchange between us five on the question of teaching but a very intense curiosity towards the Bucharest dance scene and more generally Bucharest itself that brought us there. We therefore hoped to meet the actors of the local dance scene and the few days I joined the meetings became richer with every day the number of participants would grow. I very much liked the sensitive attention, the pertinent questions and the genuine directness coming from the choreographers and dancers we met. Retrospectively, in terms of the question of “teaching or education”, I think we can confirm by what we heard from the artists we met (it might very well be a very personal interpretation) that no artist can be educated or taught by another artist. Each individual should act through his or her own motivation otherwise s/he will never act as an autonomous, creative person. A “truly educated” person will continue to learn long time after having passed through the times of school classes, since s/he is motivated by a natural curiosity and by a desire to obtain knowledge. A “teacher” can only accompany this desire of learning, but may not fill it. To accompany means to offer contents, images, sensibilities, confrontations, experiences, examples, paradoxes, in short: all kinds of material that has potential of triggering off the feeling of an encounter. To accompany does not mean that these materials are guide lines or parameters of formation.

Beyond the exchanges we had in the framework of TTT, I carried very strong images of the city of Bucharest with me back home. It is the layering of contrasts, that reveal history, politics, power, presence and absence of money, the fast and the slow. As a paradigmatic place I remember the four completely different facades of the junction of Bulevardul Regina Elisabetha and Calea Victoriei, dominated by the “Cercul Militar National”, the “Casa Capsa” and the other two sides with half decrepit buildings more than half covered with monumental publicity and having instruments of modern telecommunication extravagantly attached to them. Another strong impression for me was Parcul Cismigiu where time seems to pass in another speed. A very peaceful, yet anachronistic piece of town. It almost seems that it is the users who shaped the parc through their desire for rest.