“The Fear in the air has taken a physical form. People are constantly reminded of this lingering menace, blown up to unimaginable proportions. We walk the streets with eyes wide opened, searching for the mysterious object. Anything can be the enemy, from a suitcase to a dollhouse. ‘Fear’, the silent stalker, can strike at any moment. With this constant threat looming on our heads all we can do is play, if just to keep our sanity.” Andy Luke
“It is said that when Franz Kafka read his novels to an audience, he had them in stitches. That might surprise us now, but Kafka was not always the totem of gloominess that he has become. In fact, to portray him so simply is to deny the impor- tance of humour in his work. This humour does more than sim- ply rub shoulders with Kafka’s characteristic cruelty and para- noia: it becomes its agent. Think of his most celebrated story, Metamorphosis, in which the ‘hero’ awakes one morning to find himself transformed into a beetle. Not only is this a tragic pre- dicament, it is also very funny. Furthermore, part of the tragedy stems from the indignity of being the butt of a cruel joke.
Empathy plays an important role in humour. Part of laughter’s function is to dispel the infectious nature of the other man’s bad fortune. By finding humour in Kafka’s Metamorpho- sis, we are distancing ourselves from the beetle’s predicament, something that we need to do precisely because of our potential for empathy, which threatens to draw his catastrophe closer to home. So humour, anxiety and empathy aren’t simply discrete emotions. They interact.” (B. A. Carpenter).
Vlad Nanca´s project “Terrorism – Errorism” a nd “Playing with Terrorism” (video installation) is the materialisa- tion of the lines cited above. Irony and humour may be the only way to make a point.
This project of the young Romanian visual artist was pre- sented in several expositions in Bucharest, Vienna and Dusserdorf. Vlad Nanca was born in Bucharest in 1979 and studied at the Art University of Bucharest, Photography and Video Department. “Working in a subREAListic vein (in the sense defined on one occa- sion by Calin Dan, as revealing and playing with the supreme state secrets – poverty and the ridicule), the artist Vlad Nanca is the initia- tor of 2020 Home Gallery and of the “Începem” (‘We’re getting started’) Internet discussion group and fanzine - processes which gelled a collective of artists of diverse backgrounds around the ironic credo that Romania will be the epicentre of the art world in the year 2020.”
“Vlad Nanca´s works demonstrate that the young Romanian artists have overcome the period entirely dedicated to criticizing the degrading state of a country that is in an on-going process of eliminat- ing the toxins of an oppressing regime and have renewed their vows towards art, showing that “art knows no limits”, as René Block once declared.” (Anca Mihulet , A Forceful Beginning at 2020: TRUTH/S and TERRORISM).
Courtesy: Vlad Nanca www.2020.ro
