Teodora Cosman

The memories of the new man

 37 international artists worked and lived during August 2008 in an
abandoned apartmentblock in Hoyerswerda, Eastern Germany

Teodora Cosman

The memories The Erinnerungen

of the new man des neuen Menschen

EUROPEAN POSTGRADUATE RESIDENCY

Artblock, Hoyersweda, 3 - 31 August 2008
Otto Dix Strasse, 9-11
www.art-block.blogspot.com
 THE MEMORIES OF THE NEW MAN

The four walls of a room have witnessed all the joys and I went to Hoyerswerda to paint the “new man's” memories.
sorrows of the people who were living there. They are impregnated But, like I said, those walls could keep no memories. The
with memories. The memories will be there long after the people wohncomplex's whole history was locked inside a second hand
have left or died. But when the building is no more, what might be the store. I had to borrow my own family memories and to paste them
last remaining trace of their existence is gone too. onto the walls, to give them back a (not so long) forgotten life. The
idea to let my original works being demolished along with the
I traveled to Hoyerswerda, Eastern Germany, to find such a building comes from that of the singularity of a work of art. Like a
building. It is a typical socialist apartment block, very similar to those particular human existence, a work of art (made in a traditional
in my own country, Romania. Because of unemployment, the city manner) has an “aura” of uniqueness, and when it's lost it's lost
has lost its inhabitants and many of these blocks were abandoned. forever. This is the tribute I bring to my parents' and my grandparents'
The area where it's located looks like a ghost town: deserted streets most beautiful years, and to my own childhood, an inscription I wrote
(strangely, each of them has a painter's name), playgrounds where on the wall : “These are the memories of the New Man, ghost like
children no longer play, second hand stores with the merchandise images haunting an abandoned apartment block, coming to
locked inside, just the wind gently moving the trees and the long surface for the last time before the building is gone. And, like a
grass. An unidentified, annoying buzz in the background is there to captain who wouldn't leave his ship, they will stay here until the
remind you that what seems to be a peaceful, melancholic death - end…”
civilization turning back to nature - is in fact the result of a toxic
ideology.
The communists' grand project was the creation of a “new Teodora Cosman
man”, whose existence was “prefabricated” like the dwellings made Cluj, October 2008
for him: the job, the social relations even the family. In spite of this
control, people still managed to live their lives and be profoundly
human, finding an escape perhaps in the simplest gestures, like
eating, playing, celebrating birthdays, and mourning their dead. The
traces they left behind, the cheap, humble objects: a piece of
furniture or a lampshade, wallpaper, toys or photographs show that
their gestures are the same, regardless the time and place, certainly
not brand “new”, but universal.
Without their inhabitants, these prefabricated block
buildings look like, in fact, they lost their souls. Their decay isn't grand
like that of the beautiful ruins of the nearby Dresden. The concrete
walls seem like memory proof.
The authorities have taken a pragmatic decision with a
poetic outcome: the area will be demolished and given back to
nature. (Something yet unthinkable in Romania where only the old,
beautiful houses are being demolished to make room for huge
corporate buildings.)

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The memories of the new man

The prolongation of a thought

Room 1

Teodora Cosman
The memories of the new man

Teodora Cosman
The prolongation of a thought, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008

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The memories of the new man

Teodora Cosman
 The memories of the new man

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Teodora Cosman
 The memories of the new man

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Ah, Mamaia!
Room 2

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Teodora Cosman
The memories of the new man

Teodora Cosman
Ah Mamaia!, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008

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The memories of the new man

Teodora Cosman
Ah Mamaia!, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008

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The memories of the new man

Ah Mamaia!, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008

Teodora Cosman
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The memories of the new man

Teodora Cosman
Ah Mamaia!, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008

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 The memories of the new man

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The last New Year's Eve
Room 3

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Teodora Cosman
The memories of the new man

Teodora Cosman
The last New Year's Eve, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008 The last New Year's Eve, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008

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 The memories of the new man The last New Year's Eve, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008

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Teodora Cosman
 The memories of the new man The last New Year's Eve, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008

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Teodora Cosman
 The memories of the new man The last New Year's Eve, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008

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Teodora Cosman
The memories of the new man

The last New Year's Eve, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008 The last New Year's Eve, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008

Teodora Cosman
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Room 4 Hors d'œuvre
The memories of the new man

Teodora Cosman
Child with shadows, tempera and acrylic on fabric, pasted on the wall, 2008

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 Spatial intervention – interventional space
Although doing art “spatially”, the artists of/in the Artblock
2008 in Hoyerswerda, Germany, also intervene temporally. First, their
works fill the temporal space between the period of the block's slow
decay and it's certain demolishment – without preventing the later.
Secondly, the artists come between the way they themselves, as well
as the people from Hoyerswerda think about this particular space
“before” and “after” the event these spatial practices themselves
constituted. Thereby, the artists' works perhaps change the way we
relate to an empty, soon-to-be-demolished formerly socialist
apartment block. These changes are thus brought about by actually
modifying both, space proper and the meaning that is attached to
it, and result from tensions between the space and the artist. But who
is intervening in whose existence? Do the artists living and working in
the Artblock know which space they initially entered? Should they
know that? Similarly, is the space prepared for this kind of practices?
Does it have to be? Most probably not. It's the tension between them
that counts, and facilitates art.
The Artblock might have been found accidentally, but it was
well chosen, not only because the street in front of it carries the name
of Otto Dix, a German artist who himself problematised modern
spaces and urban life. It is a stereotypical socialist apartment block
in the 10th and youngest WK (Wohnkomplex/Living Complex) of
Hoyerswerda's New City. This New City, built from scratch in the late
1950s up to the mid-1980s, was the GDR's 2nd attempt to build a
“real” socialist city, enlarging the formerly existing small old city by
approximately 70000 people to provide living space specifically for
the workers of the surrounding brown coal industry. With the changes
in 1989 and the following collapse of the coal industry, the city finds
itself without its initial function. Nowadays, it became the symbol of
demographic changes and the deconstruction of urban space.
How can art intervene in such a space? How can such a space
The memories of the new man
intervene in the artist's work/life?
Art needs space. Both for being inspired and for finding an
actual place where to “do art”. In that regard, the artists coming to
Hoyerswerda haven't simply left their studios, reaching out to the
people try to make art more prominent, (spatially) central part of life.
Rather, they came to a space that has its own history. In an most
intimate way, this space was slowly appropriated by both living and
working with and in it. Many traces remind the artists of the life that
took place here before: items left behind in the basement,
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wallpapers from earlier decades, posters from previous inhabitants.
These previous inhabitants mostly did not leave voluntarily. They had
to leave searching for new jobs in other, more prospering areas of
the world. The space, therefore, is not a simply abandoned place.
The abandonment has a history, the Artblock's intervention just being
yet another step in it. This particular space, nonetheless, is now
appropriated in many different ways. Artists from very different
contexts, with very different ways of expressing themselves take over
this space and modify it – most playfully and most seriously at the
same time. As the initial work that has been invested by the people
who built these flats and the people who lived in them on an
everyday basis, the artist's investment does shape the space, too.
But their work is knowingly temporary: the block will soon be
appropriated by machines to un-build it.
The artistic change in space will thus only become a
change in time, thought and social relations. By living and working in
the Artblock as “residents” proper, the artists depended on the help
of the people from Hoyerswerda. And they did help a lot, providing
any support thinkable, starting with the most welcomed huge
amount of space, ending with the organization of fridges and
mattresses. Living in and with the space, then, becomes also a living
with the people around and in it. It will be these relations, tough slowly
built up, which will remain. The space and the art that is being done in
and with it is, then, only a medium for multiple forms of exchanging
space and thought.
The block will be demolished; the art in it, too. But temporally,
art itself will have transcended space. Not only in the personal
relations that were built up in progress of work and residency and the
way that made everyone involved change her/his thoughts about
the issues at stake. Also, this catalogue might spread the news to the
world about an apartment block in Hoyerswerda that had been
subject to/of art, intense and creative thought, and newly emerging
social relations. It will thus hopefully open up new spaces, indeed
new worlds of meaning – interventions in and with other spaces.
Felix Ringel
PhD candidate in Social Antropology
Teodora Cosman
University of Cambridge
From the Artblock Hoyerswerda
exhibition catalogue
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 BIOGRAPHY

Teodora Cosman was born in 1978 in Cluj-Napoca, Romania. She graduated from the
Painting Department of the University of Art and Design in Cluj-Napoca in 2001 and got
her master's degree in 2006. Currently she's a doctoral candidate at the University of Arts
and Design, Cluj-Napoca, Romania, doing a research on Memory and
Representation. Photographic sources in contemporary art, coordinating professor:
Prof. Dr. Ioan Sbârciu.
She lives and works in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, 11 Andrei Muresanu, 400071
E-mail: teocosman@yahoo.com

EXHIBITIONS
2007 “Photograms”(painting), Passe-Partout Galleries, Sibiu, Romania – solo
exhibition
“Free style digital” (video) –video/photography, X Future Gallery, Sibiu, Romania
“Metamorphosis of reality” (painting), U.A.P.R. Gallery, Alba-Iulia, Romania
“Painting”, Biblioteca Astra, Sibiu, Romania
2006 The annual exhibition of the Fine Artists Union, National Art Museum
Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Graduates Exhibition from the U.A.D., Expo Transilvania, Cluj-Napoca, Romania
2003 “Re:location 4”, CASINO DE LUXEMBOURG – Forum d'art contemporain,
Luxembourg (video, installaþion)
2002 “The Window”(painting), Roland Garros Club, Cluj-Napoca - solo exhibition
The winter exhibition of painting and sculpture, U.A.P. Gallery, Cluj-Napoca,
Romania
2001 „The Way”, Veritas Gallery, Cheltenham, Great Britain - painting
2001 “Calea”, Delta Gallery, Arad - painting

VIDEO
2004 „The Jewish Community in the City of Cluj”, docummentary, Ed. Risoprint, Cluj-
Napoca
The memories of the new man

2001 “Needs More Colour”, video, 6'45”

MONUMENTAL ART
2003 „Three kings”-mosaic, Orthodox Church, Bucea, Romania
1998 „The Holy Spirit”-mosaic, Baptist Church, Viiºoara, Romania

Teodora Cosman
1997-1998 Mosaic „Communication”, Romtelecom, Deva

GRANTS
2007 – 2009 Reasearch grant for young doctoral candidates

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