Post-Apocalyptic Egogenesis. Kurvitz's Fleurs du mal
Andres Härm

	Art critic Ants Juske is not mistaken in calling one of the ideologists of Rühm T (Group T), Raoul Kurvitz, the most important Estonian artist of the 1980s, comparing him with Jüri Okas in the 1970s. (Juske 1992:35). A grandiose project of Kurvitz named Symphony Si-flat (Post-apocalyptics) exhibited in Tallinn Art Hall, in Art Hall Gallery and on Vabaduse square, can well be considered to be one of the most significant one-man exhibitions of the 1990s. This is not a retrospective by a living classic, but a grand finale, summarising Kurvitz's main creative trends of the 1990s. I am the Ghrist, I am dhe Daufter. Raoul Kurvitz in his performance More About the Fish (transcribed by Hasso Krull) Nothing is more conservative than apocalyptic genre. Jacques Derrida
	Zarathustra was never young and polite In 1988, the young artist Raoul Kurvitz wrote the following lines about Joseph Beuys: "From the Fluxus movement Beuys seized the form of a production-like action and primitive means of expression. /.../ Beuys is interested in the proportions between crystal and amorphous states, the heat properties of fat, honey and wax as organic matter, and the general role of heat in art". (Kurvitz 1988:40). If we replace heat with light, it seems that Kurvitz does not try to find some sense in Beuys, but formulates his own artistic creed; and at the most general level this is the most precise description of Kurvitz's creative work of the 1990s. Two polarities - installation and performance - comprise Kurvitz's most essential means of expression, which have pushed aside "the eroticism of ethereal bodies" of neo-expressive painting, domineering in his work of the 1980s. It has been replaced by morbid, violent and ritual corporeality of performance and video - by eroticism in its Bataille-like meaning: "by the acknowledgement of life together with death." (Bataille 1996:177). The few series of paintings made by Kurvitz in the 1990s bear the stamp of the same ideology - for example, even Ahistaja päevik (The Diary of a Harasser) (1996-99) or Maailmasõda I-VI (The World War I-VI) (1999), presented at this exhibition. But it has become a generally accepted custom to contrast his object art with his performances. Indeed, in the first glimpse there seems to be no connection between his performances of esoteric-mystical hidden meaning and total spatial installations. The unanimous approval of critics also turns to the first, more attractive and more popular genre, but actually, the difference between the two is not so radical as is usually thought. The main strategic aim of Kurvitz's performance (which could, of course, be well extended over the whole Rühm T) has been the combining of glamorous and aesthetically superior exhibitionism and (self-)destructive sadomasochistic action with the pathos of signs and sacrificial rituals of different mythologies, starting with desacralised Christianity and going right up to Persian religions. Ritual is not directed towards communication with the external world, but with the participants themselves. This is the genesis of their egos and the reproduction of such egogenesis. Hasso Krull writes that we are dealing with "an artist, who just as if erasing the characteristics of his national identity, treats his body as a volume of cosmic space, as an anti-hierarchical field of intensity /.../ Therefore, his experience is approaching that which is more habitually called the 'mystical'." (Krull 1996:139). It could be called either "autism, turning one's back on culture" or the conscious shocking of the society and social crossing of borders. (Soans:1998). But in any case, it is not a lecture on morals directed towards communication - it would be too low a form of behaviour for the Kurvitz of the early 1990s. Paraphrasing one Kurvitz's series of paintings of the late 1980s we could say that "Zarathustra was never young and polite".
	Esoterics and pure evil Following from the above, we could also characterise a number of his installa- tions - for example a computer installation Pentatonic Colour System II (1994/1999), presented at this exhibition, is connected with his esoteric theory of colour and the mystification of colour circle; the series of objects Ormus II & III(1994/1999) is connected with the Persian cult of Mithra. The cult of Mithra expanded from Persia to the areas of antique Greece and Rome and became the most powerful enemy of Christianity in the period of late Roman antiquity, surviving the Middle Ages as an esoteric-heretical dogma, related with both Albigensianism and freema-sonry. Mithra denotes the principle of light, which, in contrast with Christian black-and-white world view and the purely positive meaning of light, finds evil in light itself. Kurvitz primarily follows the same principle, telling Urmas Muru in probably one of his most impressive interviews: "At an ideal level, I find that I am God. I am busy with cognising and reflecting the world I have created myself. I am the latest word of God's self-creation. But I cannot deny that while thinking this way, I cannot escape a certain feeling of sin and guilt. Then I get the impression that I have more to do with the other half of God - the Devil." (Kurvitz 1993:25). Thus, black and white, devil and god, death and life are not opposites, but neither they stand in Taoist harmony, they are a conflicting association in itself. Such a conflict also occupies a central position in the series World War, where Kurvitz has painted cruel, brutal murders - a mother crucifies her baby, a gang of youths kills a man on a train, inflicting 49 knife wounds on him, plus nine shots from an air gun - in white shades of redemption. But also The Harasser's Diary with its Baudelaire-like wilted and dead 'fleurs du mal'could be placed in the same category. Just like in his performances, Evil occupies a central place also in these paintings. This is Evil in the same sense as understood by George Bataille, being "pure Evil only when the killings are not performed in search of any profit, but when the murderer enjoys his blows, paying no attention to his personal gain." (Bataille 1996:178). Kurvitz shares the viewpoint of Faust - he wants to penetrate to the essence of evil. There is no moralising, concerning, for example, the murders, he does not see any eschatological sign in them. This could be called post-apocalyptics. It shouldn't mean that apocalypse has already happened, but that it is not waited for any more. Or maybe it has simply been postponed.
	Found ... a body without organs At the same time, the works of Kurvitz's have been much coded, the author does not consider secret messages characteristic to Esoterics and the deciphering of codes important. The author does not take his Esoterics too seriously any more, he rather takes it with a kind of intellectual self-irony. It is, maybe, the best way to explain these works with the notion of the 'rhizome' of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari: "Any point of a rhizome can be connected with any other, and must be. This is very different from a tree or root, which fixes a point and thus an order. The linguistic tree, according to Chomsky, still begins at point S and then proceeds by dichotomy. In a rhizome, on the contrary, each feature does not necessarily refer to a linguistic feature; semiotic chains of every kind are connected in it according to very diverse modes of encoding, chains that are biological, political, economic, etc., and that put into play not only regimes of different chains, but also different states of affairs." (Deleuze and Guattari 1983:11). This is a body without organs, mass without hierarchical elements of structure, referring to which we do not need to ask, what "signifier or signified means, /.../ instead we shall wonder with what it functions, in connection with what it functions, in connection with what it transmits intensities or doesn't, into what multiplicities it introduces and metamorphoses its own, with what body without organs it makes its own coverage." (Deleuze and Guattari 1983:3). In 1990 RühmT entitled a TV presentation Search for a body without organs. It seems that now Kurvitz has found it. Thus, we do not need to subject Kurvitz to any single principle of interpretation, but all kinds of semiotic chain are allowed, as well as their absence. Interpretation can grow exuberantly in all directions, just like nettles in Kurvitz's series of works about Eastern Europe Sekundaarsed kultuurid: Ida- Euroopa tasandike noorus ja keskiga I-III (Secondary Cultures. The Youth and Middle Age of East European Plains I-III) (1999). These Eastern European landscapes are rhizoidal "essentially heterogeneous reality". (Deleuze and Guattari 1983:13). They can be interpreted biologically - nettle as rhizomatous plant; as a political metaphor - Eastern Europe as a Valley of 'Unkraut', or, for example, as a metaphor of landscape; bodily - as fleurs du mal, stamping physical signifiers on bodies; or simply as a technique for handicraft - as a nonsensical, herbal item made of wickerwork, etc.
	Kurvitz and Beuys Moving full circle, and once again reaching the beginning, we can say that it is difficult to find direct parallels to Beuys in Kurvitz's work of the 1980s and the early 1990s, but already since the mid-1990s Kurvitz has started to directly promote some of Beuys's ideas. The best example to this statement can be a video, inspired by Beuys's theory of money Monetaarne eksperiment Q2(Monetary Experiment Q2)(1998), which was not presented at this exhibition. Secondary Cultures. The Youth and Middle Age of East European Plains, Katedraal(The Cathedral) (1999) and Maelström (Maelstrom) (1999) could also bear the comparison with Beuys, regarding their totality and the use of materials. For example, Secondary Cultures. The Youth and Middle Age of East European Plains was composed of 50,000 nettle plants, Maelstrom was put together of about 15,000 bottles filled with water. The labyrinth of bottles of Maelstrom with its industrial sound and the aesthetics of a Soviet shop that accepted empty glass jars and bottles for recycling, and The Cathedral as a hospital for homeless can be compared with Beuys's meaningful material and the idea of social sculpture. Just as with Beuys, the Kurvitz of the late 1990s also considers private experience and memory important, connecting with them a series of three objects: Kahetsus, et tädi Klaara naabermajast lõpuks surnud on (Regret about Aunt Clara from the Neighbouring House Being Dead at Last" (1966/object 1999), Näärivaheaeg (New Year's Holiday) (1966/object 1999) and Jalutuskäik Leedu metsadesse (A Walk in the Lithuanian Woods) (1967/object 1999). The present article could give people the impression that we are not dealing here with an exhibition of one artist, but with that of three different artists: one - esoteric, the other - rhizoidal and the third - social, which all in all makes the situation quite schizoid. But in spite of the seeming inconsistency and dynamicality, a long-term process is underlying all these works. Just as Beuys continuously used his earlier works again, Kurvitz also repainted his earlier works again in the late 1980s, and he has constantly developed and changed his later objects. Process remains one of the central notions of the works of both Beuys and Kurvitz. Although the counterpoint of the exhibition probably lies elsewhere...
	C: it is essential to swallow in the right way For me this is the video installation Lõige I-II (The Cut I-II) (1999). Already the title of this work just as if contained a kind of breaking, falling to pieces, splitting up. The corporeality of The Cut, consisting of two related video projections, contrasts the rituality, mysticism and theatricality of Kurvitz's earlier performances. The glamour, which seemed to be inseparable from Kurvitz's earlier performances, has gone lost, this trend was noticeable already in his performance Soup(1998). The Cutdoes not seem to have any history or any story, as the other performances do. It is a physiological, violent and perishing instance. A body as a landscape and a battle field; black lines - cuts - painted on it form an image of the letter C in some certain position. Then the body disappears and C glows red hot on the screen; on the opposite screen the same process is taking place on a real landscape. Actually, we have reached a situation, described by Umberto Eco as such where the translation would "lose the majority of 'unspeakable', but not 'inexpressible' contents". (Eco 1989:47). So, there is nothing else to do than to agree with a writer Jüri Ehlvest, who has written as a commentary to Kurvitz's works: "Ah, what is there to think so much about it? What is essential is how to swallow it in the right way." (Ehlvest 1996:21).
	References: Bataille, Georges (1996). Emily Brontë'Vihurimäe' (translated by H. Krull) in a collection Katkestuse kultuur. Vagabund, Tallinn. Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Felix (1983). On the Line(translated by J. Johnston) in the series Semiotext(e). Columbia University, New York. Eco, Umberto (1989). Im Labyrinth der Vernunft. Texte über Kunst und Zeichnen. Reclam Verlag, Leipzig. Ehlvest, Jüri (1996). Veteke kui alasti häbi. Postimees 4 December, p 21 Krull, Hasso (1996). Postnomadoomia in a collection Katkestuse kultuur. Vagabund, Tallinn. Kurvitz, Raoul (1988). Joseph Beuys. Kunst no 1, 39-43pp Kurvitz, Raoul (1993). Kurvitz (an interview with U. Muru). Eesti Ekspress 6.03, p 25 Juske, Ants (1992). Kurvitz ja Zeitgeist. Vikerkaar no 5, 34-35pp Soans, Hanno (1998). Vägivaldne autistlik subjekt Eesti kunstis 1987-1998. Diploma thesis of the Estonian Art Academy, Institute of the Science of Art.
	| Estonian Art 2/99 (6) | Published by the Estonian Institute 1999 | ISSN 1406-3549 | einst@einst.ee | tel: (372) 631 43 55 | fax: (372) 631 43 56 |