Cristi Neagoe and ICR NY are Doing a Great Job

Feeder has been keeping me up-to-date with the recent scandal that the Romanian Cultural Institute of New York has been going through.

I want to make something clear. Romania is a huge and complex country, and a country of contrasts; it is a country where very expensive cars splatter mud on beggars; a country where healthcare is still very poor, but where shopping malls (the bigger, the better) are attracting throngs of people; a place where people get a credit from a bank to buy the latest cell-phone; a place where civic solidarity has all but disappeared, but where your neighbors know more about you than anyone else. It is also, unfortunately, a place where the people around you will always try to put you down, to destroy you, if you're outstanding in any way.

This country breathes with energy, energy that for a moment can give you wings, and right after can turn to something so vile and evil that you feel like disappearing from the face of the earth.

To sum up the scandal, ICR NY has organized a street art exhibition called Freedom for Lazy People. The exhibition did phenomenally well in NY, it was recommended by Wooster Collective (only the best resource online for Street Art), and got Romania in the eye of some pretty cool, young people.

This exhibition showed that there is more to Romania than street children, corruption, communism, children in orphanages etc. It shows the country for the living, breathing, exhilarating thing that it is. All those people (like Ion Iliescu, whose crimes against freedom in Romania are as yet unpunished by any court in Romania) that say otherwise have no real idea what they're talking about. Most of the people that claim "Romania's image" in the world is hurt by this exhibition couldn't be more confused. It's the fact that Romania has hardly any image in the world, and that an exhibition like this contributes to adding a piece in the puzzle that the country is, that should be celebrated.

I strongly advise anyone to first visit the exhibition (or check out these photos on Flickr), and then judge for themselves. Do not let cold-hearted, vile, uneducated people influence your thoughts and your ideas. Do not let people like Ion Iliescu, Adrian Paunescu, Felix, Andrei Badin (who the fuck is this idiot?) feed you any of their misconceptions about what Romania is, about what art is, about what is right or what is wrong. Truth be told, nobody has any clue as to what this country really is like, or what its "image" is. An exhibition like "Freedom for Lazy People" only contributes to the discussion. Which is great, and something every decent person should encourage.

I am also disappointed that this idiot has started attacking Cristi Neagoe personally. For once, what Cristi Neagoe does, in his own spare time, is his choice. If he wants to shave the legs of a woman (something incredibly sexy and sensual, btw), or get drunk, or fantasize about drugs and then write about that - it's his choice and his own business. If he wants to share that with the world, that's great. People who are interested in that will read, others will close the browser page (just like TV, when Iliescu or Paunescu or Vadim or Becali or Felix speak, I switch channel). I think ICR NY is very fortunate to have Cristi Neagoe there; I think it is great he has a great online presence, that he is well known, that he showed to the world bits and pieces about himself that are very personal and, for that, significant.

What is wrong is having people with such idiotic ideas taking those things available online and spinning them to make Cristi look bad. For the record, he is a great guy, and it's people like him, that "live" Romanian culture, that you want to promote the country. Not ghosts of the past; not old, rusty farts; not people that supported and encouraged a dictatorship in this country. Not people that think they know everything. Not morons.

The conclusion to all this is rather simple. Cristi Neagoe and his team must be doing a great job at ICR NY at promoting Romanian culture abroad, if these monsters of the past are attacking him like they are.

And one last thing: The Czech Cultural Center of Bucharest is doing a great job at promoting Czech culture in Bucharest (of course, as evaluated by those that are interested in this); do you think it's Kafka they promote?

EDIT: I visited ICR NY for a week in 2002; it was the saddest, worst possible place to be in all of New York; there was a show going on, but I remember asking the guards if anybody visited it, and their telling me that not a single soul entered the gallery for days on end...

UPDATE:

I've been reading several criticism about the incompatibility of Cristi Neagoe's position at ICR NY with his creative writing. Everybody, please understand: he is not a diplomat; he does not represent Romania in any official, "state" position. He works for a Romanian Cultural Institute in New York. He doesn't represent the country in any way.

And, when it comes to culture, no single person can represent the culture of a country. In fact, there are so many divisions and fractures and pieces to "culture", that I'm surprised we haven't yet found a better term.

Thankfully, there isn't any longer a Romanian "official culture". Each of us, individually, creates and shapes our own little "cultural" universe. And this is wonderful and liberating. That is why some of us use the city to express ourselves. And that is why most people walk by stencils and graffiti in cities and don't even notice those things. And it's also the reason for which some of us do drugs (where it's legal to do so). And why some of us don't understand metaphors. And so on.

"Freedom for Lazy People" is a great example of what happens on the Romanian street art scene, which very few people know of, and fewer still understand. But it is here, because it is made up of people, Romanians and others, that do these things on the streets of the country. We, too, are a part of "Romanian culture"; we are, also, "representative". Just because you don't understand it, it doesn't mean it's wrong, or it doesn't exist... Few people understand physics; does that make it less of a great science?