SK Parking
/8
In 2001, Vienna was the perfect setting for an intriguing time-space intervention with cars serving as visual aids. And today, “SK Parking” is viewed as having been one of the most precise among those works of art that sought to convey the psycho-topographical sentiment between East and West. Twelve years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, which the cultural scene had euphorically embraced, the Slovak conceptual artist Roman Ondak visited nearby Vienna—a city so close yet so far away. Even back then, in 2001, his intervention had a melancholic feel to it because it had already become noticeable how, after a phase of short-lived curiosity, the enthusiastic attitude of the so-called “Eastern artists” toward the West had been pigeonholed by the international art world as a merely peripheral phenomenon.
Ondak’s projects are characterized by their ability to create situations. In the words of curator and theorist Igor Zabel, they create a “constellation of things, people, and spaces that fundamentally deviates from what is expected and taken for granted.” The artist himself once said that before he starts a project, “the story is already there.” He then has merely to illustrate it using formal and non-verbal means. And when Ondak tests lines of demarcation and transitions, as he does “SK Parking,” he does so not in an abstract no man’s land but by carefully examining real and often paradoxical spatial relationships.
In “SK Parking,” the distance covered was 80 kilometers by road. “Only” 80 kilometers, one should add. With the relationship between Bratislava and Vienna having been interrupted during the Cold War, rendering these historical neighbors alienated from one another by the time the Slovak state was established in 1994, people were perplexed at the realization that this pair of national capitals was the closest anywhere in Europe. And indeed, Bratislava and Vienna still had a long way to go before they would eventually develop reasonably pragmatic—if none-too-profound—relations.
2001 saw Roman Ondak and his friends drive five aging Škodas from Bratislava to the Vienna Secession. At their place of departure they represented impoverished normalcy amidst a context of constantly growing consumer desires, while on the streets of Vienna they were likely to be met with pitying looks. They parked their lackluster cars in the parking lot behind the Secession, where they were to remain frozen in place for two months as a barely perceptible curiosity. “In a way, I am curious,” said Ondak of “SK Parking,” “about what forms and situations we can all still perceive as art. And at the same time, I’m trying to open up this space to people who are unfamiliar with art and to learn from them.”
While some passers-by took no note of these small vehicles with Slovakian license plates that appeared to have been abandoned in Vienna, others suspected them of belonging to foreign, perhaps even illegal intruders in the well-ordered consumer metropolis of Vienna. Why didn’t they drive back across the border in the evening like the shabby, often stinking buses that carried curious day-trippers from Slovakia to Vienna in the 1990s? Who had authorized their permanent parking on valuable private property in the first place?
Roman Ondak was familiar with commuting across borders and between systems. After having been denied admission for years, the artist, born in 1966, finally began his art studies in 1988, when Socialist Realism still dominated Slovak academies. He graduated in 1994, shortly after the Fall of the Iron Curtain and a liberating revolution that was celebrated with an outburst of spontaneous enthusiasm at the Bratislava Art Academy. Ondak belongs to the first post-communist generation of artists in his country, a generation for whom the neighboring western city of Vienna was no longer the inaccessible outside world that many of their predecessors and teachers had shied away from in provincial self-restraint. With short visits to Vienna, where they eagerly went to shop for ideas and could finally experience works by worldwide stars up close in both commercial and public art spaces, they were able to bring their knowledge of contemporary art—previously acquired through surreptitious detours—up to date.
This, much like the Škoda expedition, went largely unnoticed—lacking a friendly welcome or substantial dialogue with the Viennese art community, which considered itself too good to take a look at Bratislava or Budapest. Exceptions here were specialized art scouts like those of the Knoll Gallery or the Kontakt Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation, and the contacts from that time who turned out to be lasting ones proved all the more valuable. It was thus that in the ’nineties, Vienna became an at least temporary bridgehead. For Ondak, who has been represented by Vienna’s Galerie Martin Janda since 1996, the neighboring city became a gateway to an international career: even prior to his 2001 intervention in Vienna, his works had been on display in several Central and Western European cities.
“SK Parking” was Roman Ondak’s very personal contribution to the group exhibition “Ausgeträumt...” (Dreamed Out…), which was by no means limited to an examination of the East. This installation employed a specific test case in order to underline the burgeoning skepticism that curator Kathrin Rhomberg diagnosed with regard to transsystemic upheavals. In her lead text, she wrote that “after years of hope and confidence, our social and political reality is currently perceived largely with disillusionment”. This was true not only with respect to the artistic utopia of a fruitful exchange between East and West, but also more generally regarding the dream of a comprehensive democratization process and an opening of society. It had long become apparent that the transformation of the post-socialist countries of East-Central Europe was taking place in a more abrupt and anti-social way than had been hoped for, determined by unrestrained deregulation and suddenly enforced neoliberalism and producing grotesque side effects.
In “SK Parking”, Ondak’s conceptual methods interacted perfectly. What had begun as a subversive mobile performance without an audience changed its aggregate state, temporarily solidifying into a sculpture in public space. Afterwards, the props (the borrowed cars) were returned to their owners and disappeared into everyday Slovakian traffic. What remained was a series of documentary, strangely ghostlike photographs. This work was subsequently consigned to memory as a symbol of a very special window of time.
Twenty years were to pass before this initiative’s surprising re-materialization. Following an unexpected re-enactment in front of the Kunsthalle building in Bratislava, the ensemble of tinny short-term extras was once again transferred to Vienna, where it became a permanent art object tagged with an inventory number. The reason for this reinstallation was the Kontakt Collection’s acquisition of five old Škodas that match—and hence quote—those used in the original manifestation of “SK Parking.” While these vehicles are not the originals (after all, their individual stories were irrelevant even back in 2001), the aim is to reanimate the ideas and spirit of a historically relevant event.
In the interim, this permanent presentation of aged Slovakian automobiles from another era that now have the look and feel of lovable vintage cars has seen them lined up in the underground parking garage of the Erste Campus—a somehow exotic installation amidst the sea of heavy customer and company vehicles in their shiny black managerial livery since 2021. The aspect of those bygone times that one sees reflected here is the impression of social asynchronicity. For in the 1990s, Bratislava also saw an increasing number of heavy late-model vehicles on its streets—fat SUVs and lavish, overpowered black sedans as status symbols of a rising, financially strong class, starkly contrasting with Ondak’s late-communist Škodas. Even back then, the shabby Škodas were already threatened with extinction.
Wolfgang Kos (born in 1949) is a Vienna-based historian, radio journalist, and exhibition curator. He was an editor at ORF radio broadcasting from 1969 to 2003 (for “Musikbox” and “Diagonal”, among other programs) and served as director of the Wien Museum from 2003 to 2015. From 1995 to 2010, he was a member of the Arts Council of the EVN Collection. At present, he focuses on art in the landscape. His most recent publication is Der Semmering. Eine exzentrische Landschaft (2021, Residenz Verlag).
September 2022
Ondak’s projects are characterized by their ability to create situations. In the words of curator and theorist Igor Zabel, they create a “constellation of things, people, and spaces that fundamentally deviates from what is expected and taken for granted.” The artist himself once said that before he starts a project, “the story is already there.” He then has merely to illustrate it using formal and non-verbal means. And when Ondak tests lines of demarcation and transitions, as he does “SK Parking,” he does so not in an abstract no man’s land but by carefully examining real and often paradoxical spatial relationships.
In “SK Parking,” the distance covered was 80 kilometers by road. “Only” 80 kilometers, one should add. With the relationship between Bratislava and Vienna having been interrupted during the Cold War, rendering these historical neighbors alienated from one another by the time the Slovak state was established in 1994, people were perplexed at the realization that this pair of national capitals was the closest anywhere in Europe. And indeed, Bratislava and Vienna still had a long way to go before they would eventually develop reasonably pragmatic—if none-too-profound—relations.
2001 saw Roman Ondak and his friends drive five aging Škodas from Bratislava to the Vienna Secession. At their place of departure they represented impoverished normalcy amidst a context of constantly growing consumer desires, while on the streets of Vienna they were likely to be met with pitying looks. They parked their lackluster cars in the parking lot behind the Secession, where they were to remain frozen in place for two months as a barely perceptible curiosity. “In a way, I am curious,” said Ondak of “SK Parking,” “about what forms and situations we can all still perceive as art. And at the same time, I’m trying to open up this space to people who are unfamiliar with art and to learn from them.”
While some passers-by took no note of these small vehicles with Slovakian license plates that appeared to have been abandoned in Vienna, others suspected them of belonging to foreign, perhaps even illegal intruders in the well-ordered consumer metropolis of Vienna. Why didn’t they drive back across the border in the evening like the shabby, often stinking buses that carried curious day-trippers from Slovakia to Vienna in the 1990s? Who had authorized their permanent parking on valuable private property in the first place?
Roman Ondak was familiar with commuting across borders and between systems. After having been denied admission for years, the artist, born in 1966, finally began his art studies in 1988, when Socialist Realism still dominated Slovak academies. He graduated in 1994, shortly after the Fall of the Iron Curtain and a liberating revolution that was celebrated with an outburst of spontaneous enthusiasm at the Bratislava Art Academy. Ondak belongs to the first post-communist generation of artists in his country, a generation for whom the neighboring western city of Vienna was no longer the inaccessible outside world that many of their predecessors and teachers had shied away from in provincial self-restraint. With short visits to Vienna, where they eagerly went to shop for ideas and could finally experience works by worldwide stars up close in both commercial and public art spaces, they were able to bring their knowledge of contemporary art—previously acquired through surreptitious detours—up to date.
This, much like the Škoda expedition, went largely unnoticed—lacking a friendly welcome or substantial dialogue with the Viennese art community, which considered itself too good to take a look at Bratislava or Budapest. Exceptions here were specialized art scouts like those of the Knoll Gallery or the Kontakt Collection of Erste Group and ERSTE Foundation, and the contacts from that time who turned out to be lasting ones proved all the more valuable. It was thus that in the ’nineties, Vienna became an at least temporary bridgehead. For Ondak, who has been represented by Vienna’s Galerie Martin Janda since 1996, the neighboring city became a gateway to an international career: even prior to his 2001 intervention in Vienna, his works had been on display in several Central and Western European cities.
“SK Parking” was Roman Ondak’s very personal contribution to the group exhibition “Ausgeträumt...” (Dreamed Out…), which was by no means limited to an examination of the East. This installation employed a specific test case in order to underline the burgeoning skepticism that curator Kathrin Rhomberg diagnosed with regard to transsystemic upheavals. In her lead text, she wrote that “after years of hope and confidence, our social and political reality is currently perceived largely with disillusionment”. This was true not only with respect to the artistic utopia of a fruitful exchange between East and West, but also more generally regarding the dream of a comprehensive democratization process and an opening of society. It had long become apparent that the transformation of the post-socialist countries of East-Central Europe was taking place in a more abrupt and anti-social way than had been hoped for, determined by unrestrained deregulation and suddenly enforced neoliberalism and producing grotesque side effects.
In “SK Parking”, Ondak’s conceptual methods interacted perfectly. What had begun as a subversive mobile performance without an audience changed its aggregate state, temporarily solidifying into a sculpture in public space. Afterwards, the props (the borrowed cars) were returned to their owners and disappeared into everyday Slovakian traffic. What remained was a series of documentary, strangely ghostlike photographs. This work was subsequently consigned to memory as a symbol of a very special window of time.
Twenty years were to pass before this initiative’s surprising re-materialization. Following an unexpected re-enactment in front of the Kunsthalle building in Bratislava, the ensemble of tinny short-term extras was once again transferred to Vienna, where it became a permanent art object tagged with an inventory number. The reason for this reinstallation was the Kontakt Collection’s acquisition of five old Škodas that match—and hence quote—those used in the original manifestation of “SK Parking.” While these vehicles are not the originals (after all, their individual stories were irrelevant even back in 2001), the aim is to reanimate the ideas and spirit of a historically relevant event.
In the interim, this permanent presentation of aged Slovakian automobiles from another era that now have the look and feel of lovable vintage cars has seen them lined up in the underground parking garage of the Erste Campus—a somehow exotic installation amidst the sea of heavy customer and company vehicles in their shiny black managerial livery since 2021. The aspect of those bygone times that one sees reflected here is the impression of social asynchronicity. For in the 1990s, Bratislava also saw an increasing number of heavy late-model vehicles on its streets—fat SUVs and lavish, overpowered black sedans as status symbols of a rising, financially strong class, starkly contrasting with Ondak’s late-communist Škodas. Even back then, the shabby Škodas were already threatened with extinction.
Wolfgang Kos (born in 1949) is a Vienna-based historian, radio journalist, and exhibition curator. He was an editor at ORF radio broadcasting from 1969 to 2003 (for “Musikbox” and “Diagonal”, among other programs) and served as director of the Wien Museum from 2003 to 2015. From 1995 to 2010, he was a member of the Arts Council of the EVN Collection. At present, he focuses on art in the landscape. His most recent publication is Der Semmering. Eine exzentrische Landschaft (2021, Residenz Verlag).
September 2022