Simon WINTERMANS: Symposium of technical glass in Bratislava 1997 /experimental no-commercial slovak-dutch project for exploatation of technical glass for artistic purposes/

              It sounds like old fashion idea: introducting a bunch of into a factory and have them share the wholesome experience of the artistic process with the workers of the plant. In a way this is what actually took place during the FIRST GLASS SYMPOSIUM in the Technological Glass Factory of Bratislava, held from 14th to 20th September 1997. But thank  God there was no ideological motive behind it all and through some of the force of the factory may have been stimulated by presence  of the artists, it was not main objective of the event.

             Symposium organiser and participant Ľubomír FERKO aimed at stimulating the artists first of all. The idea was to offer them the possibility of combining their artistic creativity with the factory´s technical potential and industrial materials, the whole exercise enhanced by inspiring interaction between participants from both Slovakia and the Netherlands. To a fair extend he succeeded. Having been asked to write this article for catalogue, I arrived at the factory towards the end of symposium, when Juraj STEINHUBEL, Ivica MARKOVIČOVÁ, Ľubomír FERKO /all from Slovakia/, Dorothé van DRIEL, Richard MEITNER and Mari MÉSZAROS /from the Netherlands/ had already been working there for four days. In the Dutch camp there was some frustration about the lack of speed with which their wishes were carried out at the machines in the factory hall - but of course they have been spoiled for too long by the Dutch welfare state. The slow pace of work did however produce a positive and rather unexpected side effect:as there was only week time and the machine work did not progress too quickly, the artists started looking around for alternative activities. The extraordinary socialist-realistic factory, with its huge, rather run-down halls, piled with heaps of glittering glass tubes ordently packed to form beautiful geometrical patterns, turned out to be a lovely muse. She provided new ideas for everyone. Thus Mari MÉSZAROS and Dorothé van DRIEL put their energies into making an installation out of industrial waste and finished product something both of them had never endeavoured before. They summed up the whole production process of the factory in one briliant composition: in the broad hopper on top of an old rusty machine they put heavy lumps of waste glass, which seemed to be converted into finished tubes that poured out like spagetti at the other end of machine. Elswhere equal bunches of narrow tubes gave the impression of water bursting out of pipes as part of some violent industrial process. Right in the middle of it all, a place was reserved for a camp-fire, surrounded with blue glass lumps for stones, symbolizing the indispensable fire that accompanies all glass creation. Dorothé included brass and grass trumpets /fused together from the factory´s pyrex tubes/ into the composition, as if an apocalyptical end would soon be announced. That seemed to be affirmed by the addition of Mari´s familiar glass heads, three of which were hanging from a trestle like the heads of guillotined convicts. The "end" of the installation was marked by a performance that did not have a lot common with Apocalyps however - it was more like some rather dull chapter from the book Genesis. Dorothé and Mari, dressed up as members of a primitive tribe, sat around the campfire, which was kept alight by former , while the latter imitated glass blowing. It was all filmed by the Slovak Television as part of the documentary on the symposium, which perhaps explains for the long monotonous act. Ľubomír FERKO and Juraj STEINHUBEL stayed closer to their sometime statuary vocation by creating glass sculptures of almost monumental size, putting together various finished articles of the factory with slabs of glass prepared in the workshop. Ľubomír found the forms of Moses´tables of the law, caracteristic for the artist´s actual iconography, in a combination of two long pyrex tubes and short semicircular one. By gluening these together he got outlines of a stone table, to which he then sticked two porple lead glass slabs. Finally he fixed five semicircular tubes on both sides. On remaining slace he might engrave fifteen commandments, as three tables were made, which were not yeat completely finished at the end of the symposium. Juraj´s imagination led to a creative statement that was new in his artistic vocabulary. Instead of his usual melted anthropomorphic glass statues, he used glass in its pre-melted state this time. By putting white and some red frit in between two "fences" of zig-zagging glass slabs formed like a cross-section of a mountain, he made a "geomorphic"monument. By alternating the direction of the pouring of the frit, the artist succeeded in suggesting the different geological layers of a rock. Richard MEITNER finally, interested as heis in combining art science and industry, was only one to continue working with the factory´s machinery operated by the plant´s best technician. Thut Mr X fused different pyrex tubes of the normal factory output into fanciful art objects of Richard´s wish. Interesting enough, combining these ready mades into new objects, they arrived at forms that were still quite "Meitner-like".

           Summing up the different activities of the participating artists during the symposium at the glass factory in Bratislava is one thing, evaluating it, passing a clear judgement upon it another. One may ask of course, what is the purpose of it all? Why bother letting artists come and play for a whole week inside a factory, where serious people produce serious industrial output? The answer, I think , has to do with fact that glass art and glass industry share the same basic production principles. Artistic and industrial glass objects have both been created from sand received their form by heating and melting. Although this basic principle aplies to art and industry, it goes without explanation that the working methods of the two diverge entirely. Thus a glass artist in a giant glass plant must feel him self like Alice in Wonderland-even more so when he is allowed to take whatever he needs for creating a new glass object and use the machines of the factory for it. This was the unique opportunity the artists got at the symposium. They could gather new insights in production techniques, try out materials so far unknown to them /like Mari, who melted frit into the mould of a figure head, which produced a rather unexpected effect/, and associate freely with the forms of the mass-produced glass products in the factory halls. In this manner the art of glass making progressed perhaps a modest step during thar week in Bratislava.

Simon WINTERMANS, historian of art, Hague, The Netherlands