Archive! © Published in pARTisan #2’2004

Translated shortly

Culture is a version. Every individual and every nation have their own version or even a few versions that can either agree or clash. The Belarusians for instance have several cultural versions varying in their complexity and consistency.

There can be native and alien cultures. Their versions emerge, grow, develop, maintain themselves and vanish either in the course of nature or driven out by other versions. A war of versions is not a rare thing to happen.

Democracy, dictatorship and consumerism may affect art, which represents this or that version in fixed metaphors, images and visions. But they cannot affect culture.

The versions are mobile, changeable and fluid. They are imagined, so they never cease spreading, overlapping and competing, the result often unpredictable. Besides, every nation consists of individuals, each having their own version. Made up of billions of versions, Culture is always miles ahead of life, for culture is imagination free from any limits in time or space.

Are we facing the danger of culture decline? Even if we all should stop existing, there will be someone to invent his version of us out of our imprints or memories or merely dreaming us up. So culture actually cannot be eradicated.

Life is but a minor part of culture.

In our own development we endeavour to develop our versions as well. Time comes when we are no longer happy about our version. But this is not to say we need no version at all. On the contrary, it is a powerful stimulus to create a new more interesting version. It is wrong to associate a decline in art with a decline in culture.

Art is more about some definite ways of fixing certain forms, whereas culture is a universal version present in diverse forms.

The cult of fixed visions has gradually led us to profane versions. True, the so-called professional artist has been taken hostage by his own professionalism. And goats in Mašeraŭ Avenue are now more pleasing to the eye than an exhibition of a distinguished artist. Having toured the Olympian heights, art will come back to its source to create numerous versions of existence.

Siarhej Dubaviec

Translation by Vołha Kałackaja

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