Transitioners

Opening: 15 September 2006, 7:00 pm

These last fifteen years, the list of the color revolutions has grown considerably. Some have succeeded in taking power, like the Rose Revolution in Georgia, the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, the Tulip Revolution in Kyrgyzstan, the Bulldozer Revolution in Serbia or the Cedar Revolution in Lebanon. Others characterize a historical evolution of the society, like the Violet Revolution in Iraq or the Blue Revolution in Kuwait. Still other ones point out movements of opposition which have not yet succeeded in overthrowing the old government, like the Green Revolution in Azerbaijan, the Orange movement in Belarus, the Grape Revolution in Moldova, the Yellow Revolution in Mongolia, the Bashkir movement for an Orange Revolution in Bashkortostan (Russia) or the Farmers' Revolution in Uzbekistan.

Often beginning with student movements and a massive rejection of dictatorial regimes, these revolutions are supported by the West. This support is not only diplomatic. For at least five years now, these revolutionary movements have been largely financed and trained by the Western \political development\ funds, mainly American ones.

The TRANSITIONERS project does not intend to work on the \democratic\ validity of these revolutions or on the specific context of their emergence. The central axis of this project is the bond between revolutionary mythology, traditionally associated with a radical and spontaneous transformation of the society, and its actual strategic planning. Although the Western democracies fought the revolution model for more than two centuries, it has now become a development principle for Western international interests. This transformation of the revolutionary model is the basis of the TRANSITIONERS project.

The Paris-based artist group Société Réaliste operates a revolutionary design-office assisting the preparation of political transformations by providing appropriate tools, strategies and advice. The TRANSITIONERS project takes the form of an installation, which is the TRANSITIONERS' showroom itself, where the public can encounter the techniques and strategies required for achieving the company’s mission.

\In February, by chance, we became witnesses of a demonstration intending to support the orange leader Viktor Yushchenko, in front of the Palace of Culture in Kiev, Ukraine, at the climax of the electoral campaign – which he first lost and then won after reconsidering his alliances. We were in the middle of this little compact crowd that had been paid to shake brand new orange flags behind precisely staged barriers. Between the rows of demonstrators there were broad passages, to let all the camera jibs brought by international – or national - television channels manoeuvre freely. A devoted and published singer was bellowing local revolutionary songs in the style of Whitney Houston thanks to the Wembley-size loudspeakers.

Several couples of young lovers were photographed by Nokia cell phones in front of the official orange pickup truck. The atmosphere was progressively warming with the imminent public appearance of the leaders of “Our Ukraine”, Yushchenko’s party; or maybe was it just the sound engineer pumping up the volume. A guy wearing parka suddenly got out of the former soviet palace, armed with an orange flag that he hoisted over the roof of the previously mentioned four-wheel drive vehicle, in a Yegorov & Kantaria-like gesture. Students lined up to lead the vehicle to the famous Maidan square, presented twelve months before by international medias as a kind of Kremlin besieged by angelic sans-culottes. It seemed to us that this square was hardly full, until we understood why the car was moving so slow. The Maidan square was gorged with demonstrators from the Palace of Culture as soon as they were out of the cameras’ field of view. Everything was calm. About one hundred policemen were stationed in the underground passages.

In April, 2500 kilometres away from there, we attended the public presentation of the Trend Union’s fall / winter 2008/2009 collection in Paris. Trend Union is one of the most important Parisian Trend agencies. A trend agency produces “General Trend Books”, which contains the main perspective lines of what will be fashionable tomorrow. This kind of design agencies sell its trends in 2006 to other creative workers – object, indoor, concept or graphic designers, stylists, publicists… -, whose creative workers will be inspired by these trends in 2007 for the creation of their own 2008 collections. The “General Trend Book” is essentially made out of textile samples and colour nuances, associated by keywords (for example, « Refusing Capitalism » or « Embracing Nature » were among the hundreds of key-sentences describing the fall/winter 2006/2006 following Trend Union’s expertise.) The trends are illustrated by photographs depicting more or less directly the various attitudes related to the collection. Contemporary art productions are particularly cherished for this use. When they present a new “General Book”, trend agencies are used to display continuously a video synthesizing their new collection. By their ability to produce a broad range of formal variations (colour ones, material ones, “conceptual” ones…), trend agencies are paid to provide two basic feelings that remain crucial for the good nervous health of the creation industry: the dynamic variation of the same, and the anticipation of the unpredictable.

In order to relate these two experiences, we have imagined a trend agency specialized in political transitions. This agency’s name, Transitioners, is actually the title of our project. Here in Budapest, we have decided to present political trends collection inspired by the French Revolution. By fabricating tools for a prospective design, we have determined the colours of this historical event, taking them as the basic trends for the transitions to come. Thus, this exhibition is a showroom. The visitor can see here some of the elements that brought Transitioners to design its new collection: a table of politico-psychological profiles of the French Revolution’s main actors, quantifying their actual reception and allowing to visualize the influence of an attitude or an event; portraits associating these archetypes to some colour samples extracted from the Transitioners’ national colours symbolism database, and then synthesized to define the specific colour of each character; working forms, classified following encyclopaedic principles, used to try new symbols; “media” transitions of the collection; a “General Trend Video”…

At last, the Transitioners’ showroom also hosts its own contradiction, or better, Transitioners present its trends collection for contradiction. It includes it. It integrates it. It is part of its cycle.\