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ivitagata

Listed below are comments made by ivitagata between Monday, 21st April 2008 and Thursday, 5th March 2009.

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Russia leads contemporary art charge 3:57pm on 05 Mar 2009 From your article, I fail to see how "Russia is leading the charge" in contemporary art. Perhaps Russia is leading the charge in rich young, ambitious, Ivy-League-educated people interesting in acquiring cultural capital, but that is far from what the title suggests, which is that Russia is spearheading some kind of Renaissance.
But is it art? 11:46am on 16 Jan 2009 Well, as a Romanian, I have to say that 'we' got off easy! Given what I've heard travelling through Europe and the US about 'our' national stereotype of being nomadic-unwashed-stealing-gypsy-orphans...The British press has an article on Romanian beggars every week! Honestly, if the intention was to get people in those countries to react and to think about national stereotyping and branding angst, I think some countries were spot on (i.e., funny and jabbing enough to be thought-provoking, such as the Netherlands, France, UK, Latvia), others insulting but not funny or particularly enlightening (Bulgaria - although they are taking it a bit hard and that shows they have a big inferiority complex), others funny but not sure how it relates to EU (e.g., Italy), and others just hard to figure out either way (Germany and Spain and Finland and most of the others). True enough, the artist helped out his own people, there too a few leggy blonde cheap porno stars wouldn't have hurt, but hey...Next time, let Bulgarians do the mocking! :)
Fire 'em, those people next door 5:16pm on 21 Apr 2008 Hi everyone,

To avoid being accused of partisanship, I'm Romanian, and I'm an archaeologist, and here's my 2 cents:
1) People currently living in the former ancient Macedonia are all the descendants of ancient Macedonians, Greeks, Slavs, Turks, Albanians, and Vlachs (Romanised indigenous population), not to speak of the fact that they all share Neolithic Near-Eastern origins about 8-10000 yrs ago. In some regions, they were 'hellenized' and in other regions they were 'slavicized' and so on, but they're the same people. This is because ancient people don't 'disappear' biologically, only culturally.
2) In Europe it is natural that ancient regions are now split between two or more countries, and that nationalist factions will try to use this to justify calls for annexation, war etc. However, geographic modifiers in a name won't stop this. If the Greeks really think they will, they are naive. I understand that they are worried what with Kosovo (although the name issue there would have supported the Serbs' cause)
3) There is a good example of this already in the Balkan area: Romania and Moldova. Moldova is the name of the 'independent' former Soviet republic settled on the ancient province of Basarabia, originally part of the greater Principality of Moldova, which stretched from Southern Poland to the mouth of the Danube and included Basarabia and Bukovina. Soviets renamed Basarabia Moldova exactly because they wanted to prevent Romanian nationalists from claiming it, and they were successful to a certain extent. However, when the time comes for Moldova to join EU and NATO (if ever), I doubt Romania (which is hardly a model of behavior in general, but on this issue they have acted well) will push for them to re-name themselves "Basarabia" in order to show they do not have territorial claims to the rest of Moldavia. We all call it "Basarabia" colloquially and get on with our life.

So, in conclusion, I don't think that the Greek demands will have any effect on general nationalism, and that no one will be convinced of the necessity for Skopje to re-name itself "Slavic Macedonia" or whatever. I think the Greeks are losing face because of this, and because of trying to keep Cyprus split up, and generally trying to act as the supreme power in the Balkans. Already the jokes running around on the internet are a good sign of this...

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