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Institute of Bureaucracy

The Institute of Bureaucracy is a performance lecture commissioned by The DA (International Digital Art) Festival in Sofia, Bulgaria. It emerged from a three-month residency at InterSpace in Sofia, Bulgaria and builds on earlier works, which explored the creative potential of art education and bureaucracy (How to be European) 2007 and (Different Systems of Chaos) 2004.

The work draws on the bureaucratic structures of post socialist Eastern Europe, which Lewin experienced during research visits in The Czech Republic, Lithuania and Bulgaria while also reflecting on the overly bureaucratic culture of educational institutions in the UK. “Dr Efil Em” (file me), the Director of the Institute of Bureaucracy and Head of Research for Historical and Innovative Practices in Bureaucracy and Administration, presented the lecture.

Whilst drawing on aspects of conceptual art, specifically, Mel Bochner ‘s 1966 installation “Things on Paper not necessarily meant to be viewed as art”, the performance positioned the strictures of cross cultural bureaucracy as a potential tool for creativity. The play between the live performance, translator and need for immediate contextual response was used to explore international institutional bureaucracy, the role of the audience, performer and the field of the live performance lecture.

The lecture utilised what are banal activities in administration such as stamping, signing and sorting paper work as creative acts and explored the Institutes’ mission to study the creativity and constrictions involved in bureaucracy and administration. The performance drew on the context of the National School of Art in Bulgaria and used paper work from its archives as sculptural backgrounds. The lecture used humour to make critical points about the confines of a culture of bureaucracy and aimed to illuminate the possibilities of exposing the invisible structures of institutions as a creative act.