The miners' odyssey

When history happens around you, art can help you make sense

I made these drawings 35 years ago when I was really keen on drawing my own comic books. My best friend, Ion (John), lived across the street and he had a lot of French/Belgian comic books that we both pored over: Asterix, Lucky Luke, Tin Tin, Rahan, etc. We developed a kind of contest between us that got us to draw a lot, making up our own visual narratives illuminated by word bubbles. But these particular drawings were inspired by real events, the so called Mineriad of 1990. You could call it the epic of the miners, a horrible post revolutionary moment in Romania.

The newly installed democratic government had a rocky start and became mired in a strong student protest movement that grew around University square, the heart of Bucharest. Students decamped in the square protesting the crypto communist government masquerading as democratic (Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose). A hallmark of democracy is, of course, the right to protest. Protesters did this for a couple months before the government cracked down on them. President Iliescu called them “golani” a derogatory term equivalent to something like drifter or bum. The protesters took this term as a badge of honor and made many slogans and songs that associated golan with freedom fighter and anti communist. The police came down hard but were unable to disperse the protesters.

Then, Iliescu called the workers to help him clean up the city. He claimed that these young people were fascist elements that sought to undermine the state. It’s interesting to look back and see how the play book of power has a limited repertoire - very similar scenarios are enacted through time and geography and we see this same kind of thing today. The classic battle between the lazy, elite intellectuals and the hard working blue collar workers began. The miners poured into Bucharest like a black torrent streaming straight from the mountains. They came with their hard hats and their lamps and their clubs and their metal pipes. The miners “cleaned up” the mess: they beat people in the street, they devastated the university, the offices of various press agencies, the headquarters of opposition parties. “Death to intellectuals”, “We work, we don’t think”, they chanted. Iliescu used the miners to do his dirty work. Clearly he instructed them where to inflict damage. And he touted them as heroes for having rescued the country from the protesters. He thanked them for their spirit of civic duty.

I don’t remember how I interpreted these events at the time. I don’t know what I thought about the people protesting in the square - this was a new thing, unheard of under communism. Now I know that, actually, the miners themselves had a history of protests and work stoppages under the regime. They had stood up to tyranny. But I only saw on television what was happening just minutes away from where I lived. I heard the noise, I saw the pictures. And I had the impulse to make these drawings that were probably my way of making sense of what was happening around me. It is now 35 years almost exactly since these events unfolded.

This moment occurred only months after the Romanian Revolution and both of these events had a unique flavour to them. It was a radical newness, both frightening and exciting. When the covid pandemic caused everything to come to a halt, I had this same feeling: a total cessation of what I considered normalcy before. A sense of: what happens now? I think that moments like this can cause you to pay more attention to everything that you used to consider banal or not even think about. The sky is more blue, the people are different, the energy is changed.

There is a lot of art in history that appeared at such moments. Art that documented events or art that was partisan to one of the belligerent parties. Also a lot of art that looks at past atrocities, doing its best to warn. In vain, it seems... Here are only two examples from Goya and Leon Golub:

Francisco Goya - El Tres de mayo, 1814

Leon Golub - Interrogation I, 1981

This might be another time when things are happening that will affect the course of history. When you are in the middle of something, it is difficult to know if what you are witnessing: is an episode or the start of a new reality? It is not clear if the good is really good and the bad is really bad. Sometimes though, making art about something that is happening around you can be a way to create enough distance to have a bit of a critical viewpoint. There is a lot of change and uncertainty in our world right now. If you were to make a picture or write about something in our world right now, what would it be?