 |
Articles
|
|
The Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art
// Igor Shevelyov, Vzglyad
9 june 2006
Recently a TV anchor of one “patriotic” TV channel suggested that the artists who participated in the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art should be boycotted, and asked what Sokolov, the Minister of Culture, thought about it. The latter responded that he expressed his attitude to the Biennale with the fact that he did not visit either the opening or any action of the event.
The attitude of champions of traditional art would hardly change by the time of the Second Biennale to be held from February 22 to March 2007. There is only a weak chance that we will have a different Minister of Culture then.
Nobody changes horses for the sake of contemporary art
Speaking at the conference organized in the building of the Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography, Mikhail Shvydkoy, the head of the Agency, remarked that the first Biennale aroused excitement and rage with the very fact that it was held in the Russian capital. When the drive of the beginning is followed by routine work, problems seem to grow, and fault-finding is also in full swing.
He also pointed out to the Biennale organizers that the context of the present social mood shows that any clumsy moves of artists may trigger protests of militants. The shock of the “caricature scandal” and protests against Da Vinci Code reveal that this thing is to continue.
Figaro, the Beaumarchais character aroused the fury of all religious confessions and foreign ambassadors in Paris with just one review – and a whole Biennale is to develop here! But, on the other hand, Shvydkoy remarked philosophically, who needs the Biennale without any “clumsy moves” since its essence is precisely in the destruction of aesthetical clich?s and biases. The main thing is that Moscow still strives to be a center of contemporary art. To achieve this goal one could organize the display of this very contemporary art, quite foreign to the majority of the population in reality.
The government allocated money to finance the Biennale, Shvydkoy remarked, 52 million rubles of it, and it was quite difficult to get it, and it is not enough, but we’ve got to look for sponsors. As for the personal tastes of officials of any rank, the state is to create the conditions promoting the development of every trend in art. The right for the variety of aesthetical views is envisaged by the Constitution and the conduct of the Second Biennale is in the plans of the Ministry of Culture for 2007. People who like Tsereteli and Glazunov will feel offended anyway, so the main thing is not to break the laws of the Russian Federation. “Everything will be fine,” the official figure assured. “if it would be fun.”
As a matter of fact, the Second Moscow Biennale will follow the same pattern as the first one. It was in the module offered to foreign curators of contemporary art in order to demonstrate the serious intent of Russian authorities. This Biennale, they say, is not just a caprice, it is a serious cultural and political event to provide a position for Russia in the context of contemporary art. Foreign curators brought journalists along, and the West knew more about our Biennale than Russian people. And a Biennale cannot go alone. There should be at least two of them, as the name has it. Once in two years.
Time, venue, people
So everything is going to happen from February 22 to March 22, 2007. The foreign guests have already seen the snowy Red Square and severe Russian winter. Now they are going to witness a no less severe Russian spring.
Joseph Bakstein was appointed the Commissioner of the Biennale – last time he coordinated the work of curators. He is also one of the eight curators now, other curators being expected to come from Sweden, Bulgaria, France, Turkey, Iceland, Spain and other Switzerlands, although the functioning figures of contemporary art generally have no fixed motherland, just as Marx’s proletariat: revolutions in art may explode anywhere and at any moment.
As for the program of the Second Moscow Biennale, the information about it is still quite obscure and rare. The list of participants - just young people, or famous stars will also come – will be decided at the last moment. There will be a main project again, and it will also be housed by the former Lenin Museum, by the Architecture Museum and the new TsUM structure which is to be built but not furnished yet by that time, and about 25 special projects and guest shows.
The main project will rather resemble a collective monograph where each curator is going to write his or her own chapter, and not an integrated whole as it was in 2005. Nothing but the common theme of the Biennale is known yet, and its Russian version sounds quite crazy: Geopolitics, Markets, Amnesia. FOOTNOTES. “Amnesia” is the only comprehensible word in it. Well, the works of 80 artists will surely explain what is all that fuss about. And “footnotes” presupposes a certain marginality of artistic statements concerning this issue.
Special projects are more comprehensible. It is hoped that the Tretyakov Gallery will provide the space for a show of Russian and Chinese Sots-Art, prepared by Andrei Yerofeyev, a Tretyakov Gallery expert. Yekaterina Dyogot, Olga Sviblova, Marat Guelman and others will display their projects. The organizers hope to see the shows of Boris Grois, Yoko Ono and Oleg Kulik. All the exhibition centers of Moscow from the New Manezh to Wine Factory, NCCA and M’ARS will be involved in it.
The ideological support of the future Biennale will be provided by an international philosophy conference to be held this November in Moscow – it is going to determine the role of philosophy in respect to science and art, the borderlines of aesthetics and the ability of art to react to the present condition and identity issues. Negotiations are under way to invite such popular personalities as Slavoj Zizek, Peter Sloterdijk, Alain Badiour, Frederic Jameson, Benjamin H. D. Buchloh. As for the latter, there was a hot dispute about the accentuation point of his name – whether you can utter it the way you like, or accentuate the last syllable. It turned out that one could pronounce this name in every possible way for this chief western leftist is our man, Bukhlenko by birth.
Realizing that the fate of the Second Moscow Biennale was determined by the first one, journalists and art critics made huge fuss about the third forum. Would it feature “Russian specifics” instead of the international and global one, would it present stars that could attract crowds gaining education in the sphere of contemporary art, or just some young people of non-profit art nobody knows, that is of the art nobody is inclined to buy? Would the same Joseph Bakstein head the event, at last, or would he follow the rest of Russian commissioners, executed in some out of the way place when his historical term runs out?
Commissioner Joseph Bakstein told the public that he had no plans yet to run for the third term, and as for other issues, the discussion is open. Then everybody dispersed in the hope for fun and something better at the coming forum.
View all publications
|
|
