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From Criticism to Self-Criticism (Questioning is the Program Principle of the Moscow Biennale)
// Olga Kabanova, Vedomosti February 21, 2007, Vol. 31 (1805)
21 february 2007
The program of the Second Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art to be held from March 1 to April 1 at several dozen venues was announced. The theme of the main project, Footnotes: Geopolitics, Markets, Amnesia, will be disclosed by the curators and artists from 30 countries who admit that they are not quite aware of their place in this world.
Questioning, or doubting, is the most attractive component in the ideology of the present Biennale, and it is found in every text prepared for the shows by the curators. Questions are more numerous than answers in these texts. These are mainly questions addressed to oneself, questions on the place and goals of contemporary art in contemporary reality. It looks like contemporary artists feel awkward in the habitual attitude of social criticism, they are trying to find new and more conspicuous positions in the socium. It is high time they, just as everybody else, did it.
Unlike the tradition oriented artists guarding eternal professional values and the producers of commercial art who are responsible for entertainment media, the artists of actual art trends position themselves as the people actively contemplating the changing world, people who detect its pains and work on them.
Yet, today, as Rosa Martinez, one of the Biennale curators, puts it, the artists face the situation of Cheshire cat and Alice who were trying to make it out in a tangled conversation how to find their way, for there is no single road, just as there is no single truth to believe in. It seems that the Moscow Biennale addresses itself to the viewers who are aware of this confusion and who are prepared to find the way out of it in cooperation with the artists, contemplating themselves and their surroundings.
The main project of the Biennale comprises five shows to be housed by two venues, uncompleted huge Moscow new buildings. Only Footnotes? (Art in the Epoch of Social Darwinism), an exhibition devoted to the place of contemporary art in the new situation, prepared by Joseph Backstein, is to open in the Federation Tower. The same venue will feature projects by Iara Boubnova (History in Present Tense, on the place of East Europe in contemporary world), by Rosa Martinez and Fuliya Erdemchi (After Everything telling how one could live when there is nothing good to expect from the future) and by Nicolas Bourriaud (Foundation Zero, or Icy Water of Egoistic Calculations, containing the criticism of capitalist economy, the world of brand names and logos). The new building of the TSUM Trading House is to present the show titled USA: American Video Art at the Beginning of the Third Millennium, a sample of artistic study of the political and economic mechanisms functioning in the American society, hated by a half of global population.
Since the Moscow Biennale involves only young artists regarded as promising by its curators (in this it differs from 66 biennale of contemporary art on this planet), it is enhanced by the “special guests” program. It is to feature artists enjoying a stable reputation in contemporary art, such as Darren Almond (If You Were by My Side at the Wine Factory), Sots-Art classics Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid (Peoples’ Choice at the Tretyakov Gallery building in the Krymsky Val), Italian Luca Pancrazzi (1:1 at the Zurab Gallery), feminist Valie Export (Yekaterina Culture Foundation), Swiss video artist Pipilotti Rist and aesthetics hardliner Jeff Wall (Architecture Museum).
As for the two most expected and famous persons – in this country, at least – Yoko Ono and Bob Wilson, their shows will be displayed later, and nobody knows when yet. This is partially due to the plans of these stars, and partially to curators’ tricks. “If Yoko Ono comes, the journalists would forget about our Biennale,” Joseph Backstein admitted, he knows too well that survival is hard for non-commercial art in the world dominated by brand name people.
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