Contemporary Art in Russia. Newsletter No. 4

Contemporary Art in Russia
Newsletter No. 4 - September 2004

Welcome to the fourth issue of the Contemporary Russian Art Newsletter!

Please click on any of the headings below for information on important current events in Russian contemporary art as seen by involved professionals.

- Top Event- Feature - Artist's Viewpoint - Critic's Choice - West Meets East - Video Art - Calendar - Publications - Links - Contact

- Top Event

The most important event of this past summer was the opening of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov's exhibition “Incident in the Museum and Other Installations” in the State Hermitage Museum (St. Petersburg), organized in cooperation with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (New York) and Stella Art Gallery (Moscow). The exhibition as well as the international conference timed for the show's opening on June 23 were very well received by the Russian and international art communities. We are proposing to our readers two interviews kindly given to the Newsletter by David Elliott, director the of Mori Art Museum (Tokyo), and St. Petersburg artist Sergei "Afrika" Bugaev.

Newsletter: David, Russian culture has been rather important for your well-know exhibitions and writings for decades. Our first question is about the end of the Avant-garde (to quote your essay accompanying the Ilya and Emilia Kabakov exhibition "Where is Our Place?" recently opened at the Mori Art Museum). From your point of view, what kind of role does the Russian Avant-garde play in contemporary Russian art? Is it something that still has credibility, or is it more a curse that cannot be escaped?

David Elliott: Many artists regard the Soviet Avant-garde as completely irrelevant to both their work and their lives. It seems to be located in such a far-off time when either naiveté or mendaciousness were the driving forces. Moreover, because the Avant-garde is now regarded as having been complicitous with totalitarianism, many of the institutions of modernity – modern art, modernism, communism, progress, utopia, fascism, even belief in the future – have become mashed up into some kind of unholy totalitarian soup.

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. "Incident in the Museum and Other Installations". Installation view. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photo: Vladimir Kustov. Courtesy of the artists and the State Hermitage Museum.

There is an element of truth in this post-Groysian gloom but it is a very broad generalization and also, in the case of the Avant-garde, is implicitly judgemental about people who chose to be artists rather than murderers and who, however mislead we can now easily see they may have been, believed at the time that they were doing the right thing not only for themselves but also for others.

This soup becomes even chewier when one looks at the different historical readings of the Soviet Avant-garde in both East and West. Both were very much conditioned by the fact that it was not easy to have access to original works of art or documents and wherever they could be found – in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam or the apartment of an artist's relative in Moscow for example – the difficulty or limitation of access added a sacerdotal element to the work which took on the status of a reliquary in a shrine to the remembrance of a lost age or generation. In the West such artists were broadly sentimentalized as the aesthetic victims of Stalin and it was ignored that many of them were, in the 1920's at least, staunch supporters of the Party; in Russia itself these artists became representatives of an exotic time before Socialist Realism and, because they had been displaced by it, seemed to be like proto-dissidents. On both sides of the Iron Curtain, the result was that this generation, like those that came after, was both defined and confined by a broadly political viewpoint. Yet when one looks deeper, it is clear that the best artists were far from naive about their position and their relationship to political power.

No one had been born a Bolshevik, even though later it was made to appear that way (in the early years of the Revolution both Tatlin and Rodchenko, for example, had been much more fascinated by anarchism than communism). Undoubtedly, one of the characteristic and progressive elements of both early modernism and early modernity were their espousal of utopian ideals, but in art, and indeed one could argue in politics as well, these ideals were nearly always linked to their opposite, without which they could not exist: the destructive (Expressionism/Futurism/Dada), the deconstructive (Cubism/Purism/Surrealism), the absurd...

The relationship between the Russian/Soviet Avant-garde and the absurd seems to me to have been seriously overlooked. It provides a hidden link between 19th century Russian culture (particularly literature) and the art of the 1960's, '70's and '80's. It is of course related to parody, allegory and pastiche that have a strong political and social edge. In addition, the newly born Bolshevik state was both vicious and paranoid: artists (and others) must have quickly realized that once revolution for all had been achieved there would no longer be any need for a progressive Avant-garde. After 1917 they had become an endangered species. As soon as one begins to look for parody rather than positivism or idealism, it rears its head everywhere. The jokes started against the bourgeois and the Interventionists, but it was not long before the new Soviet bureaucrats and functionaries were added to the list. As the times became more savage, artists’ expressions became more elliptical: Daniil Kharms, dressed as Sherlock Holms, burst out of cupboards in performances and recorded “incidents” of random, mindless violence.

I have examined this in greater detail in relation to the later work of Tatlin, Malevich and the Oberiuty in the article you mentioned at the beginning of this interview, but I think that the argument can be extended even further to include elements of self-parody in the late work of Rodchenko and Eisenstein. I guess that bringing all this together will be a project for the future.

Newsletter: Kabakov himself again expressed his ambiguous connections to the Russian Avant-garde during the conference that accompanied his exhibition at the State Hermitage, and his visual language is far from that of the Avant-garde artists. But in spite of this, the laboratory character of the Hermitage show as well as one’s own intuition lead us to think about Malevich -- to whom Kabakov dedicated his new installation, “Incident in the Museum” (2004). Do you think that this show would have been different if it had happened in another place? Is it important to take the historical background of St. Petersburg into consideration -- the city that 80 years ago was the birthplace of the State Institute of Artistic Culture (GInKhuK) that was directed by Malevich?

Unknown St. Petersburg philosopher and Austrian art critic Herwig Heller at the opening of the exhibition "Incident in the Museum and Other Installations" in the State Hermitage Museum, June 22, 2004.

David Elliott: As should be clear now, I think that Kabakov’s work reflects directly on the hidden absurd tradition of the Russian Avant-garde, which itself reflects back into the 19th century. The fact that for many years Kabakov was an illustrator of children’s books links him to artists like Tatlin and Ermolaeva as well as to Kharms and Vvedensky, who worked as writers for Detgiz. The question about to what extent Malevich’s late work can be regarded as a self-conscious self parody at a time of great duress has not been resolved, as most Malevich specialists have skated around this point. Certainly in his paintings and drawings of peasants 1930-32 he was one of the very few artists who were showing the true effects of the famines and collectivization: men and women without faces stalk the landscape like ghosts, which I guess that by that time they were. But when he paints his new Suprematist order in the portraits of the 1930's, I am sure that there is a strong element of irony here – particularly in the Holbein-like image of himself. By the time he died he looked like a bard, a seer – heavily bearded in a peasant’s smock – emerging out of old Russia. And that is also how George Grosz described the appearance and demeanor of Tatlin, whom he met in Moscow in the early 1920's.

In addition to the tribute to Malevich in the Hermitage show, in which Kabakov creates an absurd parody of Uspensky’s influential “Fourth Dimension” with the small figures, the crashed figure in the Angel maquette could also be regarded as Kabakov's sadder but wiser version of Tatlin’s flying machine: Letatlin. I have no doubt that the spirits of Malevich, Kharms and Tatlin, who all worked for a time in Leningrad, still stalk through the show – even though Kabakov is still categorized as a Moscow Conceptualist!

Newsletter: Kabakov has said that he does not want to have students or create a school because the Russian Avant-garde artists created circles and schools. Do you think that this is a direct or indirect influence by younger generations of contemporary Russian artists on Kabakov, particularly the idea of negating the influence of the Avant-garde?

David Elliott: I don’t think so. It is far more a reaction against the old Soviet-style collective attitudes. Kabakov made this very clear in his “Collective Flat" series. The master-pupil relationship is surely outmoded everywhere, and the only artists who continue it in Russia are such unreconstructed old monsters as Ilya Glazunov.

Emilia and Ilya Kabakov at the conference “Kabakov in Context: At Home, Abroad and at the Hermitage” in the State Hermitage Museum, June 23, 2004.

Sergei "Afrika" Bugaev kindly agree to give his opinion to the Newsletter about the Ilya and Emilia Kabakov exhibition “Incident in the Museum and Other Installations”.

This exhibition signals a significant activation of the museum business. The State Hermitage makes a correct and absolutely timely gesture by exhibiting The Toilet in the Corner and In the Closet that Kabakov presented to this world famous institution on the very same spot the artist himself installed them. However, there is also the other side of the coin. What we now see as Kabakov’s installation still exists at some Russian museums in the form of the agitation installations. For example, there is a colossal altar of the Russian Revolution activists at the Museum of the Revolution. Unfathomable efforts were invested in this work and it is also distinguished by an original structural concept. Such works are chucked away and get demolished. What is important here is re-export, the process in which something important returns to art from the sphere of scientific discourse rather than from the sphere of decorative design. For a long period of time Kabakov has been engaged in the politics of representation. In his system of exhibiting he has been demonstrating a very subtle strategy. His art cannot be perceived in terms of some ideological system, according to which you study the artist’s place of residence rather than the artist himself.

		His art should always be studied in correlation with the inner order of his personality. This exhibition is a scientific example of a more general semiotic approach to art. The interdisciplinary trans-discourse platform that had its origins in Roman Jacobson’s time-formed contemporary situation that allows one to analyze artworks in the various contexts of anthropology, psychoanalysis, linguistics, etc. Kabakov perfectly fits in this situation. With his topic of total installation the artist concludes a very important period in the development of world art. The fact that Kabakov started working in the genre of installation when Joseph Beuys stopped reveals a certain succession and continuity. The topic of collective bodies distinguishes Kabakov from the previous period.
Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. "Incident in the Museum and Other Installations". Installation view. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photo: Vladimir Kustov. Courtesy of the artists and the State Hermitage Museum.			Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. "Incident in the Museum and Other Installations". Installation view. The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. Photo: Vladimir Kustov. Courtesy of the artists and the State Hermitage Museum.

At the same time, one can retrace Kabakov’s influence on the advanced group of contemporary American artists. At this exhibition, Kabakov should have shown a wider range of his works. He has chosen the ideal mechanism by exhibiting his drafts, intermediary sketches and models of installations. They work as a long epigraph to the text given in the full-fledged installations presented. Importantly, visitors to the exhibition feel an inclination to the Sherlock Holmes-type of conduct. Kabakov counts on the spectator who is ready to reconstruct a chain of details consisting of the system of lights, strange splotches, and interpersonal relations constructed by the artist.

- Feature

In this issue we present interviews with two very influential Russian artists, Victor Pivovarov and Eduard Steinberg, who belong to the circle of artists who gathered regularly at Ilya Kabakov's studio in Moscow.

This interview with Victor Pivovarov, a key figure of Moscow Conceptualism, was recorded on June 15, 2004, as preparations for his personal exhibition "The Mechanic’s Steps" (June 21 - August 2, 2004) at the Mikhailovsky Palace of the State Russian Museum were underway:

Newsletter: How would you describe the characteristic features of Moscow Conceptualism and its latest developments?

Victor Pivovarov: The most important distinction of Moscow Conceptualism is its close relation with text. From this point of view, the phenomenon of Moscow Conceptualism is original since other international variations of Conceptualism were primarily interested in different things, such as the body or natural space. We did not have such interests in Moscow. Also, at the early stages of development, performance was hardly present in our practice. Later, Andrei Monastyrsky started a series of "collective actions". Interesting actions were performed by Komar and Melamid. Taken as a whole, Moscow Conceptualism unites two main lines. The first one represents reflections on Soviet totalitarian symbols and ideological clichés, Soviet ideology and metaphysics in general. This was later aptly termed “Sots Art” by Komar and Melamid.

Victor Pivovarov. Kabakov's Studio. From the album "Cast of Characters". 1996. Courtesy of the artist.

Another line is related to the problem of personality and existence, to which Kabakov’s early albums belong. I number myself among the representatives of this line, too. Its characteristic feature is interest in the private sphere and those human problems which have always existed in art. This line is also related to Romanticism.

Newsletter: Do your series Dark Rooms and Doctor Freud’s Studio represent the "private" line?

Victor Pivovarov: Yes. Though in this case another question arises: is this art still conceptual? It is difficult for me to answer this question. The conceptuality of this art lies in the very fact that it is expressed as a series of pictures. Conceptual artists usually work in series or large projects. Taking into account that these are not individual pictures but rather a story in which these pictures participate, one should admit a clear relation to Conceptualism. And here we approach the second part of your question, about the changes that Conceptualism has recently undergone. I would define what is now going on in contemporary art as post-Conceptualist art.

Newsletter: Do you mean such direct successors of Conceptualism as the Medical Hermeneutics group, for example?

Victor Pivovarov: I mean Western contemporary art that is currently focused on video installations. Traditional installations are now quite rare. This art came in after Conceptualism, but its forms and means of representation are closely related to conceptual art. Contemporary art owes much to the 1960's and '70's. There is a sense that art is moving in circles. Returning to Moscow Conceptualism and its two lines, I would say that the existential line is expressly represented by the works of Andrei Monastyrsky and the Collective Actions group. Later this line was taken up by the Medical Hermeneutics group

Newsletter: Working in series is a very important feature. Another trait of Moscow Conceptualism is its figurative character. It is clearly present in your works. Paradoxically, Moscow Conceptualism united the interest in Russian Avant-garde art that has always been crucial for unofficial art with interest in Realism.

Victor Pivovarov. The Lightbulb Has Burned Out. From the series "Kvartira 22". 1992-95. Courtesy of the artist.

Victor Pivovarov: In the 1960's the interest in Avant-garde art was utterly ambivalent. Some artists (such as Eduard Steinberg, for instance) were preoccupied with the Avant-garde. Steinberg identified himself with Malevich, whose portrait was always present in his studio. Other artists (Ilya Kabakov in particular) were sometimes quite severely critical of the Avant-garde. The reason for this attitude might be that the Avant-garde was virtually equal to totalitarianism for the generation of the 1960's and '70's. Surely, the Russian Avant-garde is something Russia can be proud of. However, its ideas are totalitarian and utopian, and they seemed absolutely alien to the skeptical character of the late Soviet era. Speaking of Realism, I must admit that this notion is too vague. I usually do my best to avoid using it. We know what we are talking about, but it is absolutely impossible to define what Realism is. There are too many “realisms”. Talking about the 19th century, one should not forget that all the artists of my generation were brought up in the Realist tradition of the 19th century.

Newsletter: The concept of “romantic Moscow Conceptualism” belongs to Boris Groys and first appeared in his A-Ya magazine. Did you use the term “Conceptual art” in your conversations in the late 1960's and early '70's?

Victor Pivovarov: No, we did not. We did not realize we were creating Conceptualism. This term appeared due to the reflections of art critics, Boris Groys in particular. We saw conceptual art in various magazines, but it seemed utterly alien to us – for example, Vito Acconci, who was making body art or land art. Joseph Kosuth seemed to be the closest artist. We saw photographs of actions and performances, but what was at stake was absolutely incomprehensible for us. We knew that conceptual art existed, but we did not realize that we were conceptual artists.

Newsletter: What can you tell about the Sretensky Boulevard group?

Victor Pivovarov: Two things should be emphasized with regard to the notion of Sretensky Boulevard. Firstly, the very name was contrived by Czech art historian Indrich Halupecky. He made up a joint team of Kabakov, Bulatov, Yankilevsky, Steinberg and myself. I think that these five artists did not perceive themselves as a school. Secondly, many critics use this name in a broad sense to mean a well-known circle of artists who used to visit Kabakov’s studio at the Rossiya house.

Victor Pivovarov. The Body of Unofficial Moscow Art of the '60's and '70's. 2002. Courtesy of the artist.

I consider it entirely justified that such artists as Oleg Vasilyev, Eduard Gorokhovsky and Ivan Chuykov (surprisingly, none of them was mentioned by Halupecky) should be included in this group.

Newsletter: What was it like?

Victor Pivovarov: It was a circle of close friends. Though it is impossible to unite the artists of Sretensky Boulevard – each had his own world completely different from the others – we were close friends and spent much time together. Then, at a certain stage, we split. Many of us have not seen each other for years.

Newsletter: You started making albums in the 1960's. Was it due to your professional activities or was it a form of internal resistance to official art?

Victor Pivovarov: I decided to turn to albums because I had a feeling that the visual and pictorial spheres had been exhausted. I was disgusted with painting because all images seemed false. Thus, changing the image for the word was a relief for me. But such an acute reaction could not last long, and I started to combine these two spheres. As regards Kabakov’s albums, they originated from an art phenomenon called "a picture with caption". We all remember those old books, say, by Jules Verne, with some illustration and a caption reading, "Far away on the horizon appeared the outlines of a new land." This exciting combination of a picture and caption gave birth to Kabakov’s albums. In their memoirs, Kabakov and Bulatov tell about their philosophic meditations on book covers. On the wall of Bulatov’s summer house, which was also his studio, someone pinned a book cover. It read "ant" and depicted an ant dragging some reed. Kabakov and Bulatov spent many evenings discussing that cover from all possible points of view.

Newsletter: In your paintings of the 1970's one may sense a feeling of the illogical as well as suspense.

Victor Pivovarov: In the early 1970's, the idea of a breakthrough or passageway was extraordinary popular among us.

Newsletter: Did you mean a social breakthrough?

Victor Pivovarov: No. This idea only included some separate elements of the social. This motive was present in Kabakov’s albums, but the accent was put on everyday phenomena rather than on the social. The same holds true for Yankilevsky. The space clefts you see on my pictures reflect the same idea sensually and philosophically. It is certainly right to talk about the closed character of the Soviet system and about a wish to break out of it. However, this is not that interesting. A way out, a breakthrough and a passageway in general is what we were interested in. Take, for instance, Bulatov’s picture I Go. You may find similar phenomena in film and literature (in Aksyonov’s writings, for example). Now it may not be that clear and may be perceived as a state of lightness and suspense.

Newsletter: There is a Soviet anecdote about the breakthrough. A person from some Socialist country (the GDR, Czechoslovakia, or Poland) asks his companion, “Have you heard that the Russians made it to outer space?” - “All of them?” - the companion asks with great hope in his voice. - “No. Only one”.

Victor Pivovarov: Kabakov’s The Man who Flew into Space from His Apartment also belongs to this series of breakthroughs.

Eduard Steinberg kindly gave the following interview on July 9, 2004, while in St. Petersburg for his exhibition in the Marble Palace at the State Russian Museum:

Newsletter: Many Russian artists had a complex attitude toward the Avant-garde. In particular, the Avant-garde was accused of being over-ideologized. At the same time, there were underground schools studying the Avant-garde heritage, directly conveyed via Malevich’s and Filonov’s disciples. You are said to have had Malevich’s portrait hanging in your studio in Moscow.

Eduard Steinberg: It is still hanging in my studio – not only in Moscow but also in Paris. Malevich is a very interesting phenomenon. When I started working as an artist I didn’t like Malevich. I rejected his language. For the first time, I saw Malevich’s works at the end of the 1950's in Kostaki’s collection. The collection as a whole was a shock for me because I didn’t like it. This is a normal phenomenom: when you dislike something at first, this means there is something significant in the art. Trying to understand what the language of art is, I started to read philosophy and history. Then I got interested in Malevich. This was a true interest produced by my inner workings, not a cooked-up interest. By the 1970's, I gradually came to use geometrical language. I received no education in art. I was born after the war. My father was in a camp. He was released in 1954 and took me to Tarusa. He was an artist. I began to draw at the age of 12 or 13. My father graduated from the Higher Workshops for Art and Technologies (VKhUTeMas). He was a disciple of Sterenberg and told me about Filonov. I consider him my true teacher. He said to me: “You will become an artist. You have no choice”. In Tarusa, I spent all my time drawing. I made landscapes in the Fauvist style and in the style of van Gogh. Later I destroyed most of these works. At the State Russian Museum exhibition there is one work from this period.

Eduard Steinberg. Composition. 1987. Courtesy of the State Russian Museum and the artist.

Also, there was a fine man in my life, artist Boris Sveshnikov. He died four years ago. He was in the camps together with my father. He had no place to live when he was released, and my father invited him to live at our place. In fact, I had two teachers, my father and Sveshnikov. My wife Galya, with whom I have been living together for 38 years, always supported me. I was also influenced by Evgeny Lvovich Shiffers. He lived in Leningrad and was Tovstonogov’s disciple. He directed two or three plays and made several movies. When he was deprived of any possibility of professional development he moved to Moscow. We met in Tarusa in 1962. Unemployed, he spent a winter there writing his first philosophical novel. He wasn’t an art critic, but rather an all-embracing figure, and he helped me to look at myself differently. He deciphered the language of geometry for me. We became friends in 1969. Shiffers was among the first to write about Kabakov (in his article "Metaphysical Writing Books of Ilya Kabakov"). He also wrote the article "The Ideographical Language of Eduard Steinberg", in which he tried to find archetypes in my art system. This article has not been published yet. Shiffers studied the texts of the Apostles. The language of the Christian catacombs was based on geometrical structures. Shiffers was the first to tell me about that. He was also the first to talk about Malevich’s mysticism. The second person was the Czech art historian Halupetsky. These two people are, in a sense, the co-authors of my conception. I was influenced by the Russian Avant-garde, though I altered its content. Besides, I like art related to geography and bound to the place where one lives.

In the late 1970's there was the Sretensky Boulevard group of artists.We were very close. Then Komar and Melamid left the country. They invented the language of Sots Art, though the first artist to use this language was Erik Bulatov. In his works, it is unclear whether his language is Soviet or anti-Soviet. At that time, everyone seemed to be fond of political shows. I had a row with Kabakov. Then I had ideological confrontations with Groys and later with Pivovarov. I think that Conceptualism closely tied to the Soviet language is too material. Besides, it cannot be read without texts. In my opinion, art should speak of freedom. Art that imposes on spectators something related to Soviet history rather than to some personal thinking is not interesting to me, although it is probably very relevant. However, today I prefer Mark Rothko and Malevich. By the way, I saw Rothko’s works for the first time in the West. I did not get interested in Malevich because it was fashionable. At that time nobody actually knew Malevich. Khardgiev and Gennady Aigi were two of the few exceptions. Now Malevich has become a commercial idol.

Eduard Steinberg. Black Sun. 1979. Courtesy of the State Russian Museum and the artist.

Newsletter: What influenced you in Malevich? Was it his pictures or his theory?

Eduard Steinberg: Only pictures. I like reading Mandelshtam and Chaadaev. Though I would like to read the two volumes of Malevich that have recently been published.

Newsletter: By contrast to Malevich, your geography emerges against dark backgrounds. Geometrical figures are perceived as slotted dark space. The figures start gleaming, which makes an impression of some ancient hieroglyphics.

Eduard Steinberg: I had a long white period. I had been living in the heavens for too long. Then I came back to earth. What is important is that these pictures are all about freedom. If a spectator cannot see anything in them, this indicates the level of his personal freedom – freedom to see whatever he is able to. I am an admirer of freedom. Communism is disgusting for me. I was brought up under conditions of Communist constraints. This greatly influenced me. I realized what inner freedom means, what it means to reject the non-existing exhibitions. I never wanted to go to Europe, nor did I dream of earning money with paintings. It just happened. I was going to move to Tarusa when I received an offer to work in Paris. Thus we are living now in two countries at once, returning to Russia each year.

Eduard Steinberg. Composition. 1986. Courtesy of the artist.

Newsletter: What did you discuss at Kabakov’s studio?

Eduard Steinberg: The problems of culture and philosophy. We discussed Malevich. We read articles. It was a very close friendship. One of us, Eduard Gorokhovsky, died recently. I used to have Victor Pivovarov’s drawing entitled Where I Am (1974-75). It showed our kitchen with Kabakov and his first wife, Vika; my wife Galya, Eduard Gorokhovsky, Victor Pivivarov and me.

Newsletter: Kabakov says that white color is light.

Eduard Steinberg: True. Florensky also used to say that. Everybody talked of light at that time. The language of metaphysics and philosophy was dominant then. I haven’t seen Kabakov for a long time. I have no idea what he is talking about now. I went to Pivovarov’s exhibition at the Russian State Museum. It made me sad. What happened? I saw Freud and Marx there.

Eduard Steinberg. Composition. (Dedicated to Evgeny Shiffers.)1973. Courtesy of the artist.

Newsletter: They are very important, though.

Eduard Steinberg: Yes, but they belong to the 19th century.

- Artist's Viewpoint

The Newsletter again presents the opinion of artists on exhibitions in which they have taken part

St. Petersburg artist Dmitry Pilikin gave his opinion about the exhibition “Thinking of the Motherland”, organized by the National Center of Contemporary Art in St. Petersburg at the Anna Akhmatova Museum, St. Petersburg (Curator: Marina Koldobskaya):

The exhibition provokes an ambivalent reaction. On the one hand, it presents a number of good works, although along with them one finds some distinctly feeble works. Altogether, they make a cumulative impression of mirthless sneering in Nonconformist, Sots Art style. Too many Putins and too much inarticulate criticism of Orthodoxy. Paradoxical as it is, the presence of such works finally made up the general tone of the exhibition. A theme politicized in this way is a hobbyhorse in Marina Koldobskaya’s art. However straightforward it may look in her own works, an entire exhibition composed in such a way appears hopelessly weak. On the other hand, as director of an institution, Koldobskaya has to do something despite the lack of financing.

Marina Bondarenko. Putin-Beatles. 2004. Courtesy of the artist and NCCA, St. Petersburg.

Marina Koldobskaya. Our Lady of Vladimir. From the "Camouflage" series. 1999. Courtesy of the artist and NCCA, St. Petersburg.

This is why a large part of the works was rented from the Guelman Gallery, while St. Petersburg artists received 500-1,000 rubles (approximately 15-35 dollars) to cover their production costs. It is hardly possible to create something beautiful and spectacular with such a budget, though sometimes huge budgets apparently cloud clear thinking. All in all, we should be thankful to say that this time the show went smoothly, with no interventions by radical Orthodox pogromists.

St. Petersburg artist and musician Hermes Zygott gave his impressions about the Festival of Scandinavian Poets “Swinging with Neighbors”, in which he participated with a live soundtrack performance together with Valery Alakhov for Sergei "Afrika" Bugaev's film Stalker-3 at Heaven Street Garage, Stockholm:

This year Russian poets and artists were invited to take part in the second Festival of Scandinavian Poets for the first time. The performance by the Factory of Found Clothes (Natalya "Glyuklya" Pershina-Yakimanskaya and Olga "Tsaplya" Egorova) was apparently intended to arouse Swedish businessmen by suggesting they contemplate children’s underwear. The businessmen, however, did not go so far as to masturbate right on the spot. One elderly spectator started weeping because “human beings are so complicated." The Russian participants provided razor-sharp commentary on fossilized social relations in democratic society. The general reaction to the demonstration of Sergey Bugaev’s film Stalker-3 that was accompanied by the live soundtrack I co-authored with Valery Alakhov was, “Too much”. There were no questions related to the reappropriated documentary recording of combat operations in Chechnya, although someone asked if it had been made in Afghanistan.

Valery Alakhov and Hermes Zygott. Live sound performance for Sergei "Afrika" Bugaev's film, Stalker-3.

St. Petersburg artist and director of PAIBNI (St. Petersburg Archive and Library of Unofficial Art) Andrei Khlobystin gives his impression about the exhibition "Watch Out! Art from Moscow and St. Petersburg", May 27 - September 5, 2004, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo (Curator: Kari J. Brandtzaeg).

In the last few years we have been witnessing the renaissance of neo-colonial discourse. One can feel it in the very title of the exhibition, which invokes caution and warns of some danger. On the one hand, such a title alludes to Russian art of the 1920's, when similar slogans and appeals were widely in use. On the other hand, this title refers to an exotic image of the Russians which the artists themselves readily support. The exhibition itself presented two schools of Russian art, namely those of Moscow and St. Petersburg. In addition, there were purveyors of Communism such as Dmitry Vilensky, who is actively applying leftist ideas. No one would dare deny the splendid work done by the curators, who managed to show the best artists at their exhibition. This is most likely the general trend in contemporary Russian art.

Oleg Kulik. Museum. XL Gallery, Moscow. 2003. Photo: Borre Larsen. Courtesy of the artist and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Oslo.

- Critic's Choice

Lisa Morozova, Moscow artist, member of the famous Escape group as well as staff art critic and columnist for Khudozhestvenny Zhurnal (Arts Magazine), made her choice of the best recent exhibitions for this issue of the Newsletter.

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. “Incident in the Museum and Other Installations”. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg. June 22 - August 29 (Curators: Germano Celant, Arkady Ippolitov).

Kabakov’s exhibition at the State Hermitage surely takes first place. For the first time, our great compatriot received the honor he deserves, being invited with an exhibition on an appropriate scale accompanied by a nice catalog and an interesting conference. The best possible result with, hopefully, the least expenditure. By demonstrating a large number of installations, the show became a large retrospective using the compact form of drafts and projects.

"Sliding/Dizziness". National Center of Contemporary Art. Kremlin Arsenal, Nizhny Novgorod (www.art.nnov.ru).
August 18 - September 5.

Escape. Dizziness. Courtesy of the artists and NCCA, Nizhny Novgorod.

Second place goes to the exhibition just opened at the Arsenal in Nizhny Novgorod. Being an artist, I can only make a highly subjective choice. It is natural for an artist to value the exhibitions he or she takes part in as the best ones. I have just returned from Nizhny Novgorod, where I participated in the successful opening of the "Sliding/Dizziness" joint exhibition of our Escape group and the ProMyza group of artists from Nizhny Novgorod. The event showed a fine correlation between two different projects. The specificity of space (a box bound with rusty iron suited the specific interior of the Arsenal perfectly) and interactivity of both projects contributed to its success.

International Forum of Artistic Initiatives. "Paradise"; "Na Kurort!". Maly Manezh, Moscow. July 21 - August 8 (Curator: Yury Nikich).
I have difficulties deciding whether these are two exhibitions or one divided into two parts. Their strong sides are the positive and universal topics and the support of young artists (Korina, Bozhko, Nilin, and Where are Dogs Running) and artists from provincial cities. This is a noble gesture.

"Na Kurort!". Exhibition view. Courtesy of Yury Nikich and the International Forum of Artistic Initiatives.

"Paradise". Exhibition view. Courtesy of Yury Nikich and the International Forum of Artistic Initiatives.

Olga Kisseleva. “Doors”. National Center of Contemporary Art (www.art.nnov.ru). Kremlin Arsenal, Nizhniy Novgorod. April 30 - May 20, 2004.

This well-known Russian artist has finally received the show she deserves in Russia. The quality of her work with new technologies is very high and, in this sense, very instructive. Her works are distinguished by the rare combination of meditative character and the analytical and critical approach.

Nina Kotel. “Even More Happy”. National Center of Contemporary Art. Moscow.

The exhibition consists of a live performance plus video and audio installations. I am always delighted with the combination of the classical and contemporary in her works, her command of the various languages of art, and the freshness of her perception and thinking. This show is devoted to love, as striving to utopia is combined with a historical and culturological analysis of the church wedding in Russia.

Michail Trofimenkov, renowned Russian art critic from St. Petersburg, columnist for the Kommersant publishing house (www.kommersant.ru) and a contributor to Art Electronics, Vogue, and GQ magazines, has kindly presented his choice of the best exhibitions of summer, 2004 for the current issue of the Newsletter.

Konstantin Simun. From the "Jubilees-2004" series. Stroganov Palace, State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg. July 15 - September 6, 2004.

To my mind, this exhibition should be regarded as the best simply because there is no other sculptor capable of creating such different works as the Leningrad Blockade Monument and A Glass.

Konstantin Simun. Clew. 1986. Courtesy of the artist and the State Russian Museum.

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov. “Incident in the Museum and Other Installations”. State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, June 22 - August 29 (Curators: Germano Celant, Arkady Ippolitov).

This is undoubtedly one of the most important art events in Russia, although I must admit I'm confused by Kabakov’s fame. The more successful he becomes worldwide, the less clearly I understand the reasons.

Joan Miro. Benois Wing, State Russian Museum. June 3 - August 16.

This exhibition is a realization of the fairy tale Mummy Troll. I have particularly warm feelings toward Miro, who has been honored with a personal show in Russia for the first time.

Oleg Kotelnikov. Total Pantaism. 2004. Courtesy of the artist.
Oleg Kotelnikov. "Total Panteism". Museum of the New Academy of Fine Arts. Pushkinskaya 10 Cultural Center, St. Petersburg. May 22 - June 20.
This event has again demonstrated that Kotelnikov is a true Zen artist.
Eduard Steinberg. Marble Palace, State Russian Museum. July 7 - August 23.
This is the first personal show of Russia’s last cosmist organized in Russia.

Eduard Steinberg. Composition. 1977. Courtesy of the State Russian Museum and the artist.
Mila Zwinkau and Lubov Nevolainen, staff columnists of St. Petersburg’s Krasny (Red) magazine, which is devoted to the city’s cultural life (www.redjournal.ru), added two St. Petersburg exhibitions to Critic’s Choice:
Mila Zwinkau, journalist and artist, has chosen the "Sarcophagi After Ganges Fashion" project that began at the Kvadrat Gallery in July. The project risks striving for worldwide scope. Presenting conceptions of their own funerals, the artists reject the tragic European attitude to death by turning to the traditions of the “eternal sunrise” cultures.
Lubov Nevolainen, art critic, has chosen Sasha Sosno’s exhibition. Creator of a 26-meter building-sculpture in Nice, Sosno, a French artist of Russian origin, presented for the first time in Russia his famous series "Square Heads" this June at the S.P.A.S. Gallery. An ideologist of the aggressive assault of contemporary art on the urban environment, Sasha Sosno chose this time a smaller genre (painting and sculpture).

Anna Franz. Sargofaque

- West Meets East

Art Moscow.

8th International Art Fair. Central Artist's House, Moscow. May 25 - 30.

The 8th annual international art fair Art Moscow attracted 45 art galleries, more than half of which were from Moscow. Three galleries from St. Petersburg and one each from Novosibirsk, Makhachkala and Vladivostok took part as well. International participants included galleries from Germany, Austria, Sweden, Switzerland, France, Italy, and Latvia. Inaugurated in 1996, Art Moscow has gone through difficult times caused by financial crises, ambiguous customs regulations, and rapid political changes. Its organizers, the Expo-Park Exhibition Projects company, and Russian participants focus on the integration of Russian contemporary art into the international context. International guests are looking for new Russian artists, clients and galleries and, above all, the possible expansion of the global contemporary art network.

Contemporary Art in Private Collections. Special Project "Female Team" presented with Elle magazine. Art Moscow, 2004. Courtesy of Expo-Park.

Compared with the previous Art Moscow, this 8th edition seemed “optimistic” - possibly too optimistic, according to some artists. Art Moscow has stabilized: on the one hand, there are only a few bad galleries, but on the other there is not (at least for Russian art critics) much to discover. The fair is well packaged and almost ready for integration into the international art market. To be included, though, it has to stress its uniqueness.

Aidan Gallery stand. Art Moscow, 2004. Courtesy of the gallery and Expo-Park.

Art Moscow may seem to have created its own mythology, but in fact it supports expectations the art world already has about Russia. These expectations were crucially transformed during the last decade from the hope of discovering a new Russian avant-garde to the search for new contemporary art consumers in Russia. The myth about Russian oligarchs who could possible make huge investments and begin buying contemporary art works in addition to Faberge eggs attracted serious international people, from the director of Art Basel and Christie's specialists to a huge crowd of French collectors who came to Moscow together with the AFFA representative.

This year's Art Moscow was opened effectively by a delegation of private collectors. Five women collectors were featured in Elle magazine, giving an idea of how fashionable it is to buy contemporary art. Most Russian gallery owners are women as well. This may be due to the fact that this is not yet considered to be a serious business, or it may represent another variation of a patriarchic myth: men create art, while women serve it. Women became gallery owners in Russia from the end of 1980's, during Perestroika. The founder of the famous First Gallery in Moscow was artist Aidan Salakhova, who owns the influential Aidan Gallery today. XL Gallery was organized by Elena Selina, which occupies a most important place in the Russian art scene and is working with Conceptual and post-Conceptual art. In St. Petersburg as well, the most significant galleries were founded by women: Marina Gisich Gallery, D-137 (Olga Kudryavtseva), NoMI (Vera Bibinova), and Kvadrat (Olga Tompson).

Marina Gisich Gallery stand. Art Moscow, 2004. Courtesy of the gallery and Expo-Park.

Of course, there are important exceptions in the Russian art market, such as the Regina Gallery (organized by Vladimir Ovcharenko), Guelman Gallery and Krokin Gallery in Moscow, and the Dmitry Semenov Gallery in St. Petersburg.
Art Moscow is growing. Art works were sold for $1,800,000, almost double the sum expected by the organizers. Along with the Pop art traditionally represented by Western galleries, the new Stella Art Gallery (founded in Moscow in 2003) sold out its collection of works by Alex Katz and, most important, works by Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.

XL Gallery stand. Art Moscow, 2004. Courtesy of the gallery and Expo-Park.

Regina Gallery stand. Art Moscow, 2004. Courtesy of the gallery and Expo-Park.

The Kabakovs' becoming one of the sales leaders makes sense in the context of their glorious return to Russia. Another icon of Russian art, Erik Bulatov’s work Idu, became the symbol of Art Moscow and was printed on official posters.

Kubometr Gallery. Project “Mix fight” dedicated to the 1st Moscow Biennale. Model. Art Moscow 2004. 8th International Art Fair. Courtesy A.Vinogradov& V.Dubossarsky, A. Politov, O. Lopukhova, M.Belova and Expo Park

A special project was dedicated to Bulatov, and his work was represented by the new French gallery, Orel Art Presenta, as well as in the private collectors section. Another trend - the heroic 1980's - is coming back. It’s no coincidence that a work by Sergei Mironenko from the year 1990 was sold for $60,000 by the E. K. Buro, which is working with the first generation of Perestroika artists. VP Gallery sold out its works of another 1980's hero, Sergei Volkov.

Sergei Mironenko. New. 1990. Courtesy of the artist, E. K. Art Buro and Expo-Park.

Popular paintings from previous fairs were well represented by the famous duo Vinogradov & Dubossarsky (XL Gallery presented the huge work Beatles), but also by the Ukrainian artists Arsen Savadov and Vasily Tsagolov (Guelman Gallery) and the St. Petersburg artist Kerim Ragimov (Marina Gisich Gallery).

Vinogradov & Dubossarsky also presented the "Kubometr Gallery", which exhibited a possible model of the 1st Moscow Biennale, scheduled to open in January, 2005.
Video art is still is a rare guest at Art Moscow, but was nevertheless represented by the Blue Noses video work Sex, a parody on the cycle of life between two primordial actions - procreating and defecating - projected onto a garbage receptacle.

(A short version of this text was published in Flash Art International.)

Vyacheslav Mizin and Alexander Shaburov. Doubles. 2004. Cortesy of the artists, Guelman Gallery and Expo-Park.

This summer, two Russian artists (Valery Koshlyakov and Joulia Strauss) presented projects in the sacral space of functioning churches. One exhibition was held at La Chapelle de L’Hopital Saint-Louis de la Salpetrier in Paris, which has already become famous for its art projects. The other exhibition was opened at the Französischer Dom (French Cathedral) in Berlin.

Valery Koshlyakov. Empire of Culture. 2004. Courtesy of the artist and Orel Art Presenta.

Valery Koshlyakov. “Empire of Culture”. La Chapelle de L’Hopital Saint-Louis de la Salpetrier, Paris. June 25 - July 30.

Koshlyakov is a well-known Russian artist who represented Russia at the 50th Venice Biennale. His church project was devoted to the cultural archive of Western civilization. In the interiors of Chapelle Salpetrier he created models of such cultural monuments as the Cologne Cathedral, the Parisian Arc de Triomphe, Mark Aurelius’ monument in Rome, etc. For his models, the artist used such fragile materials as gaufre and cardboard. The concept of the fragility of Europe's cultural heritage, perfectly suited to the monumental interior of the church, was suddenly confirmed by a tragic event shortly before the closing of the show.

Valery Koshlyakov. Empire of Culture. 2004. Courtesy of the artist and Orel Art Presenta.

An unknown person set one of the exhibits on fire. Happily, neither the exhibition as a whole nor the Chapelle interior suffered as a result. The artist demonstrated stoic composure and understanding of the incident, and thinks the exhibit might have been set on fire by a patient of the clinic who was inspired and disturbed by the image.

Joulia Strauss. “Swan Robot and the Computer Game as a Work of Art”. Französischer Dom, Berlin. August 13 - September 3.
Joulia Strauss is a young artist whose works have been shown at a number of international exhibitions, including Tirana Biennale 1. The artist lives in Berlin; in her works she makes extensive use of new technologies. Her new project was devoted to a critique of mass media in the field of new technologies. The show in the Französischer Dom was announced in a press release as "the first and the last exhibition of 'Mathematische Computerromantik'". Friedrich Kittler’s words became the epigram of the project: "Modern art is a dead end. The true sequel to all images of new times since Brunelesci and Alberti is 'Mathematische Computerromantik'." The analogue artwork Swan-Robot was dedicated to the "Heroes of Computer Art".

Joulia Strauss in collaboration with Moritz Mattern. Freischwan von Steckdosen. Courtesy of the artists.

According to the press release, the computer game "Freischwan von Steckdosen" (made in collaboration with artist Moritz Mattern) "appeals to the art world. The player becomes the Swan, who, situated in its gorgeous 3D-computer-lake on its quest for the perfect mathematical computer-romantic artpiece, encounters numerous talkative entheogenic plants that make perfect sense to be consumed in order to achieve said goal."

Oleg Kulik. "Fragments". Galerie Rabouan-Moussion, Paris. From September 18.

Oleg Kulik. Fragments. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Rabouan-Moussion.

Well-known Russian artist Oleg Kulik presents new black-and-white photographs devoted to the dynamism of the human body, be it in dance or battle. Models were dressed in dark clothing, so that only body parts – arms, legs, heads – are readily visible. The photographs thus show the modern concept of movement as well as classical fragments such as those found on the Pergamon altar.

Oleg Kulik. Fragments. Courtesy of the artist and Galerie Rabouan-Moussion.

From September 18 - 25, St. Petersburg's Japanese Art Gallery (JAG) in association with the Kyoto University of Art and Design, the St. Petersburg Film Museum, the St. Petersburg University of Cinematography and Photography and the nightclubs Red Club and Jet Set presented an extensive program designed to provide an in-depth look at contemporary Japanese animated art and accompanying sound technology.

A broad range of contemporary Japanese animated art was shown to some 500 visitors at the 350-seat "Rodina" film theater on September 18, providing an impressive gauge of current interest in Japanese video art.

Guests included Japanese video artists Masaki Naito, Saike Mika, Natsumi Nisioka, and Ayumi Sasaki. Sasaki is an instructor at the Kyoto University of Art and Design and conducted a Master Class on animated film production at the St. Petersburg University of Cinematography and Photography. She was assisted by Japanese DJ's DiLL, Sniff, and Yutaka Makino, who also appeared at St. Petersburg's top nightclubs.

Animated art by Ayumi Sasaki. Courtesy of the Japanese Art Gallery.

Andrei Molodkin, Arsen Savadov, Evgeniy Yufit. "Trash Resources". Curated by Victor Mazin. Kashya Hildebrand Gallery, New York. September 9 - October 30.

The artists make visible "trash resources": coal, oil, nature, and men. Mines arrange the scene for Arsen Savadov’s dramatization. Oil is the matter of Andrei Molodkin's liquid sculptures. Suburban peatbog is an aspect of Evgeniy Yufit’s black and white films and photography. Thus, there is a history of natural resources exploitation: peat - coal - oil. Resources are doomed to become trash resources. Men are resources of their own paranoia. They are the trash of evolution.

Andrei Molodkin. Kirkuk API 34 in the Shape of Jesus Christ. 2004. Courtesy of the artist and the Kashya Hildebrand Gallery.

- Video Art

From September 17 - 19, the National Center of Contemporary Art (St. Petersburg) presented computer animation by Konstantin Mitenev and Anna Kolosova in the display windows of the Interactiv shop of the Extra company at Malaya Sadovaya 2 based on an idea from Konstantin Mitenev and Marina Koldobskaya. The works shown developed cyber-cinema aesthetics. Taken separately, they remind one of video files available on the Internet. Thus, the showcase of the shop turned into a huge display, while passersby automatically became Internet users. The real city was thus transformed into a cybercity.

Anna Kolosova. KD. Courtesy of the artist and NCCA, St. Petersburg.

Russian video art is young and dynamic. Antonio Geusa who is writing his PhD on Russian Video Art for Roal Holloway, University of London and who is already known to the readers of the second and the third Newsletter, has kindly prepared an article exclusively for the fourth issue. It is focused on the proto-history of Russian video art.

A Few Facts About Proto-Video Art in Russia
Antonio Geusa

“There are lots of people who think that only painters and sculptors are “artists”. Especially when the Academy of Arts has named them so. All the others are not considered artists”
(Tupeynyy khudoshnik, Nikolay Leskov, 1883).

In the introduction to their seminal book on the birth and evolution of video art in the US “Illuminating Video: An Essential Guide to Video Art”, Doug Hall and Sally Jo Fifer warn that art historians must come to terms with two obstacles to constructing a credible history of video art: video’s multiple origins and its explicitly anti-Establishment beginnings . A close look at the historical timeline of Russian video art informs that the first experiments with video cameras took place at the end of the ‘80s – very beginning of the ‘90s. According to Kirill Preobrashenkiy, one of the first and most eclectic video pioneers, what Russian video art has in common with Western video art is that its roots lay in the experimental cinema. In the Moscow’s case, influential for the video artists of the origins were Vladimir Kobrin’s “quasi-documentary films” from the beginning of the ‘80s and Gleb and Igor Aleynikov’s production grouped under Cine Fantom. For what concerns Saint Petersburg, correlative references are Evgeniy Yufit’s sombre films known as “Necrorealism”.

Still from Smert zamechatelnykh lyudei, Pirate TV, 1989-92. With Svetlana Kunitsina as Eva Braun and Vladimir Mamyshev-Monroe as Adolf Hitler.

Around this time, the association video and rave music became extremely strong, making of discos and nightclubs the very first place of video’s mass consumption. Several artists worked as video-DJs mixing live music with their own pre-recorded video material for the dance floor. The phenomenon is claimed to have originated in St. Petersburg – with artist Sergei "Afrika" Bugaev as one of its representatives – and soon after successfully exported to Moscow.

Conventionally, that happened in 1991 when at the Kosmos pavilion at the VDNKh exposition centre the notorious “Gagarin Party” took place. In one of his essays on the development of video art in Russia, Vladimir Salnikov labelled the video production flourishing around techno-clubs and induced by the rave music culture as “dope videos” modelled on MTV aesthetics .

From 1980-93 Palimpsest. Copyright: Kobrin Screen Studio	Predictably, the video camera from the very start became the perfect medium to document the artists’ community, “a strange world – the world of ‘underground’ subculture and bohemianism”, as Anatoly Prokhorov has pointed out . It was in fact through the practise of unofficial art of the time that video entered the art world. Unedited tapes documenting the underground art scene both in Leningrad and Moscow form a conspicuous video literature of inconfutable historical value. Amongst others, the photographer Sergei Borisov was one of the most active “independent video-journalists” of that era, capturing on his camera concerts, happenings, and interviews with artists.	Sergei Shutov, video still from the installation "Chuvstvennye opyty", 1992. Copyright: Sergey Shutov
Within the above-mentioned body of taped documentation, performance can be isolated as a sub-genre. Anecdotally, the first performance to be filmed on video was that of the Moscow conceptualist group “Gnezdo” (Mikhail Fedorov-Roshal, Gennadiy Donskoy, Viktor Skersis). The performance was called “Underground Art” and took place in 1979. It was filmed by the American curator David Ross with artist Alena Kirtzova acting as a translator. In 1984, Sabina Haensgen brought with her from Germany a video camera and taped the underground life of Moscow’s art community (performances, poems readings, conversations, and interview with artists in their studios). Under the pseudonym of Sasha Wonders (in collaboration with Guenter Hirt) these tapes were showed at in 1988 at an exhibition in Bern. Later on Haensgen became a member of the group Kollektivnye deistviya. The tapes produced from 1989 to 1992 documenting the group’s activity – which in the words of the group’s leader Andrey Monastyrsk are to be seen as “meditative films” – were subsequently collected in a “videothèque”. Although access to national TV channels was for the most part barred to artists – with a very few exceptions – from the beginning of the ‘90s onwards, TV played a pivotal role introducing video art to the wide public. The following programmes and people who realised them are, each one for its peculiar reasons, worth to be mentioned: Nina Zaretskaya’s “Shok Show” (1990 – 1991) and “TV Gallery” (1990 – 1995) – 1st Channel; Andrey Borisov’s “Eksotika” – RTR (1991 – 1996); “Lenin – Grib” written and hosted by Sergey Sholokhov – 5th Channel St. Petersburg (1992); Tatyana Didenko’s “Tishina 9” – RTR (1992 – 1996) . As a matter of fact, Russian artists never benefited from support from the State or granting agencies. The first injection of a conspicuous dose of cash from a private institution, the George Soros Fundation, which permitted the development of media arts – hence video art – on a large scale in Russia only happened at the beginning of the ‘90s. Before that, artists were literally left to themselves in experimenting with video equipment. Exchanging information happened only rarely and it was mainly limited to the two biggest cities. Exceptional figures in this scenario appear to be Sergey Shutov –“membrane and mediator” between the two capitals – and Kirill Preobrashenskiy. Outside Moscow and Saint Petersburg, outstanding for variety and dedication was the activity of the collective Prometei, led by Bulat Galeyev, based in Kazan. They were amongst the very first artists to experiment the interralation between music and video images. They were also the very first to set up single and multi-channel video installations. By and large, all video’s multiple origins are rooted in the underground culture alien to mainstream institutions. They were, by nature, anti-Establishment sources. Although the figure of the “video activist” is rather feeble in the scenario of Russian video works of the origins, the most powerful attack to the Establishment was by far that of the Leningrad based collective Pirate TV (Timur Novikov, Yuris Lesnik, Vlad Mamyshev-Monroe, amongst others – 1989 - 1992). As the group’s name suggests, TV was under attack. Curiously, what David Antin writes about the activity of artists committed to “change” TV in the 70s in the US fits perfectly with the Leningrad’s variant: “What artists constantly re-evoke and engage with is television’s fundamental equivocation and mannerism, which may really be the distinctive feature of the medium. But they may do this from two diametrically opposed angles, either by parodying the television system and providing some amazing bubble or by offering to demonstrate how, with virtually no resources, they can do all the worthwhile things that television should do or could do in principle and has never yet done and never will do”. Anyhow, this attack did not come from within the system like in the US, where artists were given access to cable TV equipment. Pirate TV was not broadcasted on national TV. On the contrary, it came from – and stayed – underground. It did not even get to be shown in a gallery for a few years. All the same, the importance of Pirate TV transcends certain objective limitations. As Prokhorov points out: “An intentional atmosphere of non- professionalism, an excitement of totally faked skits of the early 90's, a rich homosexual coating of the whole series - all these - being interspersed with finely cut fragments of official TV- reality - created such an uncommon genre which I would put as "a TV madhouse" and which was spitting not only at the forms but as well as at the very essence of TV” . The virulent strength of Pirate TV lies in the subversive irony underlying the whole body of their TV programmes. Their “channel” mocked conventional mainstream broadcasting, offering an “alternative choice” – even though it was for a limited audience. Humour, as Umberto Eco describes it, was their most effective weapon: “[Humor] reminds us of the presence of the law that we no longer have reason to obey. In doing so it undermines the law. It makes us feel the uneasiness of living under the law – any law” . Together with the two above-mentioned perils (multiple origins and anti-Establishment beginnings), tracing the history of video as an art form in Russia presents a third, even more threatening obstacle: the reluctance of the early artists working with a video camera to voice on paper their feelings and programmatic intents triggered by the new medium. Whereas in the US artists wrote extensively about video to such an extent that “it is in fact the emergence of the artist’s voice – clear, insightful, powerful and fully controlled by the artist – that forms the foundation of video as an art form” , such a recurrence is nowhere to be found in Russia. Nevertheless, general tendencies do not exclude the intermittent appearance of exceptions. These exceptions to the norm are very often valuable sources of information and fertile analytic ground to historians. In the empty scenario of laconic written testimonies from the first Russian artists working with video, the precious exception is an article published in 1987 on the magazine Cine Fantom (issue number 9), “Your Head Is in Your Hands. A Dialogue on Video”, written by Boris Yukhananov , one of the very first artists to include video in his work. Looking at the timeline of the video’s evolution in Russia, the year 1987 falls into the phase that Nina Zaretskaya, by far one of the most active people in the Russian art community to promote video art, calls “pre-history”, while the works then made are defined “proto-video art” . At that time, the State had not still lost its control over technologies of reproduction, although it was not as strong as before perestroika. Therefore, video cameras, a threat to the established order, were not available on the Russian market. Furthermore, when they first appeared at the very end of the ‘80s, they were excessively expensive to facilitate production and diffusion of video in the art community. Olesya Turkina and Viktor Mazin wrote in 1999: “Until just over ten years ago it was still prohibited, in the Soviet Union, to privately own any kind of technical reproduction technology which might be used for mass printing or other forms of mass communication. Even though the Leningrad artist Yuris Lesnik created video-art already at the end of the 1980s, technologies such as video and digitized representation were kept under strict state control until the early 1990s, which meant that they remained largely untouched by any critical analysis” . It appears that 1987 was still a time when the same fact of owing a video camera could cost its owner imprisonment, as Valodia Salnikov states in the above-mentioned article . From what reported so far, it seems that the moment the State let its guard down on access to technology, video emerged as an art form. It is a fact that at the end of the ‘80s/beginning of the ‘90s video cameras became available in the shops, whereas before they had to be “smuggled in” from abroad. Progressively, year after year their prices became affordable for the art community and by the mid-90s video had become well-spread practice. The year when Yukhananov’s essay was published no video exhibitions had been organised in Russia, and artist plus video camera was an impracticable binomial. The same formula “video art” was not included in the Russian art dictionary. As a matter of fact, it is never mentioned in the essay. All the more, the article stands out for being the very first attempt to deconstructing video and understanding its ontological qualities. Without knowing any literature on the medium, Yukhanonov elucidates some principles and aspects inherent the nature of video, which can be put in relation to other artists’ and critics’ texts counting today as seminal literature on the topic. Written in the form of a dialogue between a director and a photographer, the article defines the essence of video as “one single, uninterrupted movement of the camera through space, an audiovisual space”. Several times the author highlights the importance of the video camera’s ability to capture sound as well as images. The video camera opens up new possibilities of spontaneous expression of the artist’s self: “The camera sees everything, and while I am filming I can immediately make comments on the images. Hence, the camera will fix on a tape what I think and what I feel in that very moment”. Capturing sound is a quality that a movie camera does not have, a prerogative of the new medium. In celebrating this, Yukhananov’s assertions echo Bill Viola’s: “Looking at the technical development of both video and film, we immediately notice a profound difference: as film as evolved basically out of photography (a film is a succession of discrete photographs), video has emerged from audio technology. [...] Thus we find that video is closer in relationship to sound, or music, than it is to the visual media of film and photography […]” . Like in cinema, images are not static, but a video camera offers more advantages. It empowers the artist with larger freedom of movement. Ultimately, holding a camera it is as if “your head is in your hand”: “I have a video camera now. Look at how many possibilities I have! I can move the hand holding the camera. It is absolutely a new technique of learning”. The camera becomes the artist’s eyes detached from his head, free to “walk around” secured in the artist’s hands. It is the same freedom of movement praised by Les Levine in his essay “One Gun Video Art”, in which the American artists enlists the qualities of one of the earliest portable video cameras: “[T]he one-gun camera seems to have a body sensibility. The one-gun camera seems to move with the body, and that definitely has some effect on the look of TV images” . From the very start, we are informed that practising with the head in your hand holds a “psychological side”. Video is never defined in terms of its machinery. It is instead celebrated as a form to explore – or better – reflect the author’s Self. In other words, Rosalind Krauss’s, the essay touches upon the “aesthetics of narcisism” pertinent to video’s nature: “[V]ideo’s real medium is a psychological situation, the very terms of which are to withdraw attention from an external object – an Other – and invest in the Self. Therefore, it is not just any psychological condition of someone who has, in Freud’s words, “abandoned the investment of objects with libido and transformed object-libido into ego-libido.” And that is the specific condition of narcissism” . Throughout the text, Yukhananov stresses the process of recording on tape over the finished product. It is as if the camera became an instrument in the artist’s hands to improvise jazz. Pressing the “rec” button starts an electrifying act of creation. This act of taping reality puts the artist in direct relation with the reality surrounding him, regardless of what the final product can be. Furthermore, video frees the artist from the guiltiness of committing a mistake, since a new tape always allows to start the recording process again. In other words, this is what Deirdre Boyle calls the “‘process’ video aesthetic”: “Video’s unique ability to capitalize on the moment with instant playback and real-time monitoring of events also suited the era’s emphasis on ‘process, not product’ . In conclusion, what video gave artists is a new language to articulate their creativity: “A new language is born in the realm of video. It is close to the language of poetry with all that harshness it can be capable of”. In this passage, Yukhananov – in a rather prophetical manner – isolates the one feature that characterises better than any other the history of video art in Russia from its beginnings to today’s. As a matter of fact, at the core of Russian video production there has always been the artists’ intent to tell a story, not just in the poetic form as Yukhananov states, but constantly shifting from prose to poetry. As Jon Burris in his essay “Did the Portapak Cause Video Art? Notes on the Formation of a New Medium” has pointed out, American video art of the origins lacked narrative fiction: the “most native” form to cinema and television . Russia did not. Sometimes it was the case of unconventional adaptations of “traditional” stories (Olga Tobreluts’s Gore ot uma, 1993, for example), or ironical staging of “historical facts” (Pirate TV’s “Death of Famous People”, 1989 – 1992); in other cases videos were stories in the form of hallucinogenic trips to imaginary Wonderlands of computer-generated scenarios (most of the so-called “dope videos”). Broadly speaking, whatever the approach and the means to realise video art have been in the past 15 years, narrative that is to say fiction is by all means the dominant constant. In the specific, a tendency to lyricism is what makes Russian art peculiar, from Sergey Shutov’s altered images of a porno film accompanied by the sound of an off-screen woman’s voice reading a love letter in his installation “Chuvstvennye opyty”, 1992, to Marian Zhunin and Viktor Alimpiev’s epic enterprise Ode, 2002.

- Calendar

From September 2. "Unknown Leningrad. Masterpieces of Constructivism." Peter and Paul Fortress, St. Petersburg History Museum and ProArte Institute.

The exhibition brings together unique architectural drawings from the 1920's and '30's, such as the legendary "Red Nailer" water tower on Vasilievsky island, Traktornaya ulitsa, the Gorky Palace of Culture and many others. Among the exhibits are famous works of the leaders of Leningrad Constructivism, such as Nikolsky, Simonov, and Miturich; there are also plans made by unknown architects that never been shown.

Unknown artist. Mid-1930's. Project for bakery. Courtesy of the St. Petersburg History Museum.

September 10-13. 3rd annual Art Klyazma Festival.

Initiated by Moscow artist Vladimir Dubossarsky, Art Klyazma is a free gesture and a wish of artists to emancipate from new institutions that are actively trying to seize power in the process of institualisation of contemporary art in Russia.

Art Klyazma Festival. Plan. Courtesy of the executive director of Art Klyazma Festival Olga Lopukhova.

Olga Lopoukhova, executive director of Art Klyazma Festival, kindly answered Newsletter’s questions related to this important art event.

Art Business Consulting (Maxim Ilyukhin, Mikhail Kosolapov, Natalia Struchkova). No Parking Place. 2004. Photo: Igor Mukhin. Courtesy of the artists and Art Klyasma Festival.

Newsletter: This year Art Klyazma took place for the third time. What changes and shifts did you notice? Was the number of participants greater this year? Has the festival grown more international? Was the number of young artists participating greater this year?

Olga Lopoukhova: We notice new names rather than young artists, new names that are showing up at our festival but remain largely unnoticed by the Moscow-based art critics. This year, these are Upman with his The Well, Alexandrov and his House for Rain and The Bench (Alexandrov has been a star of the festival for last two years, though he still remains unnoticed by Misiano and Backstein), Kuptsov with his Bum Houses, Kupiko and his Swimmers, Mosolov and Ovcharov with their Birch Juice, Fedotenko with his Dance, artists from Ekaterinburg, etc.

We try to analyze the festival dynamics seriously and it becomes clear for us that we have to introduce some changes. On the one hand, this is an event evidently popular with the public (over seven thousand people visited the festival during two and a half days). On the other hand, we realize that only one third of the projects are adequate in terms of what we call contemporary art. We have to ponder over the situation and plan some changes or skip a year. We’ll decide this question within a week. Regarding internationalization of the festival, I have to state that though the total number of foreign participants remained unchanged over three years, this year we got support from three foreign embassies, which is very important.

Newsletter: The Art Klyazma project is unique primarily because it started as the private initiative of two artists, Alexander Vinogradov and Vladimir Dubossarsky, who decided that the time had come to liven up art life and build up an alternative to the growing institutionalization of contemporary art in Russia. Don’t you think that Art Klyazma is gradually becoming another art institution? Who supports the festival and what are its financial sources? Are they primarily private or is there some support coming from state and public funds?

Mikhail Roshal. Performance Art against Real Terror. 2004. Photo: Igor Mukhin. Courtesy of the artist and Art Klyasma Festival.

Olga Lopoukhova: Art Klyazma is becoming a testing ground for young artists, though the form of this testing ground no longer suits the purposes of its organizers. There are new names appearing but there are no visible dynamics in quality despite our wish to add something totally new to what we have. In case we decide to continue with the project, we will most probably organize a festival on water or make a performance show inviting some good Western artists. Our financing mostly comes from private sources and we also got financial support from the embassies of France, Germany and Holland. I have submitted an application to the Russian Ministry of Culture for the coming year but I am not sure whether they will provide any financial help.

Diana Machulina. Object SorTir. 2004. Photo: Igor Mukhin. Courtesy of the artist and Art Klyasma Festival.

Newsletter: When will the next Art Klyazma take place?

Olga Lopoukhova: The next festival will take place in winter. It will be launched as part of the 1st Moscow Biennale and last for one day. We will select about ten or twelve projects, mostly coming from architects or artists working with large forms. I have a few ideas regarding this festival but have not yet discussed them with Vladimir Dubossarsky. I have a tentative title, "Dialectics of Format", echoing the title of the Biennale, "Dialectics of Hope". The idea is to find Klyazma’s own format in relation to space and environment that would be aimed at large forms and would imply the return to plastisity, and I think that the architects are stronger in this respect than the artists.

September 18. Opening of the new art center ARTStrelka. Moscow.

The new art center is located on the territory of the Krasny Oktyabr confectionary alongside the staircase descending from the new pedestrian bridge.

The center includes several galleries of contemporary art. The most renowned of them is the Moscow XL Gallery with its new XL Projects center dedicated to promoting young artists. The new Collectors’ Club gallery supports contemporary art collecting in Russia. American artist and photographer Helena Kay is opening her own gallery on the ARTStrelka territory. Victor Freidenberg’s Design Gallery and the Yohji Yamomoto boutique will further collaboration between contemporary art and the world of design and fashion. The office of Art Business Consulting, created by artists Maxim Ilyukhin, Mikhail Kosolapov and Natalia Struchkova will pursue its activities at this new location. The Scotch Gallery (Maxim Karakulov and Petr Bystrov) and the art space of Marina Belova and Alexei Politov will also appear on the territory of ARTStrelka. All the galleries will occupy the space of former industrial garages and will be functioning according to a common schedule, presumably opening two exhibitions each month. All openings will be taking place on the same day.

One of the main initiators of the ArtStrelka project, Moscow artist Vladimir Dubossarsky, kindly agreed to answer Newsletter’s questions:

Newsletter: What is the central idea behind ArtStrelka ?

Vladimir Dubossarsky: The young generation. When we began to work as artists, the territory of art was well-structured. There were regular meetings at Kabakov’s studio and the Mukhomory group of artists was very active. Art used to be an interesting place to come to. Today we see no young artists because this place ceased to be interesting. Within the period between 1994 and 1998, for example, no new artist appeared in Moscow. This was solely caused by the total drain of artists from art for the sake of other activities. We realized it was high time to do something. When there is an interesting situation, one can live on interest. One cannot measure the local situation by foreign exhibitions. It is enough to visit these exhibitions ten times to get absolutely bored. Every time you meet the same people, shake hands with everyone and show your work. Then you leave to meet everyone in half a year in a different place.

Vladimir Dubossarsky. Courtesy of XL Gallery.

ArtStrelka

What is important for me is that I started my artistic work at a squat on Trekhprudny Lane where there was a community of artists. We lived in the atmosphere of common creativity; we had conversations that generated new ideas. This was the right place to exchange information and to build up a new situation in art. At the moment, there is no such place. I would like to do my best in order to fill the current art scene with events. This is not that difficult to do. We only need to allow artists to realize the projects they cannot do in a different place for some reasons. We know that we also cannot realize everything. As an organizer, I perceive Art Klyazma as a huge performance where each individual work is not as important as the cumulative energy of the process and the wide range of possibilities available to everyone. On September 5 we are opening several galleries in the center of Moscow.

We’re also waiting for the opening of XL Projects. At the moment it is clear that the XL Gallery has certain obligations to its artists and cannot show new interesting names, though it is its risky projects that made the gallery famous. Now they will get a possibility to exhibit young artists. What is crucial is that foreign galleries will take part in Moscow’s art life, competing with Russian galleries in real-time mode. Russian galleries do not usually bring foreign artists here; we do not have them on the Moscow art market. This is a substandard situation. Stella Gallery is working with foreign artists, and they showed Alex Katz and David Salle, which makes the story a bit different.

Newsletter: Any further details and ideas?

Vladimir Dubossarsky: ArtStrelka is thus named since it is situated on a spit. There is a gorgeous bridge leading from Our Savior Cathedral. It is decorated with Tsereteli’s sculptures no one has ever seen yet. As Luzhkov, the mayor of Moscow, put it, it will be an openwork bridge and women will like it. There will be a descent after the bridge to a square with six to eight galleries on it. There will be a place for the exhibitions of upcoming artists, a design gallery, and there might also be a gallery of naive art called Dar ("Gift"). A whole range of various art trends will be represented there. There will be a shop selling art works, too. A dormitory is situated nearby. We would like to organize art studios there and to make tiny artists’ galleries on the first floor, as we used to have at Trekhprudny Lane. Young artists should have an opportunity to open their own galleries. It might be reasonable to open an art club at this place and to have several cafes for profit’s sake. The profit should be invested in the development of the place and purchase of equipment. Such is the plan of the region’s economical development. Having a place, one will be able to invite foreign exhibitions. Openings at various galleries should be timed to the same day. What is important is that ten new galleries, each making at least ten exhibitions a year, will appear in Moscow. This results in a hundred shows, which means that a hundred new artists will have a chance to demonstrate their works. We will need to stimulate people to discover new names.

Newsletter: Sounds like an art incubator…

Vladimir Dubossarsky: That may become a very large incubator, the central incubator, in a year or two.

September 25 - October 31. Festival of Contemporary Art in the Traditional Museum. St. Petersburg (various venues).

This annual festival of contemporary art has become the most significant and well- known project of the ProArte Institute (www.proarte.ru) As the institute's press release notes, “Artistic projects to become part of the festival are selected on the basis of a grant competition. The main goal of the festival is to assist in rapprochement of traditional culture and contemporary art and bring forth modernization of Petersburg museums. Apart from Petersburg artists there are also artists from other regions of Russia as well as international artists that take part in the festival.”

Elena Kolovskaya, Executive Director of Pro Arte Institute and initiator of the widely known festival Contemporary Art in the Traditional Museum (www.artmuseum.spb.afisha.ru), kindly agreed to answer Newsletter’s questions short before the opening of the fourth festival that takes place in St. Petersburg from 25 September until 31 October 2004.

Newsletter: The Contemporary Art in the Traditional Museum festival essentially livens up the current art situation in Russia. When and how did the idea of this festival appear?

Elena Kolovskaya: The idea appeared five years ago. By organizing the festival, we pursued two purposes. On the one hand, we wanted to show contemporary art while on the other hand we wished to introduce the many museums of St. Petersburg to a wider public. There are over two hundred museums in the city and most of them are barely known. We are always choosing non-art