Talks on scaffolds
To comprehend the outcome of the First Kyiv Contemporary Art biennial “Arsenale” and the situation in domestic art overall, THE DAY held a roundtable discussion, specially dedicated to these themes. Our guests where Yulia Vahanova, program director, the foundation “Center for Contemporary Art,” Oleksandr Soloviov, deputy CEO, Mystetsky Arsenal, and the young Kyiv-based painters Mykyta Kadan and Volodymyr Vorotniov. THE DAY was represented by Dmytro Desiateryk and Hanna Sheremet.
FEEDBACK
Dmytro DESIATERYK: “Arsenale was the immediate reason for our meeting, so let us start with it. Or, more precisely, from the response (sometimes quite antagonistic, from admiration to resentment) it drew. Are you pleased with Arsenale?”
Yulia VAHANOVA: “It is a good sign that both the public and critics are so different about the same event. People try to analyze what they have seen, and react to it. This is the way it should be.”
Oleksandr SOLOVIOV: “This is an axiom, how else can it be? This was an extraordinary even on the contemporary art agenda. It still remains to be seen how well it fits this agenda. We have professional critics, but do we have critics as an institute is also a question. So it is good that you have organized the roundtable: it is an event which will help describe and analyze it. We lack analytical materials. Admiration or rejection are emotions, what we need is analytics.”
Mykyta KADAN: “It should be noted that for the time being I am hardly interested in Ukrainian reality, for you have to resign some things for the sake of others, more timely – but they did not arrive as a surprise. True, we cannot find good analytical articles in specialized editions. There are self-evident statements to the effect that another biennale has appeared on the map of international events; that the biennale in Kyiv looks quite like real, only that the masterminds failed to assemble it on time. The observations saying that the biennale looks glossy, oriented towards big stars, and thus conservative, are also there. However, the selection of international publications on Arsenale’s website contains only a few serious texts. One can only hope that the selection could be incomplete.”
O.S.: “I am with Mykyta here, but I would not label the biennale a ‘glossy’ event. The selection reflects assessment, surprise at the fact of the event. It is as if Ukraine had just been born for serious international curators and critics, quite a lot of whom arrived in Kyiv. I cannot say that they had only praise to offer, but, I reiterate, there was a moment of surprise.”
Volodymyr VOROTNIOV: “Polar reactions are quite logical, since our entire society is divided and polarized. As for the Western media, I could not see big reports there either. Paradoxically, from Arsenale’s catalog, which comprises meaty, interesting texts, one can learn more than from the Internet or press. The response is indeed weak on the level of analysis, rather than merely on the level of information feedback. The latter is good, of course, for it results in a kind of synergetic advertising, when numerous media advertise an event for free, but it all boils down to reprinting press releases. It looks as if there is a lack of a community of journalists and curators, who would be interested in taking a closer look at things.”
O.S.: “In Western criticism, contemporary art has long been enjoying a certain status. I am more interested in domestic response, because the problem is limited not to pure theorizing. It was important to get through to our very conservative social environment.”
EXPOSURE OF SYMPTOMS
D.D.: “How do you see the outcome of Arsenale?”
M.K.: “A little biennale in Iasi, Romania, or the Industrial Biennale in Yekaterinburg gave rise to many serious publications, since they carried a new offer for the development of art. Our biennale had no such offer. It was a high-quality digest of time-honored art, and it was quite ‘adult,’ but it was not risky. There was nothing to argue about.”
Yu.V.: “When the biennale was announced, nine months before its actual opening, I was quite skeptical: it was too short a notice. But after I had seen the exhibits, I changed my opinion. I think this was a successful experience which proved that we can host international events of this kind. It is not so bad for Ukraine that it was old-fashioned and academic, because you have to show certain standards. A discussion program, public presentations, a parallel program, several venues, and the cooperation of Ukrainian and foreign curators are all a good, didactic example of building a big international event. Although there certainly are lots of questions to answer.”
M.K.: “I think the biennale is important, because it has graphically shown many plots of the Ukrainian art process. For a long time our large-scale projects have had the form of a Potemkin village, window-dressing, a monumental potboiler, slapped up quick and dirty by joint efforts of all the nation’s artistic forces, and devoid of structure, substantialness, or historical dimension. Against this background, Arsenale looks very mature. It proved that many conventional approaches are absolutely irrelevant. The parallel program involved even salon artists and those, who denounced the biennale as a crime against domestic art, but the program itself was devoid of an international dimension.
“For instance, at a very provincial Moscow Biennale the special project agenda mostly comprises international exhibits, which show that the Moscow stage is part of the international cultural processes. Unfortunately, Ukraine’s stage is isolated, and the parallel program revealed it. It could also be revealed during the discussions in the framework of a very strong theoretical platform, where people from the Center for Visual Culture were perhaps the only competent interlocutors; it looked as if the professional art critics and commentators from Kyiv had no idea what was being said.
“This exposure of symptoms is a large achievement of the Biennale. However, some doubts still remain. Is not Arsenale 2012 too closely linked to Euro-2012? Isn’t the entire project just a risky venture? Is another Kyiv biennale of the same scale also possible (let alone the question of whether the same scale is necessary whatsoever)? Isn’t it worthwhile making an innovative project and work at the front line?”
V.V.: “I believe the answer can be found in the name offered by the curator, The Worst of Times, the Best of Times. In our society, art exists on problem grounds. So the earlier these symptoms (using Mykyta’s definition) are exposed, the better. There is indeed an imbalance between a well-balanced main program, the artificial parallel projects, and perhaps the too advanced discussion program. This imbalanced situation reflects what we actually have here, and this is good. The sooner these problems come out of shadow, the better.”
D.D.: “You know, despite the fact that I rather liked the main exposition at the Arsenal, I could not get rid of the thought that this is a biennale held in a poor country.”
O.S.: “How did that manifest itself?”
D.D.: “In the air of incompleteness, as if the whole thing was ill thought out. Also, in the lack of a complete infrastructure of accompanying entertainment. The controversial social background, mentioned earlier by Volodymyr here, did tell.”
M.K.: “Maybe, this is because all that you see is a pretty facade, but you know there is no supporting construction behind it? There is a wonderful movie by the Moldovan artist Pavel Braila about the Romani town of Soroca in Moldova. There, they start building housed with facades, and decorate them with sculptures of flying horses, and then the owner runs out of money, and he and his family sleep on filthy matrasses in bare, unheated rooms behind those beautiful facades. Arsenale is a powerful representative event. However, given the situation with art’s public institutions, art education, critics, and the so-called art market, the facade is in too stark a contrast with the interiors.”
O.S.: “As a reminder, the talks of the domestic biennial flared up after Ukrainian artists’ first trip to the Venice Biennale back in 2001. That’s where it all also ended: talks. Then the idea arose at last, and what does it matter if it was suggested by Euro-2012 or the election? Who cares? Then, a foundation appeared, Mystetsky Arsenal, albeit in the project status. And suddenly, will also appeared. I was the first one who implored them to stay away from this fight. On the other hand, I realized that there was no other way to do it, risk was indispensable. Maybe, some people really hoped that Euro-2012 would sparkle an interest in culture, all to no avail. The biggest miracle is that it actually happened. George Soros spoke about Russia’s ‘resource curse.’ We have the same curse, in the shape of Arsenal’s luxury building. I have known David Elliot [the curator of Arsenale. – Author] for quite some time, and he is a high-class curator. The unique opportunity tempted him to take the risk. When asked why he hadn’t made the Biennale innovative, he answered that he wasn’t in the least interested in it. He was interested in making something conventionally artistic. Of course, there will be a follow-up. The only question is, what kind of follow-up.”
A UKRAINIAN CAUSE
Hanna SHEREMET: “An interim summary: it is great that Arsenale did take place. I love the phrase ‘exposure of symptoms.’ However, it would be strange to implement such a costly project in order to state what is already known. Let us go back to Ukrainian artists and their participation. How well did they do?”
O.S.: “Any biennale aims, among other things, to motivate the local artistic environment. We placed this mission on top of our priority list. Elliot had been visiting studios, and he hand-picked 20 painters for the main project. You could complain that someone was left out, someone was forgotten, or represented with wrong works, but as a whole, David made choices according to his concept, which was built around the powerful presence of Oriental artists. As a curator, he had his own disproportions, maybe, conscious – after all, he had a right to that. His choice is very good, but if I were him, I would have ventured to trust our painters with some separate, extensive projects. However, he preferred to rely on what he had seen at the studios.”
Yu.V.: “It looked to me as a manifestation of Ukrainian artists’ age-old problems: traveling more, exhibiting more, having relevant education, and a possibility to produce new work. Most of Ukrainian exhibits were not new. It was a compilation of studio stuff, and this is very sad, given Arsenale’s hyped-up potential. I would like to see pieces which our artists cannot make at commercial galleries or on their own. What actually happened was the opposite: we had seen it all, and a part of the works, in comparison to their foreign counterparts, were far from being so good as we had advertised them.
“It is important to see how the Biennale is going to use this know-how. Will Arsenal sterilize its rooms every time for a grand project, or will it breed something like a workshop or a laboratory?”
O.S.: “The word arsenal has Arabic etymology, it means a workshop, actually.”
Yu.V.: “We can repeat the mantra about the need for laboratory art until we are blue in the face, but if such art does not interest the government or some tycoon (and as a rule it does not), it will not get any support. Conversely, big structures have a unique possibility both to show a great project and to implement high-quality experimental programs.”
O.S.: “I cannot but agree with Yulia, and this is true not only for our authors. Works, created specially for Arsenal in laboratory style, did stand out – just like Phillida Barlow’s, who won an award.”
Yu.V.: “There is another thing to be said of Ukrainian artists: the way they were invited was a far cry from standard international practice. They delivered and displayed their work on their own. The approach to the presentation of Ukrainian art hardly differed from the approaches at the majority of the country’s galleries. The difference is striking and depressing.”
M.K.: “The display of Ukrainian art is not equivalent to displaying us, socially engaged painters. For me, the Biennale was nowhere near original. R.E.P. group and I have exhibited our works abroad multiple times together with many international authors, who were invited here. On the one hand, the fact that ‘here’ resembled ‘there’ suggested a good deja vu experience, but on the other hand, the effect was not sufficiently strong, because many drawbacks in the local infrastructure deficiency (like those mentioned by Yulia) took their toll. So in my case this rather resembled professional exhibits abroad, as if one of those exhibits was miraculously teleported here. It is curious, but not unusual.
“After all, even the Contemporary Art Center at the Kyiv Mohyla Academy was able to make exhibits by international standards. Now, small-scale structures like the Center for Visual Culture (CVC) could work at this level. That is to say, it is not artists’ problem, but rather that of institutions, commentators, and audiences. Artists learned to survive in this unfriendly environment.”
V.V.: “It is hard for me to judge since I am an outsider in Ukraine’s art process, since I am working on the verge of subculture and mainstream art. That is why the invitation to participate took me by surprise. As for me, virtually all renowned young artists were represented quite fairly, if not in the main project, then definitely in the special one.
“For me this experience became quite a serious and symbolic overture. As most young Ukrainian artists, I can hardly take my participation in the Biennale as a path to conventional life. However, it is clearly very important, since the media I worked with there, are a new path for me.”
RADICALS
D.D.: “But anyway, it seems to me that radical critical art of younger generations was not represented in a proper way.”
M.K.: “Actually, it was represented by a large number of exhibits. The other thing is that the main project was carried out as a pluralistic space, in which both Disney Land objects and socially critical works could fit. But this seems to be a half measure, like a discussion about anti-fascism: fascists have to participate and express their point of view too. It seems that this is not a full-fledged way of representation of critical art. And such projects as the recent Berlin or 12th Istanbul biennales show that critical art needs to create parallel institutions. If an experimental biennale was held, it would attract critical and politically committed art.”
H.Sh.: “Would it be possible to carry out such a project in Kyiv?”
M.K.: “I am sure that this is the only option that would make sense. All other options would provide more exquisite entertainment for the audience, but they would be senseless. And sense has to be created, otherwise, why even bother doing this? Street activism serves as a means of analysis and reflection on things that are happening. But simply going out into public space is not enough; we need to make institutions serve the society. Interventions into places where art was not expected will never replace the involvement of existing art institutions.”
D.D.: “That’s exactly what we are saying. On the one hand, we have Pussy Riot’s and Oleksandr Volodarsky’s performances, but on the other, Arsenale and PinchukArtCentre, a far cry from the former.”
O.S.: “These street actions are good in the environment where they happen. If you move them into an exhibition hall, they will lose their meaning.”
M.K.: “In my opinion, the backwardness of the artistic situation in Ukraine blocks the opportunity for viewing the activists’ work as part of a whole. People only see violation and call the police. But in fact, street activism and the academic interpretation of social problems highlighted by activism are congruous front lines.”
V.V.: “I think that everyone’d better stay in their niche. Brazilian graffiti painters were invited to participate in the Berlin biennial painting contest. Everyone was allowed to express themselves, but then Brazilians painted something wrong, and they were reported to the police. So, out of revenge the Brazilian artists poured yellow paint over the curator of the biennale, Zmijewski. This vividly shows that radical things should be done independently. Self-organization and commercial platforms should not be mixed together in order to avoid hypocrisy and double game. Our public does not understand traditional art that much, let alone something that transcends this format. The work should be started from the bottom, not from the top.”
M.K.: “Art doesn’t owe anything to anyone. And it doesn’t exist for the purpose of entertaining the public with some radical spectacles. We are doomed to self-organizing for many years to come. While we are in the streets, they come to subdue museums to their own interests, implement a business plan on gallery paintings sales, promote themselves on the market. Consider the mayhem at the Visual Culture Research Center, or what is now going on at the National Art Museum of Ukraine. I think that we need to make these institutions serve the society.”
O.S.: “But first we need to actually have these institutions.”
D.D.: “As far as I understand, you oppose cooperation between critical artists and mainstream culture.”
V.V.: “Not that I oppose it, but I have my own doubts if the society is ready for this. I want to repeat the metaphor mentioned above: I wouldn’t like our art to have the appearance of radicalism, while the inside would be empty. I draw a clear line between my civic stand and my activity as an artist. I am more concentrated on esthetic issues. For example, my piece for Arsenale is the analysis of esthetic features of modern pseudo-national kitsch culture. I try not to mix up the artist and the citizen in myself.”
M.K.: “Your artworks can be perceived as social criticism, which, probably, affirms that pure esthetic art does not exist. Any modern artwork is a combination of ethical and esthetic compounds. In my opinion, today the radical stand is a state of a so-called calm consciousness, when, on the one hand, you understand that there is no God and no king, but on the other, it makes sense to not just pull down the monuments and destroy iconostases, but think about the way this mechanism works, to rip aside the decorations and study the backstage machinery that moved them. Activist art as a radicalism championship seems to be a rather important addition to the social analytics, which is brought out through art images, which can be quite reserved, as well as extremely shocking. These days, political art is not confined to shouting alone.”
POST-INTERNET AND POST-GLOBALISM
D.D.: “Post-modernism was a popular topic of discussions in the 1990s. Each era has its own trend. What about the present?”
Yu.V.: “There is so much absurdity and fake today, as the government, oligarchs, and media put out so much false information about modern art. I believe that eventually we will come to the point where it will become possible to leave behind all the ‘-isms,’ and try to continue with the art that would be radical not because dozens of TV channels would be broadcasting some action, but because that would be the action the author would genuinely and sincerely want to perform. It is time to comprehend the meaning of the word ‘archivity’ and start studying this archive. It seems to me that in the middle of the satiety situation, a time vacuum might appear, which might leave a possibility to use the experience of Ukrainian art, at least that of the last century.”
O.S.: “The issues that we have discussed today are the key ones for me: the boundaries of art, the ways it is displayed, and if they can coexist in one dimension. If we talk about post-modernism, this era is probably over now, with only a formal system left behind, but these grand matrix postulates are still effective today. The other thing is that the content is different in each separate case. It is better to experience these things than to revive the memories of them.”
M.K.: “Francis Fukuyama’s idea of the end of history has gone to bust today. After a long period of individualization and fragmentation of society it is time to go back to historical consciousness on the level of small deeds, as well as in political planning. And this is when we are coming back to museums and biennales as institutions. We need to make them serve society instead of those, who have usurped the power under the disguise of representative democracy. In other words, we have to simultaneously be social experimenters, who have a utopic outlook, and believe in the existence of a fairer society, and be more ecologically oriented, slow down the foul machine of progress, which burns resources for the sake of profit. We need to come round to a state of cool consciousness from the realization of our responsibility, social experimenting, and making up new ways to be together.”
V.V.: “I will risk giving some definitions. Things that make our era so different come from the sphere of technology and the unique modus of politics – they are globalism and Internet. Social networks are the dominating mass media these days, and globalism makes the world tighter in the same manner. They complement each other. We can use such words as post-Internet and post-globalism here, meaning that both Internet and globalism have been fully formed already. I feel comfortable being within these ‘-isms’ because of their optics and problematics.”
TOMORROW
D.D.: “Let’s end with what we began. We all hope that there will be the next biennale after this one. I also hope that our guests have a vision of what it should look like.”
Yu.V.: “I wish these two years between two biennales proved productive not only for the preparations process, but for the product that will be displayed. I wish for the next Arsenale to be more laboratorial. If there was enough will to create such an event in nine months, the same will could give artists an opportunity to experiment. The problem is that this argument does not always convince the officials. Unfortunately, they do not appear to be interested in the educational process that doesn’t involve popcorn, fireworks, and Mickey Mouse. Instead, when Euro-2012 came in sight, they immediately found money for Arsenale. I wish that the next Arsenale were more oriented towards development and progress.”
O.S.: “This is the ‘second-time syndrome.’ The first time everyone was amazed, but the next time would need some defining. And in order to accomplish this, everything has to be analyzed from the analytical point of view, and a lot depends on the curator of the future event. We know that nowadays there is a tendency to invite artists to coordinate biennales, instead of professional curators. Also, a lot will depend on the trend that will be chosen for the next biennale. One of the Manifesta’s masterminds said that today’s avant-garde is the one of the content, but not the form. It is fine if the external form is glossy, as long as it creates new content. And this is a very difficult task to perform, it requires large investments that would function on the government level and on the level of sponsors, and it turned out the latter are rather scarce in our country. We expected more patriotism in this aspect. It would be nice if we had a biennale like the one in Marrakech, which is held at an old palace: the entire space there is given to artists. I have a vision of a future biennale with a smaller number of participants, yet they would work with Arsenale’s unique space. I agree with Yulia on this.”
V.V.: “I would like to see the desire to work on all levels of the process: from the head of an institution to an assembly worker. The improvement of this situation is even more important that result-oriented work. The culture of cooperation must be somehow emphasized.”
M.K.: “I remember the biennale in Armenia in 2009, in a city destroyed by an earthquake. It was a moderately-sized, sophisticated, and intelligent exhibit, which merged with the social fabric of the city, and directly related to the life of those people. And I would like to see a biennale that would intertwine with Ukrainian social life. I don’t want another one like this year’s: an exotic bush was showered with investments, and we are watching if it is going to survive in this climate, or not. We need something that will take root and will get bound on the organic level with the context it is placed in. We need to work more on combining present-day local artistic life with international one, but at the same time we need to remember to treat the public with respect. I think we should not spoon-feed the audience. Instead, we have to invite it to participate in a serious discussion, and create didactic projects, that would develop and form a new generation of audience.”
