Moscow. Triennial among Friends
In Moscow the second Russian Contemporary Art Triennial, A Beautiful Night for All the People, is being held at the Garage art centre from 11 September 2020 to 17 January 2021. Playing with their cards on the table, its two organisers, Valentin Diaconov and Anastasia Mityushina, are shaking up the politically correct curating there and restore peer-to-peer judgement. As for our collaborator Thibaut de Ruyter, we will check that he is fully transparent.
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If the first Russian Art Triennial in 2017 showed that Russia isn’t limited to Saint Petersburg and Moscow, but extends to cities such as Krasnoyarsk, Omsk, Tomsk, Vladivostok (1) and so on, this second edition questions—above all—the role of the curator. Large, multi-year events have taken on major importance in the contemporary art scene, and the curators have become heroes. But sometimes they use the power entrusted to them to shatter the most established conventions. Valentin Diaconov and Anastasia Mityushina, the two organisers of A Beautiful Night for
All the People, have decided to take risks and not put themselves forward. For this edition their concept is simple but provocative: to ask the artists of the first triennial to choose the artist who should take their place, on condition that they state the links that unite them. While this may seem like a way of getting rid of the curators, their approach is in fact a real critical work on the making of this type of event. Diaconov explains: “I would sincerely like to be able to say that I did nothing to influence the final composition of the exhibition, but this isn’t entirely true. We spoke with each pair of artists, we sometimes helped the recommender’s choice, we discussed—at length—the works, their meaning and their production. When it came to designing the layout, we let the architects, GRACE, go to work, but many of the works were all the same placed in the imaginary topographies they had conceived. [...] The main exercise was always to leave matters alone, not to interfere, to listen instead of dictating. It was very difficult and this work is invisible, it looks more like a performance à la Tehching Hsieh than normal curatorial practice. All this is important, I think, in cultures like ours, where few people have real power, but everyone has an opinion.” Since I was unable to go to Moscow because of the nasty virus, it is Katya Isaeva (an artist I have worked with twice), who has taken it upon herself to tell me about the exhibition, give me her impressions and draw my attention to certain works. The islands built by the scenographers don’t represent a geographical territory, but a mental map, where the works are associated. Painting, video, photography, sculpture and installation are equally present. Roman Mokrov recommends Natalia Monakhova, and takes the opportunity to work with her and Andrey Slaschilin (in a three-screen video, he gives them the recipe for the “elixir of art”, comfortably lying in his bed). Anastasia Vepreva (recommended by Chto Delat) makes a docudrama about the de-industrialization of St. Petersburg, which is reminiscent of Duncan Campbell and his Make It New John (2009); while Paula Marková exhibits a wall of exvotos to proclaim: “Punk’s not Dead”. The works, as a whole, are produced with particular care, and reflect the economic strength of Garage (2) (rare in Russia), without falling into ostentation.
FILIATION
There is a particular type of artist in the history of art that the English like to call an “artist’s artist”: creators whose first recognition doesn’t come from institutions, critics or the market, but from their colleagues (PaulThek, Anna Oppermann or Jeremy Deller).Through the system of recommendations, the triennial makes this filiation the real subject of its exhibition. But we all know that networking, interpersonal relations or simply love and friendship can play a role in our aesthetic choices. We remember the little scandal that accompanied the presence of Alexandra Bachzetsis in the Documenta curated by
Adam Szymczyk, and that of Michele Ciacciofera in Christine Macel’s Venice Biennale (3). But frankly, the first person who has knowledge of my projects, who doesn’t hesitate to criticise me and recommend works for the exhibitions I organise, is my partner (Barbara Breitenfellner [4]). Let’s drop the hypocrisy and political correctness. Thus the tone was set and Alexandra Paperno invited her sister-in-law—the curator Anna Kotomina—who then produced an ethnographic display about the inaccessible Arctic territories of Russia. Pavel Pepperstein simply chose Xenia Dranysh by, I quote, “love and nepotism”, while Murad Khalivov invited somebody dead, Sabir Heybatov (1969-2018).
POWER
In a more ironic and critical way, a firstedition artist even decided to monetize her power! Diaconov explains: “Mayana Nasybullova transformed her participation into an object for sale, and organised an online auction, where an anonymous buyer then transferred the recommendation to Ivan Gorshkov. Is this a criticism of the narrow Western conventions of officially valuing ‘merit’ while inviting friends? Of course it is. But more than that, it is a criticism of the value judgments that professionals in the art world spread with such an astonishing degree of authority.” The Soviet Union (but let’s not play the prude, France and Europe today are by no means outdone) functioned through a network of friendships and small favours granted between ‘sensible people’. By making these links visible and displaying them throughout the exhibition, the curators are making a genuine criticism of a past and a present system which, if it were to become totally transparent, would have no reason to be dismantled. Finally, when Diaconov is asked if he imagines continuing to experiment for the next edition of the triennial, he replies with a smile: “We’re joking when we say we’ll programme an algorithm similar to the suggestions of Facebook friends, and that the third triennial will make itself. This would reveal the technocratic wing of the art world!” At the same time the Berlin Biennale is drowning in too much theory and Studio Berlin isn’t transparent enough in its artistic choices (see the review on pages 62-63 of this issue), Moscow, this time, is simply exemplary. n (1) See artpress no. 480-1, Sept.-Oct. 2020, pp. 72-77. (2) Right in the middle of Gorky Park in Moscow, the elegant Garage building—a former restaurant renovated by Rem Koolhaas and OMA (2011-15)—is a functional, lively art centre. In addition to the exhibition spaces, there is a large foyer housing a bookshop and a café, decorated with a large mosaic from the Soviet period. (3) In both cases, it was their companion. (4) See artpress no. 466, May 2019, pp. 22-26. (The publication is also a matter of relationships based on trust and shared interests.) Thibaut de Ruyter is a curator and critic based in Berlin. Katya Isaeva is an artist and curator based in Moscow.