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DÉTENTE: RUSSIAN CONTEMPORARY ART IN VIDEO FORMAT
2003
Kulik Oleg,
Tishkov Leonid,
AES,
Stolpovskaya Olga
March 26 - May 26, 2003
Slought Foundation, Philadelphia
Curated by Nina Zaretskaya
OLEG KULIK
Oleg Kulik is among the most radical and profound artists working today. The Russian context – Soviet and Post-Soviet – from which he springs provides us with a key to understanding his motivation in art.
Kulik was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1961, and graduated from the Kiev Art School in 1979 and the Kiev Geological Survey College in 1982. He received a scholarship from the Berlin Senate in 1996, and has exhibited his work at group and solo exhibitions at galleries and art centers in Russia and around the world.
Currently on view at Slought Foundation is the video documentation of Oleg Kulik's activities from 1991-1993 as an expositioner, and from 1994-1997 as a performing artist. This scope of his earlier work to a great extent defined the features of Russian contemporary art now.
Political cataclysms in Russia accompany aesthetic ones. The period between the two Russian revolutions of the nineties (August 1991 and October 1993) was not an exception to this rule. It turned out to be the time of a "storm and onslaught" for the new Russian art. It was at that very time when Oleg Kulik, then curator of Regina gallery, appeared on Moscow's art scene in the newly scandalous and extremely symptomatic figure of the "expositioner." His expositions presented a sort of revision of stable values, a conflict between him and the artist "being curated," between him and the community.
Amidst the turmoil of those revolutionary years, Oleg Kulik, in spring 1992, organized a festival of installations, "Animalistic Projects," during which several artists presented their works incorporating different animals. The culmination of the Festival was the project envisioned by Kulik himself, called "Piggly Wiggly Makes Presents." Two farmers slaughtered a pig (which was, in any case, raised for market) in the gallery's space, cut the carcass, and gave the meat out to the visitors. It was a shock for everybody: for regular people as well as for the art community.
The main scandal was to follow. When the television program "TV Gallery" (the only program on contemporary art at that time) broadcasted a half-hour issue on the festival, anger from pro-chauvinistic circles manifested itself.
Here are some quotes from the press coverage that ensued following the broadcast under the eloquent titles "Let Them Answer for It!" and "Rusophobia Would Not Work!"
<…> On Monday night TV Channel showed the program "TV Gallery" (host: Nina Zaretskaya). Before the eyes of millions of TV viewers, the whole of Russia and all the Russian people were terribly humiliated and insulted.
A group of black-bearded fellows with twisting masks of faces and clumsy tongues showed the pig they brought to Regina Art Gallery. Oleg Kulik, one of the "aesthetes," declared, pointing to the pig: "It (the pig) embodies the image of Russia in its eternal complexes, which cannot be solved, which can only be cut!"
This ritual murder of a pig was to show the Russian people, as the organizers put it, that the Russians have been sub
jugated forever, broken forever and they deserve only abuse.
Having compared the image of our Motherland, Russia, with a pig, and therefore having equated all Russian citizens with pigs that should be cut, the participators of the TV show, the TV workers taking part in its broadcasting, and also State Russian Television Administration humiliated the national honor and dignity of the Russian and all other peoples of Russia.
Since certain external features of the participants of the TV broadcast made it possible to claim that they belonged to the Jewish nationality, we believe that this disgusting action was consciously aimed at provoking negative attitude to the Jewish nation and to throw the seeds of ethnic hatred and hostility.
Patriotic circles send their application to the Moscow Office of Public Prosecutor, which is cited below. We appeal to all patriots to copy this application, to sign it individually or in groups and to send it to the Office of Public Prosecutor.
Application
On instituting a criminal case
Against deliberate actions
Aimed at stirring up ethnic hostility
And humiliating of the national honor and dignity,
Committed by the group of individuals <…>
After having shown this broadcast, the National TV Company "Ostankino" received an application signed by the representatives of the Russian Party, Russian Center, Russian Idea, the Pan-Slavic Assembly and the Union of the Russian People. Along with the claims by Russian "patriotic" circles to dismiss all people taking part in the preparation and demonstration of the program, they demanded that Nina Zaretskaya, the host of "TV Gallery," and Oleg Kulik, the curator of Regina Gallery, should be deprived of Russian citizenship and required to leave Russia.
These events transpired a year before Polish artist Katarzyna Kozyra made her "Pyramid of Animals," in which she raised issues similar to that of "Animalistic Projects." The fact that she had arranged to have these animals killed and stuffed caused not only a great scandal, but a heated discussion on the ethical issues of contemporary art as well. The work was widely shown and became a kind of "label" for new Eastern European Art. But by this time Kulik had already embarked upon a new strategy.
A transformation of the artist Oleg Kulik into an Art Animal was justified by his serious claims to mankind in general and to contemporary art in particular. Kulik has refused to accept the conventionality of the languages of culture and has attempted to give culture back the ethical dimension it has lost.
In his open letter "Why Have I Bitten a Man?" after the controversial situation at the international group exhibition "Interpol", held in Stockholm in 1996, which revealed deep mistranslations between East and West, Oleg Kulik wrote: "Why have I stood on all fours? Why have I become a dog? My standing on hands and knees is a conscious falling-out of a human horizon, connected with a feeling of the end of anthropocentrism, with a crisis of not just contemporary art but contemporary culture on the whole. I feel its oversaturation of semiosis as my own tragedy, its too-refined cultural language that results in misunderstanding, estrangement, and people's mutual irritation" (Primary Documents. A Sourcebook for Eastern and Central European Art since the 1950s. New York: MOMA, 2002).
I. Oleg Kulik. Curator and Expositioner. 1991-1993
Andrey Monastyrsky. The Neighborhood of Regina Gallery. [05:50]
The ETA Movement and Konstantin Zvezdotchetov. The Day of Knowledge. [01:10]
Arkadiy Petrov. Barrack. [04:20]
Oleg Golosiy. Golosiy. [04:00]
Patricia Cox, Simona Sokhranskaya, Anna Chizhova. Traces on the Platform. [04:00]
Animalistic Projects. Anatoliy Osmolovsky. The Leopards Burst into the Temple. [03:30] 128 kbps (fragment)
Animalistic Projects. Vadim Fishkin. Between the Dog and the Cow. [02:40]
Animalistic Projects. Oleg Kulik, group Nikolay. Piggly Wiggly Makes Presents. [03:00]
Vasiliy Kravchuk. Objects. [03:00]
Vladimir Ovcharenko collection.The Apology of Remaining Behind the Wall, or First-Hand Art. [05:00]
V.Arkhipov, D.Gutoff, R.Egorov, O.Kulik, A.Mareev, V.Stasunas, I.Chujkov. On Transparency. [05:40]
Reality and Realism. Victor Snopov. [03:00]
Reality and Realism. Geliy Korzhev. Mutants. [02:40]
Reality and Realism. Group exibition. Reality Mutations. [03:30]
II. Oleg Kulik. Actions and Performances. 1994-1997
I. In Search of Interspecific Moral
New Sermon. [01:20]
Alter Aegis [together with Alexey Tabashov). [01:20]
I Am a Beast For You. [01:04]
Missionary. [02:11]
I Can’t Keep Silence Any More!. [02:32]
II. In Search of Interspecific Aesthetics
Zoocentrism Experiment. [01:25]
Kulik is a Bird in Fact. [01:53]
Two Kuliks. [06:59]
Armadillo for Your Show. [01:00]
Armadillo for Your Show. [05:27]
III. The Dog Serving Moral and Aesthetics
Mad Dog or Last Taboo Guarded by Alone Cerber
(together with Alexander Brener). [01:30] 128 kbps (fragment)
Reservoir Dog. [07:05]
Dog House (Interpol). [04:22]
Pavlov’s Dog (together with Mila Bredikhina) (Manifesta I). [03:39]
I Love Europe, She Does Not Love Me Back. [06:14]
I Bite America & America Bites Me
(together with Mila Bredikhina). [09:00]
Caterpillar. The Tanks will not pass Through. [04:28]
Total duration: 116.45 min
LEONID TISHKOV
Hailed as "a Renaissance man in a Post-Industrial society," this Moscow artist is known for his work as a painter, caricaturist, graphic artist, poet, playwright, sculptor, video maker, exhibition organizer, composer and performer. In addition, he is a publisher of Dablus Press and the founder of Dablus Foundation.
Leonid Tishkov was born in a small town in the Urals in 1953. He graduated from the Moscow Medical Institute in 1978, although he soon abandoned his occupation as a surgeon for that of making art. He began his career as an artist by drawing caricatures, participating in exhibitions and receiving a number of international awards. A variety of artistic practices and media have become an integral part of his palette, which has contributed to a tradition of absurdism and surrealism in Russian cultural practice.
Leonid Tishkov is recognized for having created a universe of queer creatures. Central to them are the figures of Dablus and Dabloid. Dablus is a sausage-like object that, according to the author's mythology, appeared one misty morning in the vast fields of Russia as an archetypal symbol of fertility and, as such, gestures towards mythologies of birth. Its oval shape, which simultaneously unites feminine and masculine characteristics, the breast and the phallus, reflects the androgynous nature of this creature. The red, foot-shaped derivatives of Dablus are named Dabloids.
"This image," Tishkov writes, "came to me from dreams, settled in my brain and lives in my consciousness and in the world surrounding me as an impudent, insensible, beautiful and desired object." And: "As to me, each person has his own Dabloid, which accompanies him through his whole life." So what is a Dabloid? Let us begin from the external description: it is an absolutely anthropomorphous creature in the form of an autonomous leg with a kind of a small head, sitting on its upper part. Usually he has five fingers, sometimes he mutates and changes formally. The color of Dabloid is always red, symbolizing the vital energy, the power of life. This creature performs the leading role in the first part of the presented video program.
The second part includes two travelogues, titled "Snowangel." In these videos, shot in the Ural Mountains and the Himalayas, one can see the artist, dressed as a regular Russian man, albeit with handcrafted white wings. The desert of snow through which he travels symbolizes the Russian subconscious. These video films are often shown by Leonid Tishkov as part of his installation "The Crystal Stomach of the Angel." In this project the artist's challenge is to build a construction of a dream, of an illusion akin to that of reality, with the help of different components creating a poetic if surrealistic tale from his own childhood.
The cycle "Anthology of the Underheaven" is based on performances often made in collaboration with his son, Sergey Tishkov. The first performance, "Pictures of the Wind," envisions the wind playing the role of the painter. The second performance, "The Air Creatures," turns the wind into a sculptor.
Videos by Leonid Tishkov are primarily grounded in his own performances, which are afterwards transformed into spectacular video creations through unusual editing technique and self-composed music, practices which nevertheless evidence his deep roots within the Russian tradition: "To music, Tishkov adds primitive verbal improvisations which consist of whispers, sighs and combinations of various phonic elements. Generated by the artist himself, the overall effect of these improvisations is almost hypnotic. They are reminiscent of Kruchenykh's fantastic philology and his concept of "zaumj" as the manifestation of a spontaneous non-codified language. In that sense, Tishkov can be compared with religious sectarians who in moments of ecstasy speak "in tongues" (L.Grubisic. "Tradition and Innovation in the Works of Leonid Tishko
v", from "L.Tishkov. Creatures", 1993).
Leonid Tishkov: Video 1997-2002
Dabloids. 1997-1998
Simple Actions of the Dabloids. [02:00]
War with Dabloids. [03:57]
Man & Dabloids. [11:41]
Prothodabloids. [07:00]
Video Films. 1998-2002
Snowangel Urals. [07:40] 128 kbps (fragment); plugin_cinema
Snowangel Himalayas. [07:40] plugin_cinema
The Funeral. [16:20] plugin_cinema
Vyazanik – Crochetman. [08:20]
Anthology of the Underheaven. 1998-2001
Pictures of the Wind. Together with Sergey Tishkov. [06:40]
The Aircreatures. Together with Sergey Tishkov. [06:30]
Nikodim. [06:00]
Videoperformances. 1998-2000
Kazimir's Cube. [06:30]
Eucharistia of Tishkov, M.D.. Together with Konstantin Skotnikov. [11:02]
Total duration: 97 min
AES
The artist triumvirate AES, through a variety of media practices, including photography, video production, computer imagery, city interventions, and performances, aims at creating works which might be considered as "politically incorrect," engaging themes such as violence, body and Westernization.
All of the artists were born in Moscow. Tatiana Arzamasova (b. 1955), Lev Evzovich (b. 1958) and Evgeny Svyatsky (b. 1957) came together to form the AES group in 1987. Since 1995 they have collaborated in some projects with photographer Vladimir Fridkes (also Moscow born, 1956).
Their most famous work, "Islamic Project. AES – The Witnesses of the Future" (1996), depicts centers of Western civilization conquered by Muslim invaders and, consequently, the famous architectural cites turned into mosques. The project reflects on the idea of a contemporary social-political mythology; it was shown all over the world and turned out to be prophetic in the light of the events of September 11th.
On September 13, 2001, the artists wrote in a publicly distributed e-mail letter from Moscow:
"Together with the whole world, we are shocked by the catastrophe in New York and Washington. We never expected that the absurd hyperbole of our project could become real.
Among many e-mails, we received a message from our friend, an American collector, who wrote: 'I was reviewing your "The Witnesses of the Future" postcards, which truly predicted life copying art, but now that the USA will definitely be fully engaged in striking back, hopefully your works will show what might have been, but not what will be.' However, we believe that possible revenge for the events in America would not be the last link in the chain, and will fail to solve the problems of the relationship between Western and Islamic civilizations.
We think that contemporary art cannot deal only with aesthetic matters, closing its eyes to things that determine the present and future world. As many writers have noted (Mika Hannula, Evelyne Jouanno, Hou Hanru, and others), the "Islamic Project" is neither pro- nor anti-Islamic, and nor is it pro- or anti-Western. <…> Our work is clearly against the mutual paranoia between the East and the West. <…> Civilized society must not be afraid of the grotesque language of contemporary art when it is concerned with real events that are happening now or can happen in the future. Contemporary art does not solve the problems, but it can raise the major questions."
The exhibit program presents five videos by AES, usually shown as part of photo-video installations. Most of them intend to evaluate the role of mass media, especially television in the future.
Thus, the demonstration of the six-minute video "Who Wants to Live Forever," might serve to celebrate the memory of Princess Diana. "Queen of the Victims" engages this peculiar subject of worship and adoration by millions at the end of the 20th century, as inflicted by the automobile crash, with precise reconstruction of wounds and traumas according to medical expertise. She performs a dance around the Mercedes 300CL seat, accompanied by Queen's music. The dead body of the victim with a charming smile and bloody wounds rhythmically moves to the music of a legendary rock group and the best voice of the century, which also belongs to the deceased idol...
The media is known for it's "liberal attitude" in covering themes of sexuality and mortality. Premature deaths of appealing celebrities, AES suggests, are increasingly popular topics. In the past, deceased celebrities were surrounded by cults in the spirit of ecstatic mass necrophilia (Elvis Presley, James Dean, Marilyn Monroe), in part resembling the worship of saint martyrs that prevailed in the Middle Ages. In the future, mass worship will change - the public will openly express a desire to see their untimely and now departed idol in an all the more "bare" state. The thin tissue of morality that covers the longing of masses will be replaced by frank and unsublimated lust.
Another video by AES, currently on display, "Defile" (envisioned as a component of a large scaled multimedia project), features unidentified dead bodies in a morgue, dressed haut couture. Accordingly, it agrees with their systematic critique of the tendencies of the global media, as the power behind modern capitalism, by its own means that is provocation.
Fashion has become central to the empire of global media. Recognized labels flicker from the billboards and the pages of fashion magazines as well as ordinary publications, while the latest haut couture collections are broadcast on TV as hot news. We are presented with an image of another world, almost "Paradise", inhabited by remarkable beings of gothic proportions whose gender and eternal youth has reached angelic unlikelihood. The real world, of course, is dressed in T-shirts, sweaters and jeans, clerk uniforms or even the occasional wardrobe of a Kurdish refugee or unemployed Russian, who looks longingly through the prisms of media to the advertised picture of a world beyond. Only the profits from global media remain real behind in this thoroughly unreal world.
The most recent project by AES, "The King of the Forest," concerns the theme of corporate identity as espoused by children aspiring to professional careers. The world at the beginning of this new millennium is unusually, extremely, young. What psychological and social after-effects shall we soon witness? The artists don't provide us with the answers to this problematic, they just raise the major questions.
AES: Video Projects
The King of the Forest/ Le Roi des Aulnesa. 2002. [09:05]
Defile, sample. 2000. [02:32]
Othello. Asphyxiophilia. 1999. [04:09]
Who Wants to Live Forever. 1998. [06:20] 128 kbps (fragment)
The Yellow is Cooking, the White is Eating. 1997. [10:58]
Total duration: 34 min.
OLGA STOLPOVSKAYA
The youngest of the presented artists, Olga Stolpovskaya works primarily in multimedia with film-related concerns including that of myth, object, and theme. Her video and film works, representing the narrative approach towards the moving image in art, are popular at a variety of film festivals and art galleries. Her recent film "The Subscribers" received the Moscow Media Forum 2001 Award.
Born in 1969 in Moscow, she graduated from Moscow Art College in 1990, and in 1997 from the Individual Directing Studio (part of The Russian Theatre Academy). From 1999 to 2002 she was a producer on STS (The Russian TV Stations Network).
The presented program compiles practically all work by this young and promising artist, director and producer.
Olga Stolpovskaya accomplished her first professional film, "The Revolutionaries" (1992), at "Mosfilm studios", making use of breaks in-between the shooting of different scenes of "Traktoristy-2" ("Tractor Drivers-2") by Aleinikov brothers, the well known Russian alternative filmmakers. The empty studio set up as snow-covered Venice inspired her to create a fantasy in the style of silent movies made at the beginning of the 20th century. Scratches on the film, along with vignettes in the credit titles, a pianist, exaggerated make-up, friendly actors and, of course, a "free-of-charge Venice," all contribute to a definitive illusion.
Another video film in this program, "The Idiot," serves as a documentation and video reconstruction of real events revealing the world of a commercial TV worker who has committed a serious crime: she has stolen a camera to create a work of art. The camera trembles in her hands but never stops recording the day's events: conversations with a driver, her boss, her husband, as well as the arrival of militia officials. This film is an artifact on the boarder between reality and art, which shows a decisive moment, a passage from one world to another, along with its deep scar, raising and juxtaposing numerous issues regarding ethics and artistic production.
Her most recognized video film is "Bruner'$ Trial" (made in collaboration with Dmitry Troitsky), which premiered at Art Media Center "TV Gallery", Moscow in 1998 and was then purchased by the Museum of Modern Art, New York. The script of "Bruner'$ Trial" is based on the true-life scandalous incident, which recei
ved international coverage. Russian artist Alexander Brener vandalized a masterpiece by Kazimir Malevich (canvas "White Cross") in Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam. For painting a green $ sign on the canvas this extremist was sentenced to half-a-year of imprisonment.
"The authors of the film made an ironic statement of the story, almost in a "Mr. Bin" style. Under the influence of their protagonist's action The European Union makes a decision to abolish money. People are rejoicing and tear notes into pieces. If the film was out two years ago Brener had been acquitted of the crime for sure" (PREMIER Magazine, August, 1998)."
The shorthand from the court of justice is used in the film. However the authors' do not strive to make a documentary statement of the event of Brener's trial. Their aim is to place cinematograph back in the context of art. "The authors turn a real artist into a mythological hero, an allegory of contemporary art as a whole" (ITOGI Magazine, July, 1998)".
Olga Stolpovskaya: Films and Videos
The Powder. 1998. [01:30]
The Rose. 1999. [01:15]
The Fisherman. 2000. [01:30] 128 kbps (fragment)
Native Speech. 2001. [06:00]
An Idiot. 2001. [21:30] 128 kbps (fragment)
Mix Birthday. 1999, together with D. Troitsky. [04:40]
Abonents/The Subscribers. 2000, together with V. Alimpiev. [12:00] 128 kbps (fragment)
Without Title. 1999, together with G. Ostrecov. [01:40]
Bruner’$ Trial. 1998, together with D. Troitsky. [11:00] 128 kbps (fragment)
The Revolutionaries. 1992-1997. [10:30]
The Heaven. 1999. [22:30] 128 kbps (fragment)
Total duration: 95 min
The site has been created with the assistance of the "Open Society Institute" (Soros Foundation). Russia
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