Highlights of the 57th Venice Biennale
Antarctic Pavilion, Palazzo Molin a San Basegio, Venice
this review was written and originally published by The Brussels Times Magazine, n. 25 (Summer 2017)
The biennale by artists for the artists – this is the motto of the curator of the 57th edition, Christine Macel, the chief curator of Centre Pompidou in Paris, where she initially founded the contemporary art department. In contrast to the previous edition of biennale (which was also reviewed in The Brussels Times’ summer edition two years ago), curated by Okwui Enwezor, this year’s international art exhibition was meant to detach itself from the struggles and excessive engagement with the world of politics and return to mantra of “art for art’s sake” – “l’art pour l’art” – a claim that the only “true art” is one that is free from any utilitarian, ideological, social and political factors. Art, according to this view, is just a subjective expression of the emotional state of the particular artist.
Adhering to this ideology, Macel selected 120 artists from 51 countries to contribute to the total project in two main pavilions with an approach that appears rather light-hearted. The main pavilion in Giardini is filled with action: there is a performance of the artist inhabiting the pavilion, a 3D-printing laboratory and even Olafur Eliasson’s workshops on sunlight harvesting to illuminate the reading rooms at night.
John Waters’s “Study Art Signs” are full of strategic humour and expose the naivety of the art world becoming “hot” for those seeking new ways to feed the ego and obtain fame by any means in the neoliberal “I am a brand” culture. Taus Makhacheva poetic video artwork “Tightrope” is a reminder of the constant struggle of the artist, curator and researcher to have a say about the narratives of art. Corresponding to the spirit of a pronounced overarching concept, the installation “The Artist is Asleep” of Yelena and Viktor Vorobyev, who are based in Kazakhstan, literally speaks about the nature of the artistic production as being intrinsically independent from the narratives of politics and society. The exclusively male identity of this sleeping artist is quite symptomatic to both the place of the origin of the artists and the cultural context.
Guan Xiao, “David” (2013)
The second main venue of the exhibition, Arsenale, offers a much more coherent and scholastic picture. The large space of the former military arsenal of Venetian Republic is divided into the thematic sub-pavilions that address specific subjects of art, such as shamanism (devoted, not surprisingly, to Joseph Beuys), nature, etc. In general, the Arsenale pavilion communicates a refreshing gentle softness and femininity, despite the fact that the majority of the artists chosen by Macel are male. It seems she managed to amplify so much needed emphasis on the conversation, as opposed to aggression and conflict, which characterize our overly masculine contemporaneity.
Marcos Avila Forero, “Atrato” (2014)
Among the notable works are Marcos Avila Forero’s video artwork “Atrato”, in which he presents the result of observation and research of the Afro-Colombian community in the area of Atrato river. The artist documented the lost tradition of drumming on water as a mean of communication in the community. Another great and refreshing video artwork is by Guan Xiao - in “David” he playfully and with sharp irony addressed the issue of mindless copying of the icons without questioning and inserting their meaning.
Christine Macel’s main pavilions do not support coherency and may be questionable in terms of responding to the overarching theme of an international art exhibition, but I find this contradiction rather productive. It seems as if the occasional appearance of subjects, beyond “art for art’s sake”, is strategic (which it is most probably not). It could well be the result of the absence of total control over the production of the exhibition, as well as contributions of the artists.
Highlights of national pavilions: Finnish, Greek, Italian and Chinese pavilions
The Finnish Pavilion is located in Giardini in a container-like permanent structure. When I was told by the curator that the video in the sculptural installation lasts longer than 50 minutes, I was almost certain that I wouldn’t spend more than 2-3 minutes there, as my time during the Biennale preview, with all the meetings and things you have to see, was at a premium. But I was wrong: I actually stayed inside the container for the whole duration of the piece. The witty video installation “The Aalto Natives” by Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen is wholesome in being political, ironic, aesthetic and anti-entertainingly repulsive at the same time, making it a sublime object of contemplation. It addresses nationalism, religion, conservatism, patriotism, escapism and so many other “-isms”. It is a definite must-see.
Nathaniel Mellors and Erkka Nissinen, “The Aalto Natives” (2017)
The Greek Pavilion in Giardini presents an immersive installation entitled “Laboratory of Dilemmas” by George Drivas. It is a narrative video installation – based on Aeschylus’ theatre play Iketides (Suppliant Women), which poses a dilemma between saving the foreigner and protecting the safety of the native, using the language of medical research. Addressing current global socio-political issues, the work deals with the anguish, puzzlement and confusion of individuals and social groups.
Roberto Cuoghi, “Imitation of Christ” (2017)
The Italian pavilion presents “Il Mondo Magico” in Arsenale with works by Adelita Husni-Bey, Roberto Cuoghi and Giorgio Andreotta Calo. Roberto Cuoghi presents a large sculptural installation, which appears like a macabre factory that produces monuments of the crucified Christ from various organic matter instead of the customary material, such as metal, bronze or wood. The pods with the mouldy, decaying icons and its parts are shown in all stages of production and decomposition. The production of ideology in material form is worth seeing. Adelita Husni-Bey made a video artwork for the pavilion in New York in which she addresses the geopolitical crisis through the lens of imagination and utopia. She brought together groups of people in intense workshops in which they try to create a new cosmology of the world. Finally, Giorgio Andreotta Calo made an installation that questions the concept of space, the limitation of its functional appropriation and concept of the expectation, as such.
Tang Nannan, Wu Jian’an, Wang Tianwen and Yao Huifen, “A Network of Intertextual and Collective Creation”
The Chinese pavilion introduces the internal cosmology itself via the complex aesthetic and conceptual dialogue between contemporary and traditional, archaeology and innovation, scholastics and criticism. Curated by artist and curator Qiu Zhijie, Dean of the School of Experimental Art at China’s Central Academy of Fine Arts, the pavilion features Tang Nannan, Wu Jian’an, Wang Tianwen and Yao Huifen. A witty conversation between the artists in a mix of traditional and contemporary mediums – from ancient theatre of shadows to robotic programming – is full of links to critical theory and post-structural thinking without aggressive attempts to rupture any of them. Special attention should be paid to the embroideries that are the result of collaboration between Yao Huifen and Wu Jian’an – incredible delicacy in aesthetics and immensely deep in meaning.
Must-see: Fondazione Prada, “The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.”
Fondazione Prada does not disappoint - the exhibition “The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.” is a definite top location among the art happenings in Venice this year. I would call the experience of visiting it as a trip through the mind of a child of Franz Kafka and Jean Baudrillard. It is a transmedia exhibition project, the result of an ongoing, in-depth exchange between writer and filmmaker Alexander Kluge, artist Thomas Demand, stage and costume designer Anna Viebrock and curator Udo Kittelmann. Alexander Kluge and Anna Viebrock act as “artists” for the very first time in a collaborative endeavour.
Fondazione Prada, “The Boat is Leaking. The Captain Lied.”
In this (non)-exhibition, you enter the room with the paintings after which you enter the space of the paintings and get lost in the video narratives that defy the very border between fiction and reality. The presentation is an inherent part of the changed space of the luxurious Venetian palazzo, which is transformed into an amalgamation of theatre stage, lm set and moody interior of the apartment of your recently deceased aged neighbour. This is definitely an example of the exhibition that cannot be photographed or properly described in text, video or any other one-dimensional form. It is an exhibition that you experience differently each time you attend.
The only accurate, universal description of the exhibition would be: you have to see it.
Temple of Futures Thinking in London
Avenir Institute. “…thing”, 2015
The future is a pastiche of relational and extrapolative images of expectations, desires and fears. Avenir Institute was founded in summer 2015 with the mission of exploring the questions on potentialities in possible futures. This was a gesture towards challenging the prevailing linear thinking in philosophy, politics, technology and arts.
As a summary of the think tank’s transdisciplinary researches between 2015 and 2016, Avenir Institute presents the total installation Temple of Futures Thinking. The political theologist Carl Schmitt argued about the nature of political as inherently religious. The belief in the sacred nature of the non-visualisable notions of ‘social contract’ or ‘democracy’ is quite proximate to the assurance in life after death, the existence of karma and so forth. Why then to settle for a limited one-dimensionality of monotheistic and autocratic teachings of the books?
The Temple of Futures Thinking is critical: it does not offer answers on the eternal questions, but it twists the processes of reflection about their roots. Knowledges are infinitely plural as are the possible interpretations of thinking patterns. Just like in Ancient Greek mythology, the literal is poetic and the poetic is literal. It is the superposition of human intellectual and emotional intelligence. The total installation consists of 7 brass mind maps with the core terms for contemporary futures thinking introduced by the Institute, the lecture- performance “Futures: Plural, Queer & Rhizomatic”, which digs critically in the nature of enclosed systemic thinking, and the publication “Against the Future”.
In the midst of the socio-political search for a new modernity, triggered by the perceived collapse of the postmodern promise, and the settling for the convenient refuge in nostalgia, we offer a focus on futures thinking as the way to replace the blind simplicity with a beautiful and multidimensional complexity. If we are anthropologically inclined to believe in something, let it be the belief in the limitlessness of human potentiality.
The installation is on view from June 17 - July 2 at Studio 24, 87 Crampton Street, London, SE17 3AZ (by appointment only: shtagergallery(at)gmail.com, +44 7541 251979
Interview for “It’s an Artful Life”
“As co-founder of the Avenir Institute (www.avenirinstitute.info/) and having worked all around the world as a curator and analyst, Denis Maksimov has an incredibly deep perspective on the interchange of politics and art, as well as the intellectual impact of arts in daily life“. - Gillian Rhodes
Listen the interview here.
too much as not enough, vol. 1
a group exhibition feat. feat. Marina Alexeeva, Maria Arendt, Ludmila Belova, Vita Buivid, Alexandr Dashevsky, Laura Dekker, Lee Edwards, Andrey Gorbunov, Amir-Nasr Kamgooyan, Boris Kazakov, Alexandra Mazur-Knyazeva, Ivan Plusch, Vitaly Pushnitsky, Alexandr Shishkin-Hokhusai, Ivan Tuzov
Artist, curator, dealer, provocateur and polymath Marcel Duchamp is a Pandora of art history for some and John the Baptist of modern and contemporary art for others. Among many disruptions of the order and normality of what was set to be called ‘art’, in 1935 he created Boîte-en-valise, or box in a suitcase, a portable miniature monograph including sixty-nine reproductions of the artist’s own work. In the following years, he created other editions of the boxes, with varying content and luxurious touch, including a special edition for long time friend Peggy Guggenheim. Is it a portfolio of artist’s work or an individual piece of work, or maybe both? As enigmatic as ever, Duchamp was not meaning to provide a definite answer.
An inaugural exhibition at Shtager Gallery in London unites under the same roof in a compact space not only one, but multiple group and solo ‘exhibitions’. The conceptual gesture of Duchamp is peculiar in the contemporary context of commercialisation, gentrification and scarcity. How many narratives and stories can strategically fit in a small experimental space?
Duchamp anticipated and contributed to the institutionalisation of many forms of presentation within and beyond artistic fields with his radical and daring innovations. Curriculum Vitae and a personal statement are the standard of self-presentation now. The radical nature of his heritage is timeless and in the currents of crises in contemporaneity, becomes actual and even urgent.
Attention deficit alongside the culture of acceleration lead to us to necessity to be more effective in literally all aspects of modern life. The functions of the museum, gallery, artist-run and independent project spaces are merging with each other in search of new meaning as the social and political conditions of artistic production are evolving towards new, seemingly tougher, but possible just different frontiers. Revisiting in this context the most influential ideas of the age of manifestos is more than necessary.
A portable exhibition is presented here in the form of an intellectual vortex: it drags the viewer into its own laws of matter, gravity and light. Just like it is in the space of contemporary media, where the increasing number of simultaneous voices create more autonomous images of subjective real.
By placing the artists in an experimental, multiversal and hardly comprehensible conversation, a strategic cacophony, there is an emergence of the question about what we observe in the constantly accelerating societies: is too much the new not enough?
'too much as not enough’, curated by Denis Maksimov, is the first exhibition in an upcoming yearly cycle of research in contemporary miniature art practices in Shtager Gallery (Studio 24, 87 Crampton Street, London, SE17 3AZ ). Vol. 1 will run from May 18 till May 30 with the opening on May 18, 19.00, by the lecture by Denis Maksimov on Duchamp, acceleration, radical forms of presentation, experimentation & ‘too much as not enough’ series (RSVP: shtagergallery@gmail.com).
Shtager Gallery moved from the cultural capital of Russia, St Petersburg, to one of the global art capitals, London, the UK, in 2017. Founder of the gallery Marina Shtager has been working in professional art world since 2006 in the roles of director and curator. She founded Shtager Gallery in 2014. Elephant & Castle is an experimental art space conceived by Shtager Gallery in cooperation with Morris & Associates in 2017.
Boaventura De Sousa Santos in conversation with Denis Maksimov: state, nation and alternatives
Boaventura de Sousa Santos, image source
The conversation between Boaventura de Sousa Santos and Denis Maksimov about nation state, it’s contemporary condition and evolution in the context of the challenges of 21 century.
Can a state exist without a nation? Can functions of a state be replaced by other entities? Some quotes from the conversation:
“Nation state is a modern fiction.”
“State builds its own erosion by privatisation.”
“We need not alternatives - we need alternative thinking about alternatives.”
“Institutions are used extra-institutionally to control them. Trump legislates by Twitter.”
“We reproduce the state in the process of undoing it.”
Boaventura de Sousa Santos is a sociologist and legal scholar. He is Professor of Sociology at the University of Coimbra, Portugal, and Distinguished Legal Scholar at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as well as the director of the Center for Social Studies at the University of Coimbra. He has written and published widely on the issues of globalization, sociology of law and the state, epistemology, democracy, human rights, social movements and the World Social Forum. His most recent publications include If God Were a Human Rights Activist (2015), Epistemologies of the South. Justice against the Epistemicide (2014), and Toward a New Legal Common Sense: Law, Globalization, and Emancipation (2002).
Rana Dasgupta in conversation with Denis Maksimov: multiculturalism, hegemony and nation state
Rana Dasgupta, image source
Conversation between Denis Maksimov and Rana Dasgupta took place in the context of the event “Now is the Time of Monsters. What Comes After Nations?” at Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Germany, on March 24, 2017.
How the global hegemony is shifting in the currents? What are the possible futures of multiculturalism?
Some quotes from the conversation:
“There is a vacuum on the level of internationalism, nation state being too small and too big at the same time”
“We talk about homogeneity, but we actually leave in a very fragmented space… The fact that the world is far more strange than it was 30-40 years ago”
“Multiculturalism is a nationalist project: there is French, American, British, etc. It is a state technology, that is designed for avoiding conflicts inside of the nation”
“The world is electing leaders, that are declaring war on liberalism”
Rana Dasgupta is a novelist and essayist. His texts focus on issues of home and homelessness as well as rootedness and motion in a globalized world. His novel Solo won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize in 2010. His latest book, Capital: A Portrait of Twenty-First-Century Delhi (2014), is a non-fiction exploration of his adopted city of Delhi, and, in particular, the changes and personalities brought about there by globalization. Dasgupta is Distinguished Visiting Lecturer and Writer-in-Residence in the Department of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University.
Against the Future
Avenir Institute. “Against the Future”, publication (limited edition, signed), 2017
The publication contains mind maps of futures thinking terminology and the selection of the texts, written by the Institute in 2015-2016 in different contexts, where the terms are directly or indirectly employed.
The aesthetic form of the book is a “working paper”: the reader is invited to deconstruct the book physically, intervene with her comments, writings and doodles; share pages or parts of the book.
Berlin Biennale 9: shiny, but not deep
Sculptural element ‘L'Avalee des avales (The Swallower Swallowed) Iguana/Sloth’ of Jon Rafman’s 'View of Parizer Platz’ (2016)
I was going to Berlin with some degree of anticipation to see the strong statement: philosophies in total visuality are irrelevant. But DIS, curatorial collective/fashion online magazine team went half-way there: being not radical enough to emphasise the nakedness of the king and at the same time providing seemingly unnecessary layer of pseudo-intellectualism. It appears to breath the same cold air as 'connecting with your inner self’ iPhone covers, produced in South Asian sweatshops in 'limited edition’ royal navy blue colour to be sold in Colette at Parisian Rue St Honore.
While society of spectacle is in urgent need of strong slap on the face amidst growing apathy and absenteeism, the Biennial doesn’t go further than demonstrate or, at its strongest moments, proclaim what we have been seeing for more than decade: continuous mass delusion and enchantment with carpet bombardment of shiny, glossy and hyperreal imagery. I had hard time to distinguish difference between 'visual things’ shown at the Biennale from my Instagram feed.
Another unrealised expectation: the issue of digital identification and the gap between 'digital me’ and 'empirical me’ haven’t been addressed critically. Rather, like in Jon Rafman installation on the terrace of Akademie der Kunste, it was spectacularly demonstrated. Attention wasn’t paid as well to reflecting on the possible consequences of further evolvement of identity politics, actualisation of possible space for thinking and placing you in position of environmental discomfort, where the expected magic of immersing into the world of contemporary art could actually happen. Criticism of reality in this context is not criticism per se: it falls in the trap of being part of ideologised environment while trying to appear outside of it.
Camille Henrot, installation view of 'Office of Unreplied Animals’, 2016
Biennale, which I expected to be a slap on the face of the hierarchies of contemporary (f)art world, in fact tried to sit on several chairs at the same time. 'Fuck you we are not even curators’ attitude doesn’t go far enough when those pronouncing rock-and-roll spirited mantras words are entering the very same mode of talking with the audience. Philosophic inquiry seems like it was based on purchased in the Urban Outfitters tome of 'All Philosophy in Cat Pictures’.
Absence of the theme or any point is felt in the KW Institute for Contemporary Art and Akademie der Kunst the most. Adrian Piper familiar critical reflections on 'everything being taken away’ are shown next to poorly produced AirBnB-lifestyle devoted installation. Rather neutral in their appeal (and therefore not very much provoking in any sense) but very Instagram-friendly Anna Uddenberg hommages to self-obsession and packable light travel lifestyle talk to less than 1% of bubble-inhabiting jet-set golden youth. Hito Steyerl video installation which is shedding the light and dissecting Saddam Hussein project of building modern tower of Babel in Akademie der Kunste fall somehow out of the general LOLism and emojis, but because of it’s outstanding quality and depth seems to be out of place.
What appears to be strategic, however, is the choice of the locations for the exhibition. The KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Akademie der Kunste, Berlin European School of Management, The Feuerle Collection and touristic Blue Boat ensemble suggest a proper dialogue about overarching penetration by the fashionable 'contemporary art’ into anything and everything - in many cases to hide emptiness, ridicule and unjustified hierarchies. The Fuerle Collection appears to be the most coherent in terms of addressing the subject of advancing 'pastichisation’ in contemporaneity. The former military bunker as the space of escapism and complete abandonment is the only platform that is available for critical reflection and thinking in today’s environment of over-arching totality.
All in all, Berlin Biennale succeeds to demonstrate how 'Present’ appears like, just like the spread of fashion magazine. However, for instance, 'Martha Rosler reads Vogue’ (1982) is standalone the work and not only encompasses what the Biennale should have, but suggests much more. Visiting sites feels like browsing through Instagram or Facebook feed - rather an activity to 'kill the time’ in the public transport commute or queue in supermarket to the cashier, than a space to formulate actual inquiries about the problematics within modern way of living.
The future of the ‘Artist’: challenges of transdisciplinarity and the expanding field of art
Participants: Matteo Lucchetti (freelance curator, curator Visible), Tobias Sternberg (artist), Daniel Blanga-Gubbay (researcher, founder Aleppo), Moderator: Denis Maksimov (theorist, curator and researcher)
Artists take over more and more the status of different specialists: the artist as anthropologist, artist as scientist, artist as philosopher, etc. Due to the stronger liberalisation and flexibilisation of our current economy, the role of the artist seems to be turning into a flexible, self-motivated and innovative individual: artist becomes a ‘transdisciplinary agent’ and 'cross-sectoral diplomat’. Increase of artists collectives is another interesting trend that illustrates transformation of the artist’s role and function in the society. How is this change affecting their work and how can they develop their practice under these circumstances?
How is this influencing our notion of 'art’? What are the effects of co-productions between different fields in the realisation of artworks, artists infiltrating into other fields, cross-disciplinarity and knowledge exchanges? Which new discourses or art forms have been created because of this shift and how could the outcome function as a way to reinvent and rethink the present day to change tomorrow?
The Issues of Communication between State and Business in Modern Russia
the cover of the book “The Issues of Communication between State and Business in Modern Russia”
The book is devoted to analysis of specificity of institutionalisation of communication between state, business and civil society organisations in modern Russia, cross-institutional interactions and it’s evolution. Both theoretical and practical aspects of the problematics are addressed via analysis of the fundamental concepts of state-government interactions. The book may interest students, professors and researchers as well as general public interested in cross-institutional communications in Russia as well as problematics of institutional capacity-building in transitional political regimes.
The book is written in Russian and can be purchased here.