museum siberia
When I stayed in East
Germany recently, I was impressed by the sense of history people had. A small
example: in a bank, there was a poster showing a sequence of banknotes from the
end of the 19th century through the Nazi years, WWII and post WWII, to nowadays.
GDR was reflected in the banknotes as a sequence of historical moments. A bank
does not deal with historical studies, and still, the people consider it appropriate
to show their relation to what was before.
Soviet
mass mentality in the 20th century cultivated the belief that 'true' history began
in 1917 (i.e. after the Great October Revolution). After the Communist era came
to an end in 1991, there arose a tendency to forget about what occurred between
1917 and 1991. Russians wanted to be rid of a shameful and unpleasant past, and
to begin in a way from scratch, to finally step onto the "right" historical path,
once and for all. Step
by step, Russian society has learnt to alternatively accept or disinherit the
past, with the immensely rich Russian culture helping people to do so.
The IVth Museum Biennale
opened its expositions in the Krasnoyarsk Culture and Museum Complex. The Krasnoyarsk
Biennale is a kind of festival when tens of museums and individual artists from
all over Russia come for several days to Krasnoyarsk, to show their projects.
The theme of this year's Biennale was "Art of the Memory". Therefore, most of
the projects dealt with "spatial kinds of memory, with that creative practice
that appeals to our life experience submerging a person in a media of spontaneous
reminiscences and exciting the imagination..." as the organizers put it.
Everyone likes to stress
the special importance of what they particularly are doing, and the organizers
pretended to have found a new kind of arts - the art of memory. I cannot judge
about the fundamentals of this 'discovery'. At the very least, there are many
varied opinions on that. If however, you like crowds of enthusiastic artists and
designers freely mixing with each other, a terrible variety of exhibits in limited
space, and the joyful spirit of big fairs you would welcome the Krasnoyarsk Museum
Biennale.
Entrance to the IVth Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale.
Great
variety actually means that among over 70 projects one would find next to everything,
from scientific studies, artistic performances to very naturalistic, even scandalous
demonstrations. As a former scientific worker I especially appreciated a study
of Scientific Museum of Tatarstan. It showed profound relationships between the
morphology of the human body (as an animal) and the inventions that stemmed from
and enforced human organs - teeth, hands etc.
The project of Scientific Museum of Tatarstan under the title "History without
puzzles".
A project
that evoked emotions had the title "Panem et circenses!" (Bread and entertainment!).
It consisted of a sofa built of real loaves of bread and a TV set standing in
front of it. In Russia, bread has always been a sacred thing, so, many people
asked if it's allowable to treat bread this way. Well, what artists do with sacred
objects is often indulged because, for the broad public, artists themselves are
kind of crazy/mystical creatures.
"Panem et circenses!"
At
the show, naturalistic installations dedicated to abortion or suicide were next
to highly symbolic projects as, e.g., "The touch" by Forostovskii, Ivanova, and
Gavrishina. Dark past (the floor), the 3D present, angels, and a ladder to heaven...
A central part of the composition was a large canvas by Julia Ivanova depicting
many small cells with angel images. She took a vow to paint one angel every day
during one year.
"The touch."
A
director of a "traditional" Krasnoyarsk museum called the Biennale a "disco" wishing
to separate her "serious" approach from the show. But, unlike the "serious" events,
the shows like IVth Biennale attract many people. There is therefore an opportunity
to influence the broad public and give an historical perspective of their society,
the sort of perspective forgotten in everyday mishmash. I find it very good. One
way or another, history is with us. "The music still plays" was the title of a
project showing the evolution of musical devices. Yes, it still plays.
"The music still plays."
Vladimir
Gavrikov gavrikov@online.ru
Other
articles
[the difference between Russian and western
art worlds]
[Russian time]
[culture
on sale?]
