Saatchi Gallery 16 November – 31 December 2017 Art Riot Post-Soviet Actionism Presented by Sponsored by 1 Art RiotPost-Soviet Actionism Curated by Marat Guelman Edited by Andrey Kovalev Content 26 Introduction 132 Context 28 Marat Guelman 134 Arseny Sergeyev Introduction You’re Not in Moscow Here 32 Boris Groys, Andrey Kovalev 156 Alisa Lozhkina Russian Actionism: The New Narodniki Permanent Revolution. Contemporary Art and Politics in Ukraine 1987–2017 40 Protagonists 178 Anna Matveeva 42 Oleg Kulik St. Petersburg Votes Atypically 48 Charles Esche Animal Magic Oleg Kulik or how one person 186 Historical Perspective dealt with the collapse of everything 188 Natalia Murray 54 Ekaterina Degot Revolutionary Spectacle: Street Performances Like a Fish in Water: Oleg Kulik in the 1990s in Petrograd in 1917–1920 64 Pussy Riot 196 Andrey Kovalev 70 Helen Pyotrovsky Against All. Toward a History Pussy Riot: From Intervention to Action of Protest Art in Russia 82 Nadezhda Tolokonnikova of Pussy Riot’s 216 Alek D. Epstein prison letters to Slavoj Žižek Art Activism in the Putin Era. The Heirs of Moscow Conceptualism 96 Maria Alyokhina and Sots Art in the 21st Century Riot Days (excerpts) 228 Catalogue Plates 106 Pyotr Pavlensky 112 Sarah Wilson 244 Endnotes Pyotr Pavlensky: Images of conviction, 250 Selected Bibliography bureaucratic convulsion 254 Biographies 124 Ludmila Bredikhina Performance Instead of Politics CV, or the Pavlensky File AK Let’s start with a question about what in Russian art BG That’s not quite so obvious. I think the problem fig. 1 Oleg Kulik I Love Europe, It Does Not lies in the fact that when artists are confronted with the can be defined as Art Riot. The Peredvizhniki (Wanderers) or Love Me Back, 1996 inertia of existing institutions, in the West they start fig. 2 Oleg Kulik I Love Europe, It Does Not perhaps Russian critical realism of the nineteenth century? criticizing them and fighting against them. In Russia, of Love Me Back, 1996 fig. 3 Alexander Brener course, almost no one did that. BG Perhaps. I don’t know whether we need to go back so Boxing Champion, 1995 AK Well, in general, yes. But in a sense there was far, we’ll get to Peter the Great that way. Or even further, nothing to criticize. The first galleries that supported the Christianization of Rus.’ That was a kind of Art Riot, contemporary art in the early nineties were extreme- too — the appearance of the icon. I think that we should ly powerless. It was a long time until the White Cube opened. And there was no Museum of Modern Art, in begin, of course, with the avant- garde. And I think that which the walls had to distroyed. we should start with the discussion of the relationship BG No, actually there were lots of museums. And they had a lot of contemporary, i.e., Soviet art. But in Russia between art and artistic institutions. In Russia in the early there was no criticism of these institutions, and nobody twentieth century even the radical avant- garde move- had to fight to join those institutions. In part this was ments were relatively quickly integrated into the art sys- because in the Soviet period artists weren’t particularly interested in being part of these organisations. Instead, tem. Before the revolution, the avant- garde artworks were beginning from the seventies — Conceptualism — alter- included into all kinds of private collections, and there was native institutions appeared that would perform all the an intensive exhibition activity of the avant- garde. And functions of the official ones: publication, distribution of 1 materials, exhibitions, performances, and so on. If we look now at the Western ex- then after the revolution the avant- gardists re- perience, we will see that there are more instances of the emergence of alternative ceived substantial institutional power. If you com- institutions there. Basically, criticism of institutions in recent years has vanished, no one is interested in it anymore. But I think that Russian actionism tried to avoid insti- pare, let’s say, Russian Futurism with the Italian tutional inclusion altogether. I think actionists adopted the impulse, which without one, you can see where the Art Riot came from judgment, I call anti- intellectualism. Yes? 3 AK Not quite. The radicals who came onto the art scene in and why it went out into the streets. Marinetti the early nineties — Oleg Kulik, Anatoly Osmolovsky, and Alexan- 1 and the Italian Futurists on the whole were not der Brener were rapidly educating themselves and seeking new integrated into art institutions for a long time. languages of intellectualism. BG I did not notice that. I think instead they were trying That’s why they went out onto the street. And to run away from what Solzhenitsyn called ‘educatedism.’ To run I think that the same thing happened in Russia, away from certain tastes, from the judgement by the members of the intelligentsia, responsibility to achieve aesthetic quality. even in a more acute way, during perestroika I think that the actionist artists felt that all post-Soviet culture Russian Actionism: The New Narodniki and after it. was weak and was made up of losers and nerds. That it had only two or three years left to live. And that it would I think that at the time ability of Russian art institutions to assimilate all go under, the whole culture with its hierarchies. People went contemporary art was rather limited, which led to art trying to where they thought new places of power had appeared. News- break out beyond its borders and appeal directly to the mass media. papers, radio and television. They decided to go to the masses. Artists of the perestroika period were looking for allies in the press, 2 They identified with that new force. on television. In the post-perestroika period, Russian actionism AK I can tell you about my own experience. In 1991 I went became a landmark, going beyond the borders of institutions and overnight from a quiet academic art historian, specialist in the thereby acquiring a certain social effect and significance. Russian avant-garde, to a speedy newspaper critic. The time was AK But there was also the circle of Moscow Conceptualism, going so fast that it was impossible to sit and unhurriedly discuss which was a bureaucratic institution in itself, if we use Benjamin the next chapter in a monograph at the Institute of Art History Buchloh’s2 idea. To a certain extent the Aesthetic of Administra- with people who ceased to understand the language I was speak- tion was developed more deeply in Moscow than, say, in the Art ing. My field was art criticism of the 1910–1920s and I knew how and Language group. The Moscow Conceptualist bureaucracy much pleasure and passion Mikhail Larionov and David Burlyuk Boris Groys Boris Groys Kovalev Andrey rejected the ’new’ radicals. took in manipulating the mass media. To fill in the picture, I’ll 32 33 add that Italian Futurism in fact did not appear in a gallery or of the Russian Pavilion in Venice. They asked me: ‘Starting from what attendance art magazine but from its manifesto published in the newspaper figures would I consider the exhibition a success?’ I said that this criterion did not Le Figaro. By the way, an interesting detail. Our chief fighter with exist for me. They said, ‘Oh, yes, we forgot, you don’t like people, you despise rotten and prostituted intelligentsia, Alexander Brener, is the them.’ The problem here is that the greater part of the intelligentsia switched to son of a doctor and schoolteacher from Alma- Ata, thecapital servicing mass taste faster than Brener and Osmolovsky of Kazakhstan. Provincial members of the intelligentsia made up did. Brener and Osmolovsky thought that they would 3 the backbone of Russian culture. come to the masses and awaken them, but in reality BG Marinetti himself had that anti- intelligentsia and anti- the Russian mass media combined Soviet tradition with intellectual syndrome. He was an extremely refined man, hard to marketing, which are fundamentally the same things. It be more so. But it was not about his origins, but his beliefs. A kind is a system for mastering the taste of a great number of of new ‘narodnichestvo’ has appeared, if you like. The narodni- people. At the technological level, manipulation stayed ki wanted to kiss the fruitful Russian soil, in the good sense of the same, the ideology changed, but the manipulation the word, they dreamt that it would bear powerful trees, oaks. system remained the same. There is nothing done can The actionists did the same. But when they moved closer to the do about it. You can scream as much as you want on the massses, they rather quickly discovered, as did the narodniki of square, but that is the voice crying out in the wilderness, 1860s and 1870s, that the masses were not interested in them. which is actually quite pleasant. I think the re-creation Then they started crawling into very dark corners, organizing their of the figure Voice Crying Out in the Wilderness is the most institutions with varied success. Anatoly Osmolovsky carried out powerful side of Russian actionism of that period. 4 the institutionalization most consistently. In one form or another AK But that is exactly Alexander Brener calling Boris Yeltsin to come for a box- it was done by all the artists of that circle. ing duel on Lobnoe Mesto in the Red Square. AK All except Alexander Brener, but his persistent and ruth- BG It’s also Kulik’s man- dog, because one day he realized: ‘The only thing I have less struggle against art institutions in the end turned him into an is my body.