[spectre] Post-Diasporas: Voyages and Missions, 1 Moscow Biennale of contemporary art

[geert]

From: julia malher <julia.malher at free.fr>
 
Post-Diasporas:Voyages and Missions, special project in frameworks of 1
MoscowBiennale of contemporary art
January29th - February 26th 2005
Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, ul. Petrovka, 25

opening January 28th, from 3PM

Exhibition Post-Diasporas: Voyages and Missions is dedicated
tostrategies of cultural identification in the works of the artists
whohave had experience of living in emigration and diaspora
(ordiaporas), with its characteristic contradictions between a
voluntaryassimilation and cultural self-isolation. The artists, most of
whommoved to the West in the beginning of the 90s – Alina and Jeff
Bliumis(USA), Daniel Bozhkov (USA), Pavel Braila (Moldovia – Holland),
YuriyGavrilenko (USA), Anton Ginzburg (USA), Olga Kisseleva (France),
AnnaKowalska (Poland – Austria), Joanna Malinowska (USA), Yaroslav
Mogutin(Russia – USA), Sviatoslav Solgannik (USA), Yevgeniy Fiks (USA) –
havean experience of navigation between various cultures as well as
understanding of the differences between “foreign” and “one’s
own”cultures. 

The issue of the relations ofdiasporic subject to her/ his national
culture and history isrefracted in peculiar way in practices of those
artists, who undertakea journey to the country of departure, combining
both Gulliver’s encounter with “strange” societies and Ulysses’
anticipation of“cultural shock” in his comeback home. It occurs in
Postcards from Warsaw, a work by Anna Kowalska. Kowalskajuxtaposes the
postcards, made during her trip to the native Warsaw,that depict, with
the effect of “déjà vu,” realia of Warsaw ghetto ofthe 1940s, which turn
out to be the setting built for Roman Polanski’s film “The Pianist,”
with the photographs that Kowalska took two years after Polanski film on
the site of the former ghetto, in which the economic utopia of the
contemporary post-Soviet metropolis is presented. 

The theme of return, undoubtedly, is present in the three-chanalledvideo
Barons’ Hills by Pavel Braila, which looks intomodern Moldova, artist’s
motherland. The work shows thehouses of gypsy “barons,” Moldavian Noveau
Riche: eclectic, abundantlydecorated facades and interiors of the
gigantic mansions embody theessence of a diasporic subject-nomad which
builds its own culture fromthe elements of “others’.”

In Olga Kisseleva’s work Border, the artist points out toa “border” as a
symbol of contemporary disintegration and alienationoccurred inside the
post-Soviet world which is opposed to the infinitefreedom of an
individual represented in the video by the sprint-danceof Keity Anjoure.

Alina and Jeff Blumis, in their pictorial series entitledgeometric
geography, generalize their experience of emigrationassociated with
dramatic transition from the socialist -above-the-individual - reality
into the context of other cultural andnational identifications. In the
creation of this series, the artistsused the industrial materials and
production processes, wherebyprovoking the conflict with work’s highly
personal content.

In her work Untitled, Joanna Malinowska cleans New Yorkresidents’
apartments in exchanges for lectures on philosophy – animage of Polish
émigré utilizing the stereotype of a Polish woman inthe Western
consciousness. Another work of Malinowska, 22.56 squaremeters of
”Karamazov Brothers.” Dedicated to Anna GrigorievnaDostoyevska a manual
copying of Dostoyevski’s novel, is revisiting anational (in this case,
Russian) culture in format of tedious,time-consuming action that is
associated with the self-discipline andexercise in “faith” of what art
is. 

Daniel Bozhkov, in work “The Station of NewProductivists,” explores
mutations of Western culture (includingconsumer culture) on the
Eastern-European soil: Swedish furniturestore IKEA appears as a
“Western” bacillus the presence of which inRussian context is analyzed
through the juxtaposition of Swedish namesfor IKEA items and their
description in Russian. Another part ofBozhkov’s project – documentation
of the action of cutting ofBozhkov’s own beard realized in front of the
statue Peter the Great inMoscow – an artist’s reaction on the historical
perverseness ofRussian reality, its harsh transition from the
appropriation of theforeign to the hostility towards it (if to assume
that the possessorof the beard is a foreigner for whom beard is a
unalterable andcomfortable part of his look.) 

National references can be recognized in Maxim Vakhmin - a
Russianimmigrant, artist and master of survival, living at the streets
of NewYork – the protagonist of film 20 Cans of Chunky Beef Soup byYuri
Gavrilenko and Sviatoslav Solgannik. Vakhmin’stroubles, his
self-destructiveness and self-negation, put him in linewith the famous
characters of the literature of social realism.

Yaroslav Mogutin, in his photographic works, united underthe same title
“No Love,” Yaroslav Mogutin confronts hisown media image of “Russian
Slava,” made by the Western mass media,with a narrative based on the
real experience of extensive travels andintimate encounters, where the
author persuasively avoids dealing withthe fixed national
identifications and appealing to the culturalclichés. 

Dilemma assimilation/ isolation is present in Anton Ginzburg’swork
totemdoppelganger. Ginzburg, using (andreproducing) totems and signs of
“other” diasporas (like Raiders,Latin-American football team from
Oakland, California) as well asmass-produced goods of the 2000s (in
totemdoppelganger, it is an“ipod”), which are perceived by the author as
contemporary “totemicpoles” of desire, reveals one more aspect of
diasporic subjectivity,the essence of which is, from the one hand,
personal mimicry of animmigrant inside of “other” culture (in this case,
it is Westernmodernist and postmodernist culture), and from another -
one’sparallel and exclusive existence in it as an alien.

The exploration of the identity politics in the art of new media
andactivism connects individual reflections to the larger movements
andradical tendencies in art that is reflected in video projection
ofYevgeniy Fiks “Hacker’s Cubicle.” The author tries toposition himself
as a representative of the Russian diaspora in theWest, drawing the
parallels between Russian “hackers,” professionallybreaking into banks,
and western artists-activists who intervene inthe sphere of state and
big business. 

Curator: Olga Kopenkina