CHILDREN OF THE COLD WAR, GODPARENTS OF THE HOT WAR ARTISTS IN EUROPE’S FAR EAST
Art Forum Berlin, 2002. Crowds of visitors stroll aimlessly around the richly decorated exhibition hall. The Slovakian artist Richard Fajnor sits on the floor in the midst of this commercial spectacle, leaning up against the side of his stand, Priestor Galerie in Bratislava, in front of him a plate and sign saying: “Please help me. I’m an artist and I’m hungry.” Fajnor is one of many (Eastern European) artists who have made their wretched working and living conditions the focus of their art.Same time, same place. The Moscow artist Elena Kovylina organises a procession with children from Berlin past the collectors and the pictures on sale to raise money for homeless children in Russia. Kovylina has been working for several years with homeless people in her country. She founded the Red Shelter Committee to help them, a project that was designed not to put an aesthetic gloss on negative social conditions but to wrest an incisive moment from an artistic action.
The end of the Cold War and the start of the radical capitalisation of the Eastern Bloc countries marked the termination of art subsidised and dictated by the State but also of critical dissidence. The young generation of Eastern European artists was made insecure and could find neither an intellectual nor a material point of reference in their home(lessness). Their elders slithered with even less direction into the post-Socialist era. The State no longer had any money for the social security of its citizens, let alone for a luxury item like art. Was there really only one possible direction to take in the ruins of Real Socialism? Western culture promised recognition and prosperity, but at the price of complete adaptation to its norms and trends. After a long period of disinterest, bait was offered in the form of grants and exhibitions. Many of these benevolent programmes were probably well meaning and motivated by a genuine interest, but in general they were driven by two underlying motives: the gradual indoctrination of Western culture and brightening up this culture’s ordinariness with the exotic sheen of “otherness” or “Eastern”. The artists were softened up with alms and created a new image of themselves: their origins became synonymous with open hands and speculative adaptation. At the same time the conditions under which they were subsidised and the geopolitical nature of the exhibitions clearly labelled them as “Eastern European”. The intention and the result was a kind of ghettoisation that deprived these cultures not only of individual but also of collective self-esteem. Disillusioned, Soros – whose foundation also invested in education and research by the young generation in the East so as to support the development and maintenance of an autonomous economic and cultural existence – has in recent years drastically cut back its art subsidies. The reasons are plain to see. And yet, there is another side to the coin: the artists, so recently released from the constraints of Real Socialism, capitulated to the dictates of the Western art market. Where they did not sink into oblivion, the artists became the contracted servants of the new order, and the dissidents of yesterday the cultural bureaucrats of today. The “artist children of the defunct East” followed the alluring call of the West and imitate with varying degrees of adroitness what is lauded as the “global art of the 21st century”. They whisper in awe the names of contemporary artistic idols listed in the plethora of biennial exhibitions as they once used to whisper the names of revolutionaries or opposition figures. Do they really have no other choice but to produce even more copies of the trivial nothingness that pass for “cutting-edge” transatlantic culture? Their own tradition – a critical one at that – has been left on the shelf because the defining elements no longer exist and needed to be forgotten as quickly as possible. The necessary critical tradition that presumably exists everywhere, and hence under these new circumstances as well, has been subordinated to a new version of the old lie. Do they fail to recognise the affirmative force of this decorative machinery that undermines and transfigures reality with false promises?
What do Kovylina and Fajnor have in common? Like many others throughout the world they opted for the artist’s profession. To pursue art as a vocation today, it must be separated from art as a profession. Or vice versa. In a “liberal” era the material and intellectual conditions for combining the two are not at all favourable. No artist can be happy with taking odd jobs so as to be able to follow his or her vocation. The idea that this could result in a more independent and critical artistic is quickly seen as paradoxical when it is realised that these jobs are merely financing the period of waiting for the great leap to a professional career in the entertainment industry.
How do Kovylina and Fajnor differ? Since May 2004 when his country joined the EU, Fajnor no longer has to ask himself whether it is a privilege or a disgrace to be a “child of the East”. The welcome in some spheres and the rejection in others no longer exist and culture is now regarded as an integral component of the service industry. It is not for nothing that German art critics are beginning to talk of cheap examples of the Leipzig School from a low-wage country like Poland. This industrialisation of culture as a phenomenon of globalisation extends far beyond the boundaries of the EU. Fajnor now has the choice between producing standard art at rock-bottom prices, doing his begging performance for real or going underground.
The EU democratisation and colonialisation mania is having a tough time with Kovylina’s country. The former power hub of the Eastern Bloc has long gone its own way since the failure of the Real Socialism experiment, installing neo-Russian capitalism and settling autocratically into this new system. The conditions for the existence of culture are also subject to new dictates. Serving the shrill lifestyle of the new Russians is a full-time occupation and has produced a small middle (mediocre) class, which is working its way up in the media industry. It has attracted many former students of the art colleges here. The circle of contemporary artists in the heart of Russia has dwindled accordingly but it still exists. The continued presence of Art Moscow and the Moscow Biennale established in 2005 ensure that Moscow remains a functioning market that also has links with the global cultural trend towards sophisticated Disneyland. The new Russian elite sees itself as cosmopolitan and has finally discovered that art is a good investment. The international art and curator crowds flock to these events, attracted not only by the money there but also by an exoticism that the western part of Eastern Europe has gradually lost. Beyond these highlights and with the exception of a few native stars, the life of the Russian artist is a fight for survival in every respect. Hardly anybody speaks of the material production situation. Production continues with whatever means are available – radical and self-assured. The theme is the insanity of existence and its language, which the average Westerner of today often finds alienating. Intellectual production is a matter for discussion. Whereas critical voices are silenced in Western culture by economic sanctions, in Putin’s realm it is the State justice system that does the job.
Moscow, 2005. While the art elite smugly celebrates the first Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art in the Lenin Museum and fritters away the Ministry of Culture’s annual budget, the people demonstrate in front of the building at being deprived of the last remnants of a dignified life. At the same time, criminal case 4616 is being heard in a Moscow court. It concerns the exhibition Caution, Religion! in the Sakharov Museum, which was destroyed in January 2003 by members of the Russian Orthodox Church. A contract. The defendants were not the vandals but the museum director and the artists, accused of “inciting hate and enmity and humiliating the dignity of a group on the grounds of their nationality and religious affiliation”. The trial was used as fascist propaganda by the Church to make an example of the artists, who were questioning the new freedom, and to give voice to the new Russian common sense: “Betrayers of the Russian people!”, “All Jews should be hanged!” “We need a new Holocaust!”. The trial and the judgement by the public prosecutor’s office are not only equivalent for the artists to a prohibition from working but also torpedo the constitutionally confirmed right to freedom of expression and conscience. In the same year Kovylina returned to Moscow from Germany, claiming that she could be internationally successful as an artist only by calling on her national identity ...
Novosibirsk, 2005. Moscow is not Russia. Siberia ... a word that is associated with the unending tundra, forests and lakes, icy cold and more: imports from Moscow like the gulag and other barbarities. Siberia is thought to be far from any form of civilisation or culture and it is only the most hardly adventurer who feels a strange attraction to the place. And yet, half way between Moscow and Vladivostok is Novosibirsk, a city of 1.5 million inhabitants and the third largest metropolis in Russia. It is also the city with the highest crime rate in the Federation. Hard to believe. If it wasn’t for the odd black Mercedes gliding by from time to time or the Max Mara boutique in the city centre, you would think you were back in the days when the Cold War was still being waged. Books speak of the city as a cultural centre with a strong music and theatre tradition. And the arts themselves? A vague notion in Siberia ... There are certainly people there who try to develop and communicate the arts and who fight against tedium and conservatism, greed and opportunism. Ludmila Ivashina is an art specialist and curator, which, since Soros decamped from the Siberian capital, is the same as being unemployed. But she continues to fight for projects to promote local potential and to combat the general provinciality. Ivashina’s husband, Konstantin Skotnikov, is a founding member of the artist group The Blue Noses, whose socially critical and provocative performances, films and collages are now also popular in the Western art scene. For the last year Skotnikov has no longer been a member of the group – remaining in Novosibirsk proved to be his undoing. His two partners have long moved to Moscow and are under contract with the art magnate Guelman. There is no mention of Skotnikov in publications and exhibitions. He is out of it. Out of it in Siberia where he earns his living as a lecturer at the State Academy for Architecture and Art, teaching a new generation to think and act for themselves. Most of his students soon leave the city for the West. The Siberian metropolis has one 20 square metre private gallery. The gallery owner can afford the occasional avant-garde work only by selling works from his landscape and still life collection now and then. Skotnikov says that this artistic desert extends from Ufa to Vladivostok. Novosibirsk is just the capital. But the desert metaphor also has a positive connotation. The absence of an art scene and market has so far protected the desert of Siberia from being taken over by the art industry of Europe and Moscow.
Berlin, 2006. While I was attempting a fragmentary and exemplary reconstruction of the art scene in the post-Soviet space, I was aware in the back of my head of the gunshots and bombs that were exploding around the world, reminding me of the absurdity of my undertaking. But the conclusion still has to be looked at. Fajnor will bear with his profession and vocation. He is now a citizen of Fortress Europe, which is accountable for the conflict in Yugoslavia and which would like to give militarisation a constitutional status. Kovylina has become known internationally not through the social aspect of her work but through her sensational suicidal performances. In her home country the right-wing power elite, hand in glove with the Church, military and judiciary, is not only fomenting fear, hate and violence but for over ten years has also been waging a genocidal war against Chechnya. Europeans, who believe that they have the monopoly on democracy and culture, say nothing. Meanwhile Kovylina performs her dance as the Russian heroine at the Art Miami and has retired to Los Angeles with a grant. Ivashina will bring the fresh wind of the steppes to Salzburg and report on fighting windmills in the desert.
We children of the Cold War – on both sides – can no longer use geographical advantages and disadvantages as an excuse. Borders have always contained thought and prevented other thoughts from entering. Compass points are something for mythology and sailors. We children of the Cold War have become godparents of a hot global war. We are not innocent, since we watch the madness of general destruction silently and obsequiously, sitting or dancing, and have nothing to offer but to reproduce it and feed it into the cynical machinery of the art industry, while having the non-existing but promoted advantage of us and of our fortress in mind, eye and hand.
Could it have been otherwise?