1995
Viktor Misiano
Text from the catalogue "La Biennale di Venezia 1995. Padiglione Russo"
…REASON IS SOMETHING THE WORLD MUST OBTAIN WHETHER IT WANTS TO OR NOT…
Originally, the curatorial idea of the present project set the condition that
the three artists from Moscow- Evgeny Asse (b. 1946), Dimitri Gutov (b. 1960)
and Vadim Fishkin (b. 1965) - were to work jointly on a mutual project instead
of representing their individual works of art. The work on the project ended
up in a long discussion focused on a number of problems, set forward by the
conditions of the work itself, i.e. to a possibility create a project at the
Venice Biennale inside the Russian Pavilion. What kind of subject in fact should
be exhibited? What are the todays boundaries of the phenomenon of art? What
are the functions of an author exhibited? Or else, could a single artist's values
represent those of a nation? What are the project's exhibiting possibilities
capable of nowadays? Or, putting it differently, does the language of art express
somewhat universal values?
In course of the work various emerging versions of the project were being discussed.
It was suggested to represent a pavilion as a huge information stand on Russian
art, or else to use video clips, television programs, etc., that is materials
representing new Russian mass culture. Another version addressed a somewhat
common metaphor for contemporary Russia and suggested to organize a pavilion
exhibiting documents on a gigantic financial "fraud" of the joint-stock
company ^MMM" and the fabulous adventures of its president Sergei Mavrodi.
Yet another idea included a set of chauvinistic commercials produced by the
financial company "Hermes" constituted another metaphor for the project.
There were a number of other versions including an idea to leave a pavilion
completely empty or to make it hypothetically explode. In course of their work
the authors of the project could not help addressing the issues that in fact
shaped the previous year - the war in Chechnya, scandalous political assassinations,
social and economic chaos, etc.
Appreciation of the valuable experience of the work on the project itself under
the conditions when an artistic consciousness is completely incapable of synthesizing
any experience and to identify its values has become a major artistic result
of these cooperative efforts. The first room has become the representational
space where all the versions worked out in the course of the year have been
shown as well as the materials that reflect the life of the previous year spent
in discussion of a future project. The project that has finally been chosen
to be shown in the central hall does not follow any program. The newsreel tells
us about the edifices that over the centuries has been built, destroyed, and
rebuilt at one and the same place downtown Moscow. This truthful story obviously
illustrates a cyclical and self-contained nature of the Russian history, with
its evident tendency for destruction and utopia. The action to collect money
for the artificial reason that took place in the last exhibition hall also reflects
the present situation, where collecting money is a logical metaphor for todays
Russia, and an appeal for artificial reason is also an obvious metaphor for
the undestroyable Russian Transcendentalism and Idealism. The view of the Venice
Lagoon from the balcony of the pavilion, and Ivan Fadeev whistling a "Song
of Naples" by Tchaikovsky - a fragment of the newsreel released in 1932
that the authors of the project have found in the process of the work has a
certain kind of authenticity within the boundaries of the project. For a more
authentic effect the authors mailed an inquiry to the Volokolamsk local archives
to obtain the birth and probable death certificates of the unknown "whistler".
They have not heard from the archives yet, though, in fact, it is not of significant
importance; neither is the fact that the name of the work ^Reason is Something
the World Must Obtain whether it Wants to or Not" is quoted from Karl Marx'.
Victor Misiano
1995