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| Representing Estonia Zane Oborenko, Culture Theorist Conversation with the Director of the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Estonia Johannes Saar | |
| Historically, the issues of identity of a country and its representation have been of the greatest importance in the creation of national pavilions at the Venice Biennale. Whether a paradigmatic framework such as this has an impact on the creation of national exhibitions these days, and whether it justifies itself, is the subject of interviews with Johannes Saar, director of the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Estonia and commissioner of the Estonian pavilion at the Biennale, and artist Liina Siib, who is representing Estonia in Venice this year with the project A Woman Takes Little Space. Liina Siib’s project, from an unusual standpoint, illustrates a problem which has long existed, but is more often than not ignored by the general public, namely, the position of women in contemporary society. From a seemingly superficial discussion the project grows into a study of the following issues: who we are, how we think, how we understand and care about ourselves and the people around us, what we could be like in the future and how to become different. It is also an analysis of the historical restraints imposed upon us by the existing order of things, and that, of course, it isn’t limited to women alone. | |
 Johannes Saar Photo from private archive of Johannes Saar | |
| Zane Oborenko: This year it will be the 8th time Estonia participates in the Venice Biennale, and 5th time in a row that you will exhibit in Palazzo Malipiero. Has it become like the national pavilion of Estonia? Johannes Saar: I don’t know, really. I’m not a hundred percent happy with the premises, because it’s a flat, after all. Certain projects benefit from this kind of environment, but others do not. I see Estonian artists producing their artwork especially for the space, it’s not entirely a good thing. Maybe at some point we will have to change something, otherwise we will face a kind of production-based creation, which is not actually something that we call artistic artwork, rather it’s a production. Z.O.: In Venice the strategies of asserting national identity have become a kind of nation branding, where it is important for nation-states to make themselves visible in a saturated market. What are your strategies, how do you make yourself visible and identifiable as a country at the Venice Biennale? J.S.: It really depends on money, after all. The last time that we had plenty of money was in 2007, when we presented Marko Mäetamm. Then we had the luxury of thinking about how we present ourselves. But ever since then it has been more about surviving and making ends meet. And all this nation building and branding really sounds nice, but it rather belongs to the 19th century, when nation-based states were born, when it was affordable and when it was a kind of topical thing to do; now it’s more about getting the attention of the market, and it’s not that pompous activity any more. As for the market, I don’t believe that we can afford anything outside the pavilion, any visibility we could buy in the public space, because there’s no money for that. Z.O.: How do you cope with the fact that Estonia will never have its own pavilion in the Giardini, and with the fact that, as Mark Wigley puts it:” If you don’t have a pavilion in the Biennale, then you’re not a country”? J.S.: I don’t know who Mark Wigley is and I don’t know whether he is very well known in Estonia, but apart from that, I don’t really consider the Giardini as being the centre of the art world, not even in Venice. Most times of the year it is just an empty place with old people and dogs running around. Apart from that, most of the time it is a tourist trap. And on top of that, it really feeds itself with biennales of all kinds and the Art Biennale is just one of them. I wouldn’t go along with that statement at all. Z.O.: But all the same it is harder to find a pavilion that’s not in the Giardini, you really have to want to go there and to seek it out, therefore in a way Giardini provides an added value to art, and being in the Giardini automatically legitimizes a country’s identity. How then is it with the rest of Venice, where other marginalized countries such as Estonia or Latvia are situated? J.S.: We all know that there is the notion of bazaar, like in the Orient, where everybody is trying to sell something, everybody is trying to catch the attention of the visitors and passers-by. But there is something even worse than a bazaar, I think it’s called bahzar and that is the word my landlord of Palazzo Malipiero used to describe the situation of the national pavilion. Bahzar is like a really poor version of the bazaar where nobody actually has their own counter where to sell and attract buyers, but instead invite people into their home and then try to sell things that they might have in the house. This is bahzar: where everything is kind of mixed up and there is no division between seller and buyer, everybody can be anything in the process of buying and selling. The reason why I use this particular word is that the pavilion territory outside the Giardini seems to be somewhat derelict, and nobody really cares about it. It’s kind of second rate and does not attract that many visitors, it’s true. There is this superior, elitist group of the Giardini and on the other hand there is this bahzar, the other limit, the other extremity. But I do believe that we are somewhere in between. Z.O.: The Biennale is often compared to the Olympic Games of art, but while nobody questions the need to invest in participating in the Olympic Games, then participation in the Venice Biennale has been criticized as an expenditure… do you think this attitude will change some day? J.S.: I don’t believe that it will disappear completely because, as a matter of fact, it is an expense. From a certain point of view it could be considered a luxury, because it brings no revenue in the sense that someone who is starving might understand it as income, it does not provide bread as the next stage. This is really hard to argue about. It is a value-based discussion about what we actually rate, whether we think it’s worth anything to have an artistic life in our country, whether it’s worthwhile to show it abroad or not. The question is about how valuable it is to have our own artistic life on the local scene and to present it to the outside world as well. Either you say – no, of course it’s a luxury we can’t afford, or if you think that sometimes you need that kind of luxury, then you don’t complain, especially if you think how much money is spent on singing in choirs, for example, and on all kinds of concerts, all kinds of conducting activities we might have. The difference in proportion is really massive. Whining about it means that you don’t actually know the amount of money that goes into it. But we do get visibility in Venice, although I could complain myself that sometimes it’s just in order to be there, but this is the price you have to pay. We do get a number of visitors to the pavilion after all. Z.O.: What is your aim in organizing the Estonian exposition at the mostra di Venezia? J.S.: My personal aim is to do the job well. To create some kind of opportunity for the artists. I see that they benefit a lot from the experience of the Biennale. They get noticed and they come into contact with the international scene, they get invited to international exhibitions. They need this visibility, definitely. Personally, if no more, if not for the country itself. If the country doesn’t care, really, whether it has any successful artists or not, that’s OK, however for the artist it definitely means some kind of professional step further in their career. It’s not a 100% guarantee, but it really does create an opportunity. Z.O.: When looking back over previous years at the Venice Biennale, I’d like you to take a critical look at the CCA and Estonian work. What should have been done differently, in your opinion, to achieve the goal you are striving for? J.S.: The thing is that Venice is not the best place to show contemporary art. Z.O.: Which place would be, then? J.S.: Berlin would be OK. It really starts from the premises. We go back to that issue about the space. In a place that is so tradition-overloaded you don’t feel yourself as being very free and flexible and creative, you rather think of how you are going to get your job done, and then you go back home. You get people who will take care to get the result until the end of November, when the Biennale closes. This is not the framework in which you feel very well and very creative. Once you arrive there, you have some kind of plan in your mind and you are as if on a mission, you have to do everything on time and in the proper way. It comes down to production. I do believe that it is just one big factory of production for the cultural industry. But that’s not a phenomenon particular to Venice, it’s global, although it is especially visible in Venice. I don’t know what I can do about it, apparently I, too, am being exploited by this industry, but I’m also a part of it, reproducing it with my own activities as a commissioner. I do believe that money would make a difference. At certain moments I see that it makes sense to walk away from that kind of routine Biennale, going back and forth, back and forth. I don’t believe that young art, for example, needs any kind of experience like that, the Biennale is the oldest Biennale in the world, so it seems to be for old people. That’s the problem. Z.O.: Besides, Bice Curiger has expressed her wish to streng-then the union between the international exhibition at the Arsenale and national participation. Will it be enough to achieve that aim with five questions, and are they limiting you even more? J.S.: Posing the same five questions to everybody is an attempt to tribalize the world, to colonize all of the earth, the globe with one measure only; everybody has to measure up to the same standard questions. It reminds me of the 19th century, when a relentless process of colonization was going on. Bice Curiger is doing the same thing all over again in the 21st century, trying to conceptually colonize the whole world. I don’t believe that this is very smart and effective. We should instead travel around, meet people and go places. Z.O.: Which countries do you get compared with? J.S.: Germany keeps surprising me all the time, how low you can go… because they have this very strong concept of curator. They firstly select the curator and then the curator is given complete freedom to do whatever they want. And occasionally other countries do the same. But Germany is so laden with this idea of “mastermind” and spreading the idea all around. And it affects the entire tradition of the German pavilion; with every Bienniale it becomes worse and worse, and more boring. It really tries to be something “deep”, profoundly intellectual and they fail in this, they take it too seriously. This seems to be a problem of big countries as such. I’d say that the US and Great Britain try too hard to make themselves visible and I don’t feel as if I’m invited, I am received as someone from the periphery of the world. I don’t believe that they are addressing me with their pavilions, rather they are addressing themselves. Maybe we do the same thing, but at least we do try to communicate and make conversation with the visitor, while I don’t see, for example, my own reflection on the show when I go to the pavilions of the “big” countries. This is what I’m looking for: I always want to make a connection with the show, but I see that the difference in heritage is so vast that it does not set off a bell ringing in my head. Z.O.: The concept of representation is central to academic disciplines such as art history, which is organized around institutions like art museums, editorial boards etc. CCA, Estonia is a part of this and plays a central role in the representation of contemporary art in Estonia, as in the case of the Venice Biennale. What is it that you really try to represent in Venice, and is it different from what you represent in Estonia? J.S.: I wouldn’t take all the blame for what we show in Venice. It’s team work, starting from the very beginning when there is an open call and everybody can present their proposals for the next Biennale. It involves both artists and curators. And then there are the board members, including myself, who discuss all the propositions we have received. I could describe the technique of how we get to the final outcome, but I would never say that we had something in mind from the very beginning. Rather it comes at the end: we choose whatever might look the most promising, who can tell the story about Estonia, even if the story itself is critical and hypercritical. We don’t want any kind of preconceptualized politics of representation to be involved in the selection process, because otherwise it would lead to the German example. But then again – I’ve realized over the years that I’ve been a part of this selection process, that we have this lack of curator, which in the German case is very strong, yet in our case we have a shortage of curatorial dictatorship. For example, this year we don’t have a curator at all. We have free contributors to the catalogue and an artist. And they have to conceptualize together this year’s representation of Estonia, while in the gallery space the artists are given quite a free hand. I don’t feel entirely comfortable with this situation, that until the very last moment I actually don’t know what’s going to be on show. Maybe it’s a part of the job, I don’t know, but I would like to know more of what we are actually doing. Z.O.: The concept of representation involves two major factors at play: the Social History of Art and the New History of Art. With the first there is an appeal to origins, with the second the very notion of origin is doomed to extinction. How does this, in your opinion, go together with presenting artworks in national pavilions that put a strong emphasis on the origins of the artwork? J.S.: Currently there is this notion of neoarchaism going on. Labelling old things as something new, presenting new things in the old framework, like the example of the national pavilions in Venice. I do believe that at the level of perception the framework does most of the job and it doesn’t matter very much what you display at the show. But when you arrive in Venice you know that the framework is basically there, it’s all been set up, and it’s all about the division between the nations. It makes a very lousy start for any real communication with the artworks, because before you get introduced to the art you’ve gone through different levels of filtration, like the “who the hell are you anyway”? When you enter a national pavilion it makes your mind twist, even before you start to talk to the artists or encounter their artwork. Once you get there, you are already washed away and you are not able to take in what’s on show. It’s part of the cultural industries system. Your time is also divided into five minute segments, and you don’t actually talk to the art, but to the framework of segmentation, this is what you get from the Biennale. Z.O.: The Venice Biennale is a part of the representational world in which we live. How can artworks be made the objects of encounter, not of recognition, and how to think about art in a non-representational way? J.S.: In the 1990s there was a movement of artist strikes. Such as: on this day we won’t do art, or at this moment we won’t deal with the artist and artistic questions… So that was a moment of non-representation, while, on the other hand, by doing this you actually admit that before and after there has been and is something going on which is huge and overwhelming, which is called the representation system. And by going on strike, you cause only a tiny gap between those continuities, and nothing more. I think it’s problematic. How can you make a difference if it’s so overwhelming that you have to strike for stopping doing art. It’s a really diffcult question and I’m maybe not the right person to talk about it, because, after all, I am a contributor to the Venice Bienniale with its evil thing, which is this global and colonizing thing. I don’t believe that an institutional person as I am, as a director, would say that OK – the institution is bad, walk away from it, because that would be hypocritical. I work on a daily basis in this office and I’m trying to make things happen. But I would really say, if I wasn’t working here, that I would go for a truly good selection of institutions, and I don’t believe that all institutions are evil, but you have to select between them. And set up your own institutions, and apply for the space and visibility and money. Z.O.: What is the Liina Siib value-added in representing Estonia? How does she fit into the context of previous Estonian representatives at the Venice Biennale? J.S.: She is critical about Estonia again, as the previous pavilion was (with Kristina Norman). I do believe that our government won’t be happy about the outcome of the pavilion exhibition again, and they weren’t happy with the previous pavilion either… But the positive aspect about it is that we get a lot of contacts and conversations about the topics we present. At the previous Bienniale, we actually discussed the post-colonial heritage of different Eastern European countries. Everybody immediately related to the question, everybody who had had some kind of colonial experience in the past. Starting from Brazil and ending up with whomsoever had any clue about what it means to be colonized. They immediately understood the problem that we were talking about. Now, when we are talking about discrimination in Estonia based on sex, I do believe that there is plenty to talk about in Italy too, for example, or in Latin America or in Europe in general. We do find a way to communicate our problem and invite others to talk about their problems too. I believe that this is the positive value-added we have been looking for. I sat in the pavilion for a whole month and even more, and it gave me the opportunity to talk about the topic and to find out what people were thinking about. Now I’ve been enriched, based on that knowledge, and I’m looking forward to the next step with this pavilion show also. Z.O.: Is there anything I forgot to ask you? What would you like to add? J.S.: Maybe I can ask you, what do you think of a common Baltic Venice Biennale pavilion? Z.O.: I think that it could work and it could resemble the Nordic pavilion, for example, but it really depends on the ability to collaborate. J.S.: I’ve been thinking about it and writing about it for years to colleagues in Latvia and Lithuania, but in vain. We cannot even coordinate the opening times of our pavilions. It sadly happens that we open at the same time, so we can’t visit each other’s openings. If we can’t organize that, how can we put together one large pavilion for the Baltic States? But, nevertheless, this concerns the politics of representation we’ve been discussing here, whether we like to be shown together or not, or are we ashamed of each other, or would we be rather going along with Finland, as in our case, and maybe Lithuania would go together with Poland – or maybe not... This really comes down to the political world: where do you actually belong. Until very recent times, I thought that we belong together as one big Baltic bloc, but now I don’t even know… | |
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