|
|
| There was a young lady of Portugal Jana Kukaine, Art critic Conversation | |
| My conversation with solvita krese, curator of the Re:visited exhibition took place at a time when very little was known about the exhibition: a few statements in the media, the names of the artists and some sort of image in solvita’s head. bringing all this into our discussion space, centrifugal force became the reference point – in a marginal, incorrect and misunderstood direction – as well as the desire to take a risk, to discover new territories. for me, this vision seemed analogous to the situation of staring longingly through binoculars towards the horizon somewhere at the edge of the european continent. in this case, it’s not even important whether it’s Portugal or latvia. the edward lear limerick quoted in the title of the interview can be found in its entirety in a footnote, whereas the image of “a young lady of Portugal” remains like gentle irony – a distant flashing lighthouse somewhere on the periphery of the discussion. Jana Kukaine: I am reading the application for the exhibition and in the first paragraph I see, emphasized, that the selected artists have achieved international recognition, that some big “stars” will be presented. Why is this emphasis necessary? It gives the impression of either being a marketing trick, or a safety net to deflect possible criticism. or even both simultaneously. Solvita Krese: that’s an extract from the project application which was done back in 2008. at that time, while preparing riga’s application for the european capital of culture together with the other creators of the programme, we understood that we had to broaden the european dimension. and what could be simpler than by taking a readymade scheme which had already been used in other european capitals – Vilnius and linz – and by offering an exhibition in which a variety of works from european art biennales are brought together in one place. in linz the exhibition was even given the title Biennale Cuvée – in honour of the wine that is made from a mix of many types of grapes. yes, you could say that we borrowed the idea. J.K.: How is this model better than others? S.K.: it isn’t. it simply was something straightforward and tried and tested, moreover we knew that it works well. J.K.: Why didn’t you want something complex and experimental? S.K.: over the last two years, when we started visiting biennales and thinking about what we could include in our scheme, i did arrive at an experiment. because in the end we understood that quite possibly the selected artists might not be widely known in Latvia, even though they’re internationally recognised. for example, mark manders and Pawel althamer are very well known names. but that wasn’t our focus – famous or not. it didn’t interest us. J.K.: How is the “european dimension” expressed here? S.K.: in the fact that they are european biennales. the fact that many of the chosen artists aren’t even geographically connected with this region illustrates the current reality of european biennales, and this was our choice as well. you could say that in fact it turns out that the result is in conflict with the initial application. J.K.: but nobody was checking up on you anymore at that stage. S.K.: initially i didn’t promise any sort of message either. the required format was formally complied with – we are introducing viewers to artists from european biennales. J.K.: A didactic moment arises here. S.K.: but is there anything bad about that? J.K.: And what is the exhibition’s message now? S.K.: we’re inviting people to think about the biennale phenomenon that has developed throughout the world. is it demand from consumer society, the festivalization of art? does it promote superficiality? is it artists that have become good at creating competition project plans who take part in biennales? should we think about biennales in the context of a city’s image creation? is it an instrument for boosting the number of tourists? is it the product of a free economy – easily packageable and transportable art? in essence, the biennale as disneyland. On the other hand, a biennale can also be a platform for experimentation, for flexibility and mistakes which museums or other serious institutions cannot afford themselves. a biennale can have irreverent artists and flaky things, reacting quickly to what’s current around the world. J.K.: could you provide an example? S.K.: the berlin and istanbul biennales position themselves in an explicitly political context. it was interesting to watch the course of events during the recent istanbul biennale. its curator, fulya erdemci, had issued an invitation to reflect on the domination of capital, and how this relationship of power manifests itself in the public arena, particularly highlighting the problems with the proposed redevelopment of gezi Park. the focus was to exhibit the works in the public arena. Just at the time when they had to start setting up works for the biennale, the unrest began, there were clashes in gezi Park. the curator suddenly changed her mind – and art retreated back to the white cube, the works weren’t exhibited outside. i think that this was an opportunity, when art could have gone out amidst the conflict, and talked about the problem through its interventions. there are so many instruments for achieving this. And then there’s the question – is such a biennale needed here, in latvia, and what would a regular event such as this give us? would it be able to replace the function of our non-existent museum? it’s true, we do have a sculpture quadrennial, but... is it able to create positive changes in the local art environment? for example, in lithuania there’s the baltic triennial of international art, and the Vilnius Painting triennial and tallinn Print triennial are still going on as well. somehow, the lithuanians are always able to leap into new territory, as confirmed by their pavilion at the recent Venice biennale. J.K.: Still, as far as I understand, the Re:visited exhibition is not a metaexhibition about biennales. What is it about? S.K.: i’ve got this feeling that currently the organizers of biennales are searching for a way out of a dead end. for example, i really liked the central exhibition of the 2013 Venice biennale, even though i know that a lot of artists were dissatisfied. the curator, massimiliano gioni, transferred interest from the centre to the periphery. holism appeared in place of logocentrism, where the stars were in the same place as prisoners and lunatics. hierarchy and authorship, as well as where you’re from, are no longer of importance. this influenced us to a large degree when creating this exhibition which we built around the awkward, the incorrect, the odd and the different. the result could be something opposite to what one might imagine on reading the sentence about the exhibition which says that “internationally famous artists” are participating. J.K.: What then, in your opinion, could be imagined when reading this statement? S.K.: that there will be a lot that’s already known about, and predictable. works that can be recognised. J.K.: Do the works that you selected, in this combination, create some qualitatively new approach? Don’t they remain within the boundaries of their quantitative expression as, for example, in the Grafika–S exhibition? S. K.: is the exhibition good? i haven’t seen it yet. J.K.: There are many good works, but I’m troubled by the question of a common theme... In any case, if it’s a reflection on media boundaries or their historical development, then to me it doesn’t seem an enticing train of thought. S.K.: Just last night, i was sitting and writing the text for the Re:visited exhibition brochure. it’s naïve to imagine that a work of art is completely independent of its context, even though at times artists would like to think so. on the other hand, the context doesn’t create the meaning of the work of art either, it just influences it. when one starts taking out the works, and then putting them back in place again, like in a zoo, you can get strange outcomes. trying to put it all together like a jigsaw, i arrived at the english term ‘riddle’. Mīkla is the approximate translation in latvian, but it’s not quite the same. it’s more like the verse about the little bat in louis carroll’s alice in Wonderland2. because there’s something unintelligible – incomprehensible, nonsensical and different. Perhaps “other”? this concept is widely used, and can be encountered in psychoanalysis, in post-colonial, gender, language discourse and in many others. but we don’t want to put the emphasis on a counterbalance which creates tension between ‘me’ and ‘others’ , nor anything different in an exotic sense either. the word is closer to ‘uncomfortable’, ‘different’ or ‘marginal’. J.K.: How does it look in Latvia’s situation, which could also be characterized as being marginal and different? A two-fold otherness develops. What emerges from this? S.K.: identity cannot be constructed by looking at it only from your own position and excluding the view of the other. that picture will never be complete. the artists that we chose also talk about the different, and at moments the question might arise – what connection does all of this have with latvia? let’s say, there will be mexican artist José antonio Vega macotela, who buys prisoners’ time. for this they have to comply with the artist’s instructions, for example, sending greetings to his son on his birthday, or to tail a former lover. the work brings to the fore both the relationship between labour and money as well as the problem of authorship. there is something wrong here with the artist’s role, and this becomes interesting. another example – rana hamadeh, an artist from lebanon, who is rewriting the history of europe from a completely different viewpoint. when i began discussing the concept of the other with her, it really annoyed her. rana objected that it wasn’t all about this, and offered to discuss the alien... how should this be translated? it’s not ‘different one’, it is... ‘someone from another planet’, ‘stranger’ or ‘foreigner’. she suggests marginalizing planet earth, as there has to be some scale, as if looking down from space. in each of the works in the exhibition there is something like that, which creates this strange feeling of other. J.K.: How could this feeling be expressed in words? S.K.: about the same as i’m doing it now. J.K.: Right, but what is the reference point from which you define “other”? S.K.: eurocentric, “white person”, and the position of artlover, which is predictable and based on stereotypes. J.K.: What sort of stereotypes? S.K.: Perhaps stereotypes may not be the right word, because in contemporary art, wherever possible, stereotypes are challenged. rather... let’s say, one can exhibit bill Viola, and everything will be clear and wonderful, there won’t be any unintelligible feelings of marginality. there are many such infinitely beautiful works at biennales, in which one can comprehend the entire institutional hierarchy, the narrative, the aesthetic category. Properly centred works. they have not been of interest to us this time. J.K.: In the application for the exhibition you referred to the notion that today the history of art is being written with the assistance of exhibitions. In that case, what will Re:visited be able to write into the history of Latvian art? S.K.: that’s an idea that belongs to bruce ferguson and which i’ve quoted more than once. he is a co-author of a collection of essays, Thinking about exhibitions, which was one of the first works in which the strategies of various curators were analysed. i think that in latvia the perception of art continues to be focussed very much on the aesthetic experience. J.K.: you mean – the beautiful? S.K.: the beautiful and the tasteful. a perception which is adapted to a certain framework. i find it easy to guess what will appeal to the latvian viewer. for example, the for an Occurrence to Become an adventure exhibition – predictable, risk-free, it was very popular. J.K.: So you foresee that Re:visited will cause confusion? S.K.: Possibly yes, because the exhibition’s frame of reference is outside that context which is of interest to latvian society. we are not open and accepting, but more likely to be homophobic. also you couldn’t say that anyone here is particularly interested in what’s happening in post-colonial discourse, for example, why artists want to rewrite history from islamic positions in lebanon. i also think that latvian society is maddened by the ambiguity of the author’s presence, all kinds of intermediate zones. the viewer is conservative and needs clear, intelligible and attractive things. it may eventuate that people visit the exhibition to look at “internationally famous artists from significant biennales” à la bill Viola, but there’ll be nothing like it there! there will be Paolo nazareth, who followed the slave trail, running from south africa to the lyon biennale and collecting found objects on the way. or, for example, mark manders’ surreal work which simply fascinates me. it is the figure of a sleeping fox, which has a mouse tied to its stomach by a belt. the work was exhibited in the belgian pavilion at the Venice biennale, as well as at one of the little shops on the Via garibaldi, right in the city, where it had got under the feet of shoppers and tourists. i can’t think of a more absurd combination. normally the fox would eat the mouse, surely, instead of having it tied to its stomach with a belt. something is not right in this grotesque situation, and it’s not how you’d like it to be. the work is exactly about what i’m trying to say. it’s difficult to formulate. it’s not easy at all for me to write the accompanying text for the exhibition. J.K.: Have you planned any “sessions” for explaining the exhibition? S.K.: we’ll have a curator’s text, and guided tours will be offered. at the moment we are working on a game which will be an interesting component of the communication process. and then there will be a seminar on the role of the biennale and its place in contemporary art processes. J.K.: Who will you be inviting? S.K.: we have talked to a number of curators. ekaterina degot has now confirmed her participation. i’d like her to tell us about the bergen biennale which she created together with david riff , following motifs of soviet era scientific institutions, with references to strugatsky’s work Monday Begins on Saturday. there will also be Power ekroth, who curated Momentum and the turkish biennale. J.K.: on the list of selected authors there is also a Latvian artist – Kristīne Alksne. How will her work interact with the rest? S.K.: we selected her as a participant in the moscow international biennale for young art. i think that kristīne fits in well among this company with her method of noticing and inverting various things. at the beginning, before we’d found her, we were a bit perplexed on this issue – we couldn’t take Podnieks and Salmanis, as they’ll soon be showing in riga anyway. J.K.: In the end it transpires that this format – to remain within the boundaries of the two biennales of recent years – was quite restrictive. S.K.: extremely restrictive. J.K.: but you chose it yourself. S.K.: well yes, yes. but by the end it was very interesting to work like this. J.K.: Speaking about the title of the exhibition, doesn’t it seem to you that toying with all sorts of prefixes or the highlighting of letters has become clichéd? S.K.: we should return to the time five years ago, when the bare bones of the exhibition were being put together. i had absolutely no idea what the flesh on those bones of the exhibition format would be. the only thing that was clear was that it would be like a repeated reflection on things seen previously. it’s possible that the title is fairly clichéd, but it continues to be accurate. today we’d probably give it a different title. Perhaps a line out of alice. who else would have absurd dialogues? Vonnegut, or one of the authors of the new french novels? J.K.: The english have limericks. Short, humorous verses... My last question – what has the work on this exhibition given you personally? S.K.: new experience of the impact of globalism and multiculturalism on today’s society. a majority of the artists who represent the european art scene today weren’t even born or raised in europe, and only live here, at best. this is the first time that we’ve worked with artists from mexico, brazil and other, no less exotic, countries. and that, as it turns out, isn’t even all that simple. starting with communication, and finishing up with transportation and customs problems. i could never have imagined that the cost of transportation from brazil, for a few small things found on the road, could be so ridiculously expensive! but mostly there’s positive feelings. for example, i found out from konstanze schmit that the main heroine in the play that is used in her work, milda, is a latvian girl, and that the author of the play, fairly well-known soviet era russian avant-garde writer and playwright sergei tretyakov, was born in kuldīga. another hitherto undiscovered name in latvia! but personally... Probably, while preparing food, i pay more attention to reading the packaging of exotic spices, trying to find out where they’ve come from. Translator into English: Uldis Brūns 1 the first line of famous Limerick author Edward Lear’s poem is quoted: “There was a young lady of Portugal, Whose ideas were excessively nautical; She climbed up a tree To examine the sea, But declared she would never leave Portugal. (Edward Lear) 2 The lines to which Solvita Krese refers are: “Twinkle, twinkle, little bat, How i wonder what you’re at!.” | |
| go back | |
