The Last Soviet State

Beate Petersen

"This is not a UFO landing at a strategic site, but an infiltration that puts a temporary stop to the ordinary course of things," David Riff said to Kunstforum shortly before the opening of the first edition of Bergen Assembly – An Initiative for Art and Research, which he has curated together with Ekaterina Degot.

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Roee Rosen, Maxim Komar-Myshkin og The Buried Alive Group: A Manifesto (detail), Institute of Defensive Magic, Bergen Assembly 2013. Photo: Sissel Lillebostad.

Spread across eleven venues in Bergen, the exhibition "Monday Begins on Saturday" could well give one precisely that impression: that a UFO has landed and set up Soviet enclaves all around town. Both curators are based in Moscow, and many of the more than forty artists taking part in the exhibition are from the former Soviet states. At the two-day symposium during the opening weekend, dialectical materialism, viewed in the light of Soviet art and theory, was among the topics that were debated. In addition, the exhibition venues have been kitted out for the occasion to resemble research institutes, with the same kind of plants and electronic wall clocks that were obligatory features of government offices in the Soviet bureaucracy.

The inspiration – indeed the very fulcrum – for the exhibition is a Soviet science fiction novel written in 1960 by the brothers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. The novel describes a fictitious research institute where scientists and bureaucrats work alongside magicians and legendary fairy-tale characters to solve the problems of humanity with the help of magic. Viewed from outside, the fictional institute is a two-storey building, but inside it has at least twelve floors, endless corridors, and many kilometres of bookshelves. Here they work to combat positivism and vulgar materialism, pursuing their researches without so much as a break: Monday begins on Saturday. According to Degot and Riff, this amounts to an apt definition of socialism: an endless number of ministries, all busy working for human happiness – and with such application that they don't even notice the time. But for Riff, the Strugatsky brothers' book is more than just a satire of Soviet research institutions and the bureaucracy surrounding them; it is also a philosophical novel which suggests that, when people can satisfy their every desire, they become animals.

A Russian figure

Drawing parallels between bureaucracy and magic, or describing the state by means of enigmatic and burlesque satire, was a popular exercise among Soviet artists and intellectuals. There are obvious reasons for this: the utopia of a classless and thoroughly rationalised society was being implemented in a culture prone to belief in wonders and miracles and which has a special fondness for paradoxes and all things mutually exclusive. In The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov, written in the 1930s, a repressive Stalinist society deprived of religion receives a visit from the devil and his entourage, who turn the world on its head with their supernatural mischief. In his "necro-realistic" films, the film director Yevgeny Yufit depicts the disastrous consequences that arise when the more pathological aspects of human nature are allowed to conduct absurd scientific experiments – such as trying to graft people onto trees. In other words, the mad scientist is in many ways a Russian figure.

But what does this have to do with Bergen? Well, when they first visited Norway, Degot and Riff suddenly felt transported back to the USSR. In the post-Stalinist Soviet Union, roughly one percent of the population were employed in some form of state-funded research. Nevertheless, the products that resulted from this research were never able to compete on the international market, for what was produced was primarily ideas and critical thinking. And that's how it is on the Norwegian art scene, according to Degot and Riff. Describing their first encounter with Norwegian art institutions in the exhibition catalogue, they write: "It was the invisible hand of the state, rather than the market, that made everything possible (…) The idea that contemporary art was a separate, neutral sphere independent of politics, religion, and even of business, was accepted without a hint of doubt." One participant at the symposium, Ane Hjort Guttu, seemed the very embodiment of this social-democratic utopia. For her entire life so far, she has been a beneficiary of the Norwegian welfare system; she has benefitted from study grants, foundation grants and work grants, while all the commissions she has received for public artworks and all her teaching positions have also been state-funded. Even the house she lives in was built especially for artists. But this conformist welfare state, Guttu claimed, makes it difficult to be a visionary. And because we know that social democracy is in decline, it is also difficult to be critical, she said. The effects of the neo-liberal wind sweeping in across the entire Western world is of course something Degot and Riff were thoroughly aware of. Even so, they felt that in some respects Norwegian society had achieved the utopia and the promise of happiness which the Soviet state had always dreamt of.

The political prehistory

One could ask, however, whether it was an exhibition that focuses on the former Soviet Union and its utopias that Bergen city council's former commissioner for culture, the conservative politician Henning Warloe, had in mind when in 2007 he suggested that the town should launch its own biennial.

In a broader context, the question of why anyone should want to launch a biennial or triennial is equally interesting. For a long time, the field was dominated by just a few such events. The Venice Biennale was founded in 1895, the São Paulo Biennial in 1951, the Paris Biennial in 1959, the Sydney Biennial in 1973, and the Istanbul Biennial in 1987. Due in part to the fall of the Iron Curtain, in part to the entry onto the international art scene of the so-called third world, the 1990s saw an explosive increase in the number of biennials, with the result that there are now some 200 of them. But over the past decade the interest that the biennial phenomenon once attracted has given way to ambivalence. This was evident during the three-day conference "To Biennial Or Not To Biennial?" which convened at Bergen Kunsthall in September 2009 in order to explore Warloe's suggestion.

Some of the ambivalence is due to the fact that biennials have in many cases been hijacked by urban development strategies and forced into the mould of sensation culture. In many cases, the initiative for biennials has come from politicians hoping that the festive nature of these events will make their cities more attractive – not just for residents and visitors, but also for investors. In her article "Biennial Culture: A Longer History", published in The Biennial Reader, a monster of a book that resulted from Bergen's biennial conference, Caroline A. Jones describes how biennials can be linked to tourism, the development of urban infrastructure, the rebranding of once totalitarian regimes, multinational capital investment and new geopolitical ambitions. The "branding" of Bergen was also one of Warloe's objectives. In an interview in Kunstforum in September 2009, Warloe said he was inspired by the ideas on urban development of the American author and economist Richard Florida – ideas that have had huge impact the world over. According to Florida, arts and culture are strategic instruments for attracting the creative class, who tend to be followed by other affluent groups. From this perspective, arranging a biennial is a way for a city to raise its profile in the world, not only culturally, but also economically. Worried that Bergen could become isolated, Warloe wanted to do something to attract people with skills to the city, in a bid to turn Bergen into Scandinavia's most exciting and innovative cultural destination. In the interview he gave to Kunstforum, he said: "My usual point is that Bergen should not be a museum town resigned to its own self-satisfaction – an attitude one tends to find in the culture here. No, in the 16th century Bergen was Northern Europe's largest city, because we were international."

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Ane Hjort Guttu, still from Untitled (The City at Night) (2013) Institute of Anti-Formalism, Bergen Assembly 2013.

According to the arts plan put forward by the city council in 2007, with the title "Kunstbyen Bergen 2008–2017" (Bergen: City of Art 2008–2017), the two main strategies of the council are to ensure artistic freedom and autonomy, and to promote and strengthen the arts as a factor that helps build the identity of a diverse community. As we read in this document: "A biennial/triennial that is well rooted in the local arts scene and in the community, but which is at the same time perceived as relevant to the art world internationally, would have great significance with regard to networking and skills development, thus contributing positively to an innovative city of culture." And neither is the commercial aspect of an art biennial overlooked: "Ultimately, it would stimulate cultural tourism, thus having a positive economic knock-on effect, as analyses have shown is the case with festivals and major events when they prove successful." One wonders, however, whether the specified strategies and goals are mutually compatible. At first glance, nurturing cultural tourism or contributing to Bergen's cultural identity do not appear synonymous with artistic freedom. Moreover, the formula "exciting and innovative" is a vague cliché that says little about who the council wants to attract – and how it intends to do it.

An alternative biennial model

Another objection to biennials is that they exacerbate the homogenising effect of globalisation. In the introduction to The Biennial Reader, the editors Elena Filipovic, Marieke van Hal and Solveig Øvstebø write that biennials tend to be viewed as utopian opportunities to discuss politics, race, identity, globalisation and post-colonialism. But, they ask, for all their apparent celebration of globalisation, are biennials really the inclusive, transnational and multicultural projects they claim to be? Or do they serve to consolidate a culture that is both nationalist and occidental, and which supports the Western hegemony with regard to art, exhibition paradigms, curators and audiences? As Jan Verwoert points out in his article "The Curious Case of Biennial Art", global biennial culture can be accused of promoting a form of art tourism that encourages the rather questionable penchant of well-to-do Westerners to fly around the globe consuming cultural differences as if they were culinary specialities. In other words, cultural differences can easily be manipulated or vulgarised in a transnational context. Although countries are linked together in a global infrastructure, they still display different symbolic codes, different cultures and different modernities, which cannot easily be translated one into the other.

A couple of basic conditions that were set for a biennial to be established in Bergen were that it should be anchored in the local community and should challenge the traditional biennial format. At the conference in 2009, the atmosphere was apparently so thrilling that one of the conference participants proposed holding a conference of precisely that type every two years rather than an exhibition-based event. Another suggestion was to fix the discursive element as the central element, and to have the exhibitions and art projects revolve around it like satellites. The artistic advisory board eventually adopted a slightly different model. In order not to overburden the city's art institutions they suggested a triennial rather than a biennial. Instead of the usual curator-based model, two so-called "conveners" would be appointed whose responsibility would be to organise an "assembly", where artists, cultural producers and other intellectuals would use a research-based approach to explore the theme of possible futures rather than summarising and analysing the contemporary situation. In addition, the project should apply a longer-term event structure, beginning in early 2012, where those involved would be challenged to form mobile institutions, forums and research projects to search for possible future zones in an age dominated by the transient present and rapid change.

The curatorial signature

In other words, the artistic advisory board imposed fairly tight constraints. It would seem, however, that Degot and Riff have failed to follow these guidelines, with the result that in all essential respects their exhibition format is little different from that of other biennials and art events. As Degot and Riff themselves pointed out at the press conference, what they have put together is an exhibition more than a platform for discussion and debate.

Neither does this first edition of Bergen Assembly make it easy to see what the difference between the role of a traditional curator and that of the conveners Degot and Riff is supposed to consist in. Big art events have long been criticised for their tendency to give greater prominence to the curators than the participating artists. We need only think of Harald Szeemann's 1972 documenta, or Okwui Enwezor's 2002 edition of that event; or where Istanbul is concerned, the biennials by René Block, Rosa Martinez, or Vasif Kortun and Charles Esche. The curators develop the concepts, choose exhibition spaces, decide on the placing of works, and write the catalogue texts. But they don't simply establish a context that shapes our understanding of the various artworks, in some cases they also leave us feeling that the works are there to illustrate some higher-level concept. This is also the case at Bergen Assembly. Degot and Riff's signature was readily apparent in the exhibition "Monday begins on Saturday". Although they didn't create the works themselves – something they did in fact initially consider doing – they describe their contribution as "writing in space with the works of artists". In other words, they regard themselves as the exhibition's authors.

Even so, one does not get the impression here that the curatorial concept obscures the individual works. There are several reasons for this. One is the prosaic fact that the exhibition consisted largely of videos which it takes a long time to watch. At the same time, Degot and Riff have opted for a relatively narrow focus, inviting artists from what is effectively a single geographical, cultural and political region – a strategy that helps to avoid the flattening or levelling of different forms of expression for which other biennials have often been criticised. Their emphasis on fiction rather than the theoretical and/or discursive dimension also helps to give "Monday Begins on Saturday" the appearance of a well-focused show, in which the ingenious exhibition structure serves as a receptacle for a range of singular, but no less complex and enigmatic stories.

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Dimitri Venkov (in cooperation with Antonina Baever), still from Like the Sun (2013), co-produced by Triumph Gallery, Moskva, co-produced by Bergen Assembly 2013.

Ownership and local roots

Returning to the objectives of setting up mobile institutions and forums, and of ensuring the project's long-term viability, it would appear that these too were somewhat ignored. Indeed, one gets the impression that the very opposite has been achieved. After the release of their press statement in December 2011, Degot and Riff maintained a secretive stance towards their work rather than one of openness and inclusivity. No one knew what would happen during the exhibition period, what kind of participants the town would be playing host to, or what those visitors might be able to contribute outside the exhibition situation.

One could also ask what exactly it was the artistic advisory board had in mind when they suggested setting up mobile forums; what kinds of debates did they envisage, in what format, and involving whom? Should the artists initiate collaborative projects with each other, setting up temporary workshops and research institutes? Or was it the idea that the art institutions should cooperate with the conveners on organising various events ahead of the exhibition – as Okwui Enwezor did for documenta 11, which was preceded by four conferences at different geographical locations over an eighteen-month period?

Whatever the answer, it obviously isn't easy to back two horses at once; it's hard to anchor the triennial locally while at the same time developing an event with international appeal – of both the artistic and commercial varieties. Although the triennial has generated interest among the specialised international art community, the local reception has been only lukewarm, among both local art circles and the city's other residents. "As a city of art, Bergen is under occupation. We are waiting for the occupation to be lifted," said Johan Sandborg, assistant rector at the Art Academy in Bergen, during a debate at Litteraturhuset a few weeks after the triennial opened. On 26 September, Hilde Sandvik wrote in Bergens Tidende that "no one who has commented on the triennial during the past few days has been critical of the art or the curatorial approach. The real elephant in the room is the information, or the will to communicate – about what is happening in town, and why it ought to matter". One could ask, however, whether the absence of a local audience is attributable merely to poor communications, or whether it also conceivable that the triennial has failed to overcome the self-satisfaction that Warloe warned about in Bergen – an attitude which means the exhibition wouldn't arouse interest no matter how good it is, simply because, thematically, it isn't directly concerned with Bergen, and because it doesn't involve the local art community enough.

Art as research

Although the artistic advisory board's hopes concerning long-term viability and curatorial function have remained partially unfulfilled, the exhibition certainly takes the research concept seriously – even if it gives the impression that Degot and Riff are more interested in the former Soviet Union and research as a tool for achieving utopia than in the concept of research as it has been discussed in art schools and art institutions over recent years.

Bergen Kunsthall, which has assumed the name "Institute of Disappearing Future" for the occasion, is exhibiting photographs documenting ethics and aesthetics at the many research institutes that the Soviet Union founded in the 1960s to prepare the ground for the forthcoming communist state. In Dimitri Venkov's hour-long video Like the Sun at the "Institute of Defensive Magic" – a work that offers a genuinely corny blend of post-Soviet tristesse, science fiction and New Age – three researchers set out to find the ingredients for a magical yogurt that will support perfect human existence. In a dimly lit room at the "Institute of Imaginary States", Lars Cutzner and Fadlabi have compiled extensive documentation about the Burmese Paduang people and their impact on tourism in Thailand, which they show together with records, test tubes and measuring instruments – in other words, tools that are completely irrelevant to the study of the data collected, and which serve instead as an ironic comment on the notion of artistic research.

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Lars Cuzner og Fadlabis Forensics of Attraction, Installation view, Institute of Imaginary States, co-produced by Bergen Assembly 2013. Photo: Nils Klinger, 2013.

In these works, research is a tool that serves both the pursuit of impossible dreams, and the articulation of thoughts about how the world is actually configured, and how cultural, economic and structural differences are maintained. At the same time these works illustrate why scientific and artistic research are not entirely the same thing. Whereas scientific research tends to be systematic and rigorous, often absorbing earlier findings into its newer results, artistic research is characterised by unlikely juxtapositions, omissions, reformulations and sleights of hand – or, when it comes down to it, even magic. As Degot and Riff write in the catalogue when talking about the Strugatsky brothers' novel, magic is perfect "as a tool for institutional critique, in that it spices up the positivism and prosaic ultra-rationalism of the bureaucrats with a little fantasy and madness".

Ane Hjort Guttu's video Untitled (The City at Night) at the "Institute of Formalism" offers yet another approach to the concept of research. In this, a female artist talks about the thousands of abstract drawings she has made during her nocturnal wanderings around Oslo, drawings she keeps in a huge filing cabinet, firmly resolved never to exhibit them. It's an interesting thought: that one could be an inveterate outsider yet still work tirelessly, in secret, and without the desire to be seen. And perhaps this is how the art world really functions: immense amounts of work are invested in spaces that seem quite unassuming and unobtrusive from the outside, just like the fictional research institute where people work indefatigably – an institute which, according to the curators, is characterised by "a system where production failed, but research flourished, where material things were overshadowed by ideas, and where bureaucracy actually performed miracles rather than condemn them".

The myth of the welfare state

If research is one of the exhibition's principal themes, national self-images – Norwegian as well as Russian – are another. As mentioned, Degot and Riff had the impression of being back in the Soviet Union the first time they visited Bergen. "We accustomed ourselves to looking at Norway as an expensive and wealthy Soviet Union, where the inhabitants, very different from Soviet citizens, were collectively inclined, and even proud of and grateful for the sense of belonging," they write in the introduction to the catalogue.

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Keti Chukhrov, Love Machines, supported by CCI FABRIKA, Moscow og National Center for Contemporary Art, Moscow, co-produced by Bergen Assembly 2013. Photo: Liz Eve, 2013.

During their visit to Norway, they were also told that the Norwegians regarded themselves as good. This is a distinctive feature of the national self-image, which Sille Storihle and Jumana Manna also discuss in their video The Goodness Regime at the "Institute of Imaginary States". In this, the Oslo Accords, the Norwegian oil adventure, and the legacy of Fridtjof Nansen form the subject matter for a theatrical event with children in the leading roles, a work that also references Terje Tvedt and Nina Witoszek's critique of Norwegian society as overly concerned with solutions and consensus. Degot and Riff argue, however, that there is no space in this narrative for the likes of Anders Behring Breivik. They feel that all issues relating to cultural Marxism, in other words, the theoretical underpinnings of Breivik's attacks, are universally rejected. No one mentions him any more than they do Marx, the authors claimed.

It's an interesting observation, which was to some extent supported by the surprise evident in the foreign media at the fact that the party that gave most nourishment to Breivik's worldview is now in government. But despite the correctness of that observation, it deserves to be questioned. Most people know that public opinion in Norway has changed since 22 July, that attitudes have hardened, and that things one couldn't say before the attack, especially on the issue of immigration policy, are now perceived as legitimate. The fact that, just ten days after the biennial opened, the right-wing parties were able to secure the election victory they had long been hoping for probably has less to do with Breivik's being silenced and more to do with right-wing claims that the Norwegian Labour Party had been naïve and underestimated security concerns, for which it has now been punished. As for the "inexhaustible reserves" on which the cultural institutions feed, and which Degot and Riff believe those institutions take for granted: if the Progress Party achieve their goal, it will mean the end of Arts Council Norway and of state grants for artists. But that we already knew. As Guttu pointed out during the seminar, the welfare state is under threat and social solidarity is starting to crumble. So doesn't that simply indicate that the claims that we view ourselves as fundamentally good, or that Norwegian society is characterised by consensus, have become clichés? To what extent does this kind of diagnosis offer new insights?

Chto Delat's Brecht-inspired songspiel The Border Musical, shown at the "Institute of Love and the Lack Thereof", explored a different aspect of the Norwegian welfare state. In this story, based on two years of research into, among other things, Norwegian-Russian alliances, a Russian woman named Tanja turns her back on the gruff, male-chauvinist mining community of Nikel to live with her new Norwegian husband, who shows "respect for women and does not beat the children". But still their cultures collide. Tanja's encounter with Norwegian society, "where everyone is happy", becomes a pitiful affair. The son steals and it's the mother who does the beating – whereupon the child welfare service intervenes to separate them. The unquestioning belief of the child welfare service that it is doing the right thing almost amounts to abuse. The determination and moral aloofness of the system reduces the individual to apathy: Tanja's husband stands there like a paralysed onlooker.

Even if, here in Norway, we still place our trust in the state, isolated cases of authoritarian arrogance notwithstanding, other forces begin to play a part when the state can no longer be trusted and life no longer seems predictable and safe. In Russia, people know that things can go seriously wrong. The former Soviet state has given way to a robber capitalism unlike anything the West has seen before, and a new authoritarian regime is steadily taking hold. Keti Chukhrov's hour-long film Love Machines, also on show at the "Institute of Love and the Lack Thereof", depicts just such a society, now utterly corrupt, where violence and exploitation are eating away at the very fabric of society. Here one finds no evidence whatsoever of good intentions. Roee Rosen's Historical Jokes videos, shown at the "Institute of Defensive Magic", are also of the darker kind. A group of Soviet citizens in exile in Israel pursue their lives like the living dead, kidnapping people and forcing them to read long, complex, incomprehensible jokes about situations in sixteenth-century Russia. They are truly disturbing, like black masquerades that push situations to their extremes. Beside the video screen hangs a manifesto expressing total rejection of the Russia this group of living dead has left behind. Whereas one might previously have had the impression that the Russian people were always willing to perform a complete volte-face and to sacrifice their lives in pursuit of some new utopia, this manifesto makes it patently clear that there are no utopias left to pursue, only contempt, at least for this group of emigrants.

Comparing the image Norwegians have of themselves with this type of statement is the biennial's most powerful moment: here the Norwegian welfare model is juxtaposed with realities that are harsher, more chaotic, and where the stakes are far higher. In light of these extremes, the idea of Norwegian society naïvely clinging to its notion of goodness assumes new significance. Even so, one could say that, if it is a UFO that has landed in Bergen this autumn, it would appear our visitors haven't entirely grasped where they are, and that we for our part haven't fully understood who is visiting us. At the same time, it is this skewed and unfamiliar take on national self-images, on research, or on globalisation for that matter, that makes this first edition of the triennial distinctive.

 

Kunstjournalen B-post #1_13: Assembly, Momentum, LIAF