New Garage Museum exhibition traces the history of Russian performance art

The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow recently unveiled “Russian Performance: A Cartography of its History” – a large-scale exhibition, curated by Yulia Aksenova and Sasha Obukhova. The exhibition covers a century of performance art, from theatrical experiments by Kazimir Malevich and Vsevolod Meyerhold to the protest works of Pussy Riot.

“Performance art exhibitions are often monotonous and boring, with endless descriptions of the projects and shoddy photographs,” says Sasha Obukhova, fellow exhibition curator and head of the Garage Museum’s research department. “We wanted to do some sort of quest, so that even people who don’t care about the details of the story get involved.”

This quest begins in 1913, when Russian Futurists painted their faces and took to the streets of Moscow to “slap the public’s taste” and ends with Pussy Riot‘s performative protest against the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. .

Between these two points of tension lie 100 years of Russian spectacle history. And the Garage exhibition is the most academically comprehensive examination of this art form in this country: showcasing the works of more than 150 artists, including the founding group Collective Actions, established in the 1970s but active for more than two decades. decades, the aggressive ‘actionism’ of the 1990s of Oleg Kulik, Anatoly Osmolovsky, Alexander Brener and their contemporary followers like the Voina group and Petr Pavlensky.

The curators intelligently created 12 thematic routes through the exhibition, from “slogan” and “sound” to “city” and “interactive object”. They also encourage visitors to try their hand at performance art, a tactic that may be the most revolutionary gesture in contemporary Russian exhibition practice.

“Performance is the most provocative and radical art form, its history is a series of scandals and conflicts,” says co-curator Yulia Aksenova of the exhibition. “It is always a test of the limits of what is allowed both in art and in society.”

We spoke to Co-Commissioner Sasha Obukhova to find out more …

Wallpaper *: This isn’t the first time that Garage Museum has dedicated an exhibition to the history of performance art, what makes this one special?
Sasha Obukhova: Most of the previous projects were about western experience and actual performance practices. We decided to consider the Russian history of this art form. It also coincides with the centenary of the first futuristic theatrical performances. Russian avant-garde artists revolutionized the theater and pushed it beyond its limits. They drew two vectors – one directed from life to art, the other from art to life – and at the junction, performance emerged as the new art form.

Is there something uniquely Russian about Russian performance art?
We discovered how the so-called eternal “Russian questions” – the relationship to utopia, to reality and to the future – are reflected in the Russian performance. The Russian tradition of performance is also more inclined towards an act or an act, rather than performative mastery. The second hallmark of Russian performance is an almost absolute neglect of corporeality or body language. With rare exceptions, the Russian performances are bodyless and asexual, which you can see in the legacy of Collective Actions which was a very influential band.

There was an explosion of “actionism” in Russian art in the 1990s. This decade is associated with the aggressive actions of Anatoly Osmolovsky, Oleg Kulik, Alexander Brener and others. While in the 2000s, artists seemed to lose interest in performance. Why do you think this is?
For many reasons, but above all the growth of the art market. In Russia, performance – along with readymades, album covers, and diary graphics – was never considered academic. In other words: an easily capitalized tradition. Thus, the dominant positions were taken by more commercial art forms, such as painting, installation, design objects and others.

In contemporary Russia performance is the art of conflict. If we are talking about performance today, we have to talk about Pussy Riot or Petr Pavlensky with their political actions. But you are in reality a museification of the protest gesture. What the government brings to the criminal court, you place in history …
We cannot simply ignore actions that are the subject of public debate and art criticism. However, we struggled to represent them in the exhibition. Not that we encountered any ideological pressure from the authorities, but – strangely – we were faced with obstruction from the artists themselves.

This exhibition is produced by the Garage Research department, from the contemporary art archives that you have gathered for 20 years. Some time ago these archives became part of the museum and the foundation of the research service, library and video library. What are your goals today?
The Research Department is not limited to collecting and archiving information on the history of contemporary Russian art. It is even more about active propagation and education through exhibitions, publications and other forms of professional activity. And finally, to show the world that Russia still has the energy of post-avant-garde experience. Performance is action, and – as was written in the manifesto of the founding actionist group of the 1990s Expropriation of the Art Territory – “action is revolution”.