MANIFESTA 10 blog

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Back to School: MANIFESTA 10 Workshops for School Children

For about two months after MANIFESTA 10’s opening in late June its target-audiences consisted mainly of Russian or foreign tourists and locals. Then all of a sudden, at the beginning of September, we as art-mediators had to switch from adult groups to an avalanche of school children. In addition to or even instead of the mediated tour - we were also supposed to deliver so-called workshops to the children. For someone like me, unfamiliar with practical art making, it seemed a real challenge. But gradually, and with the help from the kids, I came to realise that our mutual goal is educational, and that the point was not to create meticulously executed masterpieces, but rather to learn new things about the artists and their practices by doing and experimenting.

In my amateurish opinion, even with children it is important to establish some chronological and terminological frames of the show — for them to understand and begin applying words like ‘biennial’, ‘group exhibition’, ‘contemporary art’, ‘medium’, ‘materials’ and others. Therefore, the creative part of such tours often implies discussion — before we proceed to crafting any objects. In the latter case though, handmade collages, drawings, textiles, etc. may be extremely helpful in getting acquainted with the techniques preferable by certain artists, as well as remembering some of the exhibition's themes.

One interesting thing that cropped up while attempting to develop the aforementioned art vocabulary together was the fact that many kids would really like to know the artist’s name and country of origin ­— but very few of them are used to reading the labels in the rooms. Drawing their attention to such elements of the show, for example by asking the group to find the necessary information themselves, playfully introduces young visitors to the ABC of museum-going, so that in the next rooms they start looking for panels, captions and other supporting material without being prompted.  

After working out these basic skills, we move on to examining the piece on display and share our own, often very different, interpretations of what we see in the process. The workshop usually ties together the looking and discursive parts. I have found that children aged from 8 to 12 respond very enthusiastically to the format of collage which combines practical and theoretical issues: the group gathers in the space and collectively conceives a work on paper, using pictures of the artist and his /her project for MANIFESTA 10. We repeat this scenario in the rest of the rooms on our route, with the resulting designs becoming more and more original and playful. In the end, young audiences, unaccustomed to contemporary art, leave the exhibition with handmade objects that document their first ever encounter therewith. Which, in many ways, is the most pleasurable educational achievement for an art-mediator. 

By M10 Art-Mediator Natasha Soboleva

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Reflections on Timur Novikov at MANIFESTA 10 by M10 art-mediator Natasha Soboleva

Timur Novikov’s room within MANIFESTA 10’s main exhibition in the General Staff Building is personally one of the most joyful environments for both art-mediation and thoughtful meditation. Kasper König delegated the right to choose and organize the space to Ekaterina Andreeva, a Russian Museum curator, art historian and, perhaps more importantly, a friend of Timur throughout the 1980-90s and until his untimely death in 2002. What we find there is a selection of Novikov’s textile compositions hung in two levels, one above the other, on the ochre walls of the room with the kitschy title “The Red Transformer”.

Portrait of Timur Novikov with Boney hands by Evgeny Kozlov. Oil, gouache on canvas 103 X 94 cm. 1988. State Russian Museum, St Petersburg.

For those who are familiar with the artist’s practice, or were lucky enough to have met him in person, this is a unique chance to experience Timur’s signature Horizons in a novel context, surrounded by prominent western names, some of the latter entering into a subtle dialogue with the cult figure of the Leningrad avant-garde. For instance, Thomas Hirschhorn’s Abschlag installation in the neighbouring room is a look back of sorts at Soviet communal living, a space so mundane for the local underground artists whereof the multitalented Novikov was arguably the brightest. It was in his room, in a shared flat on the corner of streets Liteyny and Voinova where the extraordinary creative milieu started gathering in the early ‘80s, generating art out of any domestic debris at hand (including curtains and upholstery) and pioneering performative media in the process.

In 1986 Timur and the ‘New Artists’ issued this fake ID certifying Andy Warhol’s membership to their imaginary ‘Academy of All Arts’. 

Timur Novikov, Sergey 'Africa' Bugayev, Sergey Kuryokhin and others with the composer John Cage doing an improvised Water Symphony in Africa's studio on Fontanka, following Cage's concert at the Philarmonia in June 1988. 

Further along on the second floor there is a direct allusion to Novikov in Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s A Handkerchief Opera who replicates his black and white Penguins on a larger fabric, with music attached to it — a piece from Sergey Kuryokhin’s soundtrack to a trashy post-Soviet horror film, The Designer (Gospodin Oformitel). Needless to say, Kuryokhin and Novikov were close friends and collaborators on numerous brilliantly idiotic theatrical and music acts in the ‘80s. While later on, it was Novikov again, who stood at the helm of this country’s first raves in Saint Petersburg and Moscow, sparking a whole generation of Russian electronic musicians and DJs.

(Left) Collaborators and friends Sergey Kuryokhin and Timur Novikov

Back at the other end of the enfilade there stands Ilya Kabakov’s Red Wagon, an installation from the permanent collection of the Hermitage. Unlike Muscovite Kabakov, Novikov never gained significant recognition in the west. However, the very juxtaposition of the two leading figures of the respective Leningrad/ Petersburg and Moscow non-conformist circles, and the differences between their lives and legacies is something worth reflecting upon.

Musician and member of the ‘New Artists’ and later the ‘New Academy’ Georgy ‘Gustav’ Guryanov and Timur Novikov.

For the local public of any ages and backgrounds this is an equally inspiring space, representing one of their most exciting contemporaries, a man of genuine intelligence and stunning creativity. While foreign visitors are additionally amazed by the level of inner freedom effortlessly attained by Timur Novikov and his fellow artists despite the austere living conditions behind the iron curtain and the omnipresent surveillance by police.

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A series of Artists' Walks by Joana Monbaron

As the organizers of the Artists' Walks project within the framework of the M10 Education Program, St. Petersburg based artist Olga Jitlina and art historian Emily Newman, outlined:

“drawing from the strong tradition of the St. Petersburg derive, the MANIFESTA 10 Education department has included in its schedule of regular events, a program of Artists' Walks.”

Using local Saint Petersburg’s artists' knowledge of their hometown, the 'Artists' Walks' aim to create a relaxed platform for local artists to meet and discuss various issues with some of the international artists invited to MANIFESTA 10. The idea is to form an artistic duet (one local artist/one international) and a tailored walk in a part of the city that is relevant to the artists' common interests, with a few enthusiasts from the public to join them.

Walk 1: Lado Darakhelevidze & Evguenya Golant at Torzhovski Market

The project was launched at the Torzhovski Market on May, 14. MANIFESTA 10 Public Program artist Lado Darakhelevidze was paired with Evguenia Golant, for a sketching and painting session. Using the post-Soviet lingua franca – the Russian language – to communicate with workers and market-traders, both artists expanded on their professional interests of issues surrounding migration. After the market studio-session, we went together to the Hodja Nasredin tearoom, located above the market, to discuss a new artistic movement that Lado Darakhelidze subsequently named “Marketism”.

Above: Lado Darakhelevidze and Evguenia Golant

Walk 2: Fishing with Wolfgang Tillmans and FotoDepartment

The 'Artists' Walks' continued on June 16, when a group of young photographers associated with FotoDepartment, St. Petersburg took Wolfgang Tillmans fishing on the Smolenka river (in the city's suburbs). The very act of fishing seen by the students as somehow similar to the process of taking pictures being the inspiration behind their walk. 

“just like a fisherman, a photographer is supposed to be patient and attentive to things.”

Two professional fishermen even joined us for this three-hours fishing session, interspersed with conversations and tea drinking.

Above Wolfgang Tillmans

Walk 3: Pavel Braila and PARAZIT: Borey Gallery

On July 18, a visit to the cult Borey Gallery was arranged for Moldovan artist Pavel Braila, who was asked for MANIFESTA 10's Public Program to react in some way to the local context of St. Petersburg. The local PARAZIT artists collective invited Pavel to have a guided tour of the exhibition “Black Envy”, which displays “perhaps the first attempt since the launch of Manifesta to consider the uneasy relationship between the local and the international art scenes”. After the meeting, the artists went for a walk along the Fontanka and sat in a park to discuss the history of the PARAZIT group with one of its founders, Igor Panin.

Above: Pavel Braila, Olga Jitlina and members of the PARAZIT group

Walk 4: Josef Dabernig & Pavel Stepanov at Petrovskiy stadium

The Viennese artist Josef Dabernig has been active in the genre of experimental film since the 1990s. His short film, "Wisla" was filmed in an empty football pitch in Kraków in 1996, while many of his photographic series take place in sports architectural structures. Art-historian Pavel Stepanov who's dissertation-in-progress takes on the topic "Artistic space in film in the Leningrad School" was invited on August 30 to join Dabernig for a walk at the empty and lifeless Petrovskiy stadium, which then became the theatre for an open conversation on art, film and nearly touching on football, coincidentally echoing the actual fate of the stadium, which has been partially closed to penalise supporters for racist behavior.

Above: Josef Dabernig

Walk 5: Aaron Schuster & Alla Mitrofanova, & Irina Yukina

Before his lecture on the sexual revolution of the Soviet 1920s at the Sigmund Freud Museum of Dreams for the MANIFESTA 10 Public Program on September 6, writer and philosopher, Aaron Schuster was invited for a walk starting from the Museum of the Siege of Leningrad’s Defence. Together with Alla Mitrofanova, media philosopher and founder of the cyber Feminist club (operating in GES-21 since 1994) and Irina Yukina, author of the book "Russian feminism as a challenge to the present", we walked to and talked about places associated with the events of the St. Petersburg and Russian feminist movement and the sexual revolution of the late 19th and early 20th century.

By combining a local artist with a foreign one, the “Artists' Walks” project seems to been to date successful in its will to encourage strangers to resist global politics with collaborative thinking, group learning and gestures of friendship.

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Thoughts of school children on visiting MANIFESTA 10

One of out art-mediators Natasha Soboleva – made some questionnaires for some of the school children who visited MANIFESTA 10 last week. We thought we’d share with you some of our favourite answers given in response to the Biennial's works...

The following answers are all from 15-year old 9-graders from three local St. Petersburg schools: a sports school, a gymnasium and an orphanage. 

Erik van Lieshout. The Basement. 2014. Mixed media installation: HD, color, sound, 17:19 min. Wood, color copies. Courtesy Annet Gelink Gallery, Amsterdam, Netherlands. Commissioned by MANIFESTA 10 St. Petersburg.

Q: In his M10 work, Erik van Lieshout aimed to “change the system”: what do YOU want to change in yourself, your country, the world around etc.?

"I’d like to help change homeless people’s lives for the better!"

(a child from an orphanage)

"I’d like Russia to join the EU."

 "I’d like to live in Paris."

"I’d like to finish education as soon as possible!" 

"I’d like to have lots of money and a Mercedes car."

"I’d love to live in the world without money."

 "I’d like to change the eco situation in the world, from the rubbish on the streets to the situation with our forests. For example to create national parks and improve the conditions for animals in the zoos."

Vlad Mamyshev-Monroe. Tragic Love. Black and white photo, hand-coloured. Collection of Elena Selina - XL Gallery

Q: Vladik Mamyshev-Monroe as an artist had multiple personifications. Which fictional or historic character would YOU like most to impersonate?

"Van Gogh"

"Kurt Cobain"

"Elizabeth the Second"

"Putin )))" (the smiles were included)

"Chip or Dale"

"Ivan The Terrible"

"Yuri Nikulin"

"Peter The Great"

Ilya Kabakov. Red Wagon. 1991

Q: Ilya Kabakov’s Red Wagon is a metaphor of the Soviet past. If you were an artist aiming to represent contemporary Russia, how would you change the colour of the wagon and the music inside?

"It would be red/white/blue with a Russian hymn playing inside (because the authorities would hardly allow anything else)." 

"It would be glamorous, decorated with rhinestones. White inside and bright silver outside."

"Sparkling squares with greyish paint splashed over. RAP would be playing!"

"Entirely black with green flashing lights and dub-step music." 

Vadim Fishkin. A Speedy Day. 2003. Electronic clock, room construction, light by A.J. Vaisbard. Installation view, MANIFESTA 10, General Staff Building, State Hermitage Museum

Vadim Fishkin’s “Speedy Day” is a reflection on the relativity of time. What could be really done within two and a half minutes?

"You could cook an egg"

"You could jump out of a plane in a parachute"

"Thinking of what could be done within a few minutes' time!"

 (a very conceptual response from a 7th grader)

Some more quotes from Thursday 4th September’s 7th grade school children: 

Francis Alÿs. Lada “Kopeika” Project. Brussels—St. Petersburg. 2014. In collaboration with brother Frédéric, Constantin Felker, and Julien Devaux. Commissioned by MANIFESTA 10, St. Petersburg.

Francis Alÿs uses his personal story as a starting point for his project. Which of your stories would YOU like to share with people?

"I’d like to tell people how I started playing basketball and my first victories"

(12-year old girl)

Timur Novikov. Works from the Horizons series, 1980-1991. Installation view, MANIFESTA 10, General Staff Building, State Hermitage Museum

Timur Novikov and the “New Artists” made up “the last heroes” generation. Who is YOUR hero?

"Mikhail Shemyakin" (a Russian painter, stage designer, sculptor and publisher, and a controversial representative of the nonconformist art tradition of St. Petersburg.

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M10 mediator Sasha Naumova tells us of the intrigue provoked by Wael Shawky's 'Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Show File' at MANIFESTA 10

It’s always hard to mediate about video-art since it’s almost impossible to talk about an artwork when visitors haven’t yet seen it at all. Video demands more time for observation. We’re not always prepared to devote half an hour in front of one artwork, especially when we’ve already missed the start of it. Why don’t we go and see the Otto Zitko painting again instead? 

Wael Shawky Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Show File artwork is located right next to the Zitko rooms, and the only thing visitors seem to catch of it is the music and the strange voices – which is rather disturbing whilst contemplating the dynamic red lines by the Austrian artist.

But what do we see if we finally do look at the Shawky work? A big screen, where some beautiful, whilst at the same time rather revolting marionettes move about and a label which explains that the work is based on a history of the Crusaders fighting for Jerusalem. Nevertheless if we stay in the room for even a few seconds and watch just a small fragment we experience an unexpected wave of fear that seemingly comes out of nowhere.

Wael Shawky, Cabaret Crusades: The Horror Show File, 2012. Video Still from HD, colour. Sound, 60:53. Installation view, MANIFESTA 10, General Staff Building, State Hermitage Museum.

From first glance nothing should be scary. We’re all used to seeing fighting, killing, dying from plagues from film. But here they characters are marionettes! Dolls. And the strings are easily visible and there is the feeling that we’re witnessing a toy-world emphasized further by the disproportions between the people and objects: the same device that we are used to seeing in medieval paintings. But all these elements are tools that Shawky exploits cunningly in his work. Combined with the attention that he pays to minute details – every face, sometimes smeared with dirt and blood, has an individual and realistic look – we perceive for example the scene where the Pope proclaims war, as if it were a contemporary press conference with some politician. The marionettes moving one by one, following the will of manipulator from up above, make us consider the real Crusaders as marionettes in a big medieval political game.

What else can I say? Just come and get involved in the gripping and sinister aesthetics of the medieval epoch which Wael Shawky’s brings to life.

Какая работа оказывается самой сложной для обсуждения с посетителями во время экскурсии? Ответ очень прост: видео-арт. Потому что невозможно вести беседу о произведении искусства, которое экскурсанты не видели. На просмотр требуется время, которое даже вне тура не все готовы уделить одной видеоработе, начало которой посетитель, скорее всего уже пропустил. Поэтому с произведением Ваэла Шавки во время экскурсии посетители знакомятся благодаря звукам и музыке, несколько мешающим им осматривать работу Отто Цитко, и краткому упоминанию арт-медиатора, советующего после вернуться и посмотреть.

А посмотреть действительно стоит. “Кабаре «Крестовые походы»”, повествующее о реальных исторических событиях, сначала вызывает необъяснимое чувство легкого страха, что кажется странным, потому что героями фильма выступают марионетки. Впечатление нереальности, театральности происходящего усиливается благодаря явному несоблюдению пропорций. Персонажи явно больше, чем должны быть, относительно архитектурных сооружений. Вспоминается средневековая живопись, пользовавшаяся подобным приемом. Однако все эти способы подчеркнуть нереальность происходящего создают обратный эффект. Мы привыкли видеть сражения, убийства, смерть людей от чумы в фильмах, но показанные с помощью марионеток, эти действия кажутся реальными и действительно жестокими. В сочетании с тем вниманием, которое Ваэль Шавки уделяет деталям (каждое лицо обладает своими индивидуальными чертами, глаза каждого персонажа способны выражать и страх, и безумие и радость), сцена объявления начала Крестовых походов Папой Римским выглядит как пресс-конференция политика, а марионетки, ведомые стройной колонной кукловодом заставляют нас думать о Крестоносцах как марионетках в большой средневековой театральной постановке.

Что еще можно добавить? Можно прийти и погрузиться в зловещую эстетику Средневековья в захватывающей видео работе Ваэла Шавки.

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Mediation in Action: a hop-and-skip through MANIFESTA 10 with Olga

Olga with a group in front of Otto Zitko's work Dedicated to K.K (Käthe Kollwitz) 2014

In order to illustrate the experience of a mediated tour I have selected a few of my favourite works that Olga choose to show us, in fact we saw about 8 other works but he’s a snippet to help you to understand how mediation works and how Manifesta 10's mediated tours are not just your typical guided tours.

In a mediated tour the focus is also on the group, who are encouraged to be active participants in the discussions that are raised around the art work in front of them. The main point is to have an experience with the work rather than listen to rigid facts about it. 

Olga on her experience as an M10 art-meditator so far:

"Working as an art-mediator has been a great experience for me. The best thing about it is that it provides a lot of freedom and space for creativity. As an art-mediator I'm able to change my tours depending on my mood and the group. In addition, during the tours, the visitors offer interesting interpretations and open our eyes to things we haven't yet seen, giving us ground to think about the artworks differently and find new connections throughout the exhibition. Working on MANIFESTA 10 as an art-mediator has given me a very close relationship with all the artworks and with contemporary art in general, which in turn has given me a new look on life." Olga Tsyganova

So down to the tour:

Olga starts by introducing us to the General Staff Building, its renovation process and purpose as the ultimate destination as the new contemporary art wing of the Hermitage Museum. Importantly she raises Manifesta as a biennial which was initially intended to create a dialogue between the East and West, a theme which will become apparent across the artists’ projects.

Now come some of the works, Olga astutely introduces two larger themes of the show with her words on the first two artists we encounter:

                                Should art be for everybody?

‘Hans Peter Feldman believes that art was for everybody’ – she asks how do you think he is showing this?

We look closer at the work: a painted sculpture which looks like it could be a classical Venus but for the garish, kitsch like colours- toy-ish- why?

Olga suggests that Feldman is trying to break down high art to something which is more accessible, something that we can identify with.

                                 What is art and authorship?

Then with Olivier Mosset’s work - another key issue in the exhibition is raised- that of authorship, his canvas is a monochromatic green with no signature and no brush strokes or marks that reveal the artist’s personality. This prompts the group to question whether authorship is important at all or whether the context of art history and of the work itself in fact more than the artist himself.

Vadim Fishkin A Speedy Day 2003. Electronic clock, room construction, light by A.J. Vaisbard. Courtesy Galerija Gregor Podnar, Ljubljana, Slovenia / Berlin, Germany. Installation view, MANIFESTA 10, General Staff Building, State Hermitage Museum

Next our first Russian artist on the tour Vadim Fishkin and his Speedy Day a window of light which puts 24 hours in 2.5 minutes. Olga explains that the artist is interested in physics and science and art. ‘We all feel the effects of light- and have our own associations. She tells of someone on a previous tour who ran out of the room shouting: ‘I don’t want to get old!

What associations are we making to certain types of light? How does it make us feel?

Members of the group experience sleepness nights so the night-time light is evocative of this, we are made to directly engage in our specific perceptions of the changing light. Olga suggests that the work is  like a time capsule- forcing us to reflect that time is passing. “We are used to saying we don’t have time for things - what if the actual day was only this long?”

Fun Fact: If you stayed in this installation for 46 days, via Fishkin’s concept of time you will have lived though a whole lifespan of a person on earth.

Wolfgang Tillmans’ rooms are not just a display, but rather an installation- Olga makes us experience this by asking us to notice how we move closer and further away from various works depending on their scale. Olga remarks that Tillmans uses photography like painting drawing our attention to his images of clothes that work like how the Renaissance used draperies.  What other themes can we see? The subject of absence and presence, the incomplete is also referred to and we search for this theme around the room. Olga shows us two works I would not naturally be drawn towards, one a black square as though it had been punched- what could this mean? The other a light blue square (significantly or not ‘light blue or goloboi’ in Russian is slang for homosexual’) and the paper edge of the light blue square’s is folded outwards, we reflect on why Tillmans has deliberately folded it this way - Olga wonders whether this edge is suggestive of pushing against society’s norms. 

Installation views of Wolfgang Tillmans' rooms at the General Staff Building

According to Tillmans he himself said that he was in no situation to comment on the current political situation but that if his art said it for him then ‘let it be’.  This brings up the relevance of mediation. If Tillmans wants to allow his art to speak to us it is often vital that a mediator helps us to really look and think about what Tillmans is trying to express.

Indeed some of the work’s titles are more than suggestive of political meaning- below Device Control with an image evocative of a system which tries to keep things going without addressing what is in fact wrong- End of Broadcast’s blank black and white imagery suggestive of media censorship.

Wolfgang Tillmans   End of Broadcast

Wolfgang Tillmans  Device Control 

Henrich Oleson’s new work Hysterical Men 3, 2014  is a large work with blown up cut outs of newspaper clippings like a giant newsstand. Why this newspaper spread feel? Olga explains Oleson is interested in the idea that art can reflect the times. The work shows faces and objects that one can recognise and associate with. Who and can we see in the images?

Is the razor, the shoes, the comb we see printed are a man’s or a woman’s? How can we tell?

She tells us that Oleson is interested in the idea of the projected labelling of the masculine and feminine, labels which we use everyday even on objects. We look at the faces, who can we recognise – how do we describe them?  One is Versace - whom one labels perhaps as a gay designer, another is the man from wikileaks again often labelled as ‘transgender.’ Labelling is very much an omnipresent problem of our times as we are constantly putting people and things into different groups or categories.

Part of Hysterical Men 3, 2014. Canvas, inkjet print on proof paper ZP 55 (newspaper), 55 gouache/m2, Amsterdam gel medium matt glue, 210 x 1,000 cm. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne.

There are more subtle references in the work too, Olga suggests that the iron in the work is a reference to Freddy Mercury and the famous Queen video where he and the band are dressed as woman as he does the ironing. The title too is questing in terms of emotional stereotypes, Olga asks us is it usually woman who are labelled as hysterical, but here it is ‘hysterical men’ what might this allude to?

Gianni Versace in Hysterical Men 3, 2014. Canvas, inkjet print on proof paper ZP 55 (newspaper), 55 gouache/m2, Amsterdam gel medium matt glue, 210 x 1,000 cm. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne.

Chelsea Manning in Hysterical Men 3, 2014. Canvas, inkjet print on proof paper ZP 55 (newspaper), 55 gouache/m2, Amsterdam gel medium matt glue, 210 x 1,000 cm. Courtesy Galerie Buchholz, Berlin/Cologne.

The perhaps most familiar artist to many in the show is Matisse who hasbeen re-hung in the General Staff Building on Kasper’s insistence prior to the full collection of art from the twentieth and twenty-first century which will all permanently move from the Hermitage later on. Olga first outlines Matisse’s intensions as part of the ‘Fauve’ group or ‘wild beasts’ as it translates – dubbed this due to the group’s preoccupation on vibrant colours and forms rather than the more traditional focus in figurative work on shadow and light for depth.

Henri Matisse The Dance and Music 1910

Olga asks us to find the differences between The Dance and it’s red outlines and Music with its black outlines- why does this difference do to the painting? The latter’s figures appear more static and solitary in comparison to the unifying darker red line which fills The Dance with movement.

She asks us what difference it would make if the figures were green rather than bright orange? Matisse’s use of colour is reminiscent of the inner vibration of colour that Kandinsky theorised about. This links perfectly with the next room, yet more square monochromatic canvases by Mosset. Olga asks us to go close to the image and feel the inner vibrations of the colour.

Olivier Mosset Untitled. 2014. Acrylic on canvas. Each: 300 × 300 cm. Courtesy Galerie Andrea Caratsch, Zurich, Switzerland; Campoli Presti, London, England

Even though I knew a lot about many of the works before and had been amongst them and the process for months, I came away from the tour feeling much more enlightened and comfortable with the works that we’d seen together, many of which I had not previously chosen to concentrate on myself. Everything was suddenly much more accessible, the questions raised in the tour contemplative, the links made between the artists helping to bring the show all together.

One of the ladies on the tour thanked Olga for allowing her to ‘see more’ and that’s exactly what she did.

Free mediated tours of the General Staff Building take place everyday in both in English and Russian at 12.00, 14.00 and 16.00 (except for Monday when the museum is closed) and Wednesday when the museum is open until 21.00 and there is an extra tour at 18.00.

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Dialogue 9 ‘Mediating the Museum’, the Russian Museum

Last week 'The Art of Mediation' was organised by Manifesta as part of the M10 dialogue series. Both the international and local panellists generated an energetic discussion on the conflicts and traditions of guiding verses mediating. The panel included:

Sophia Kudriavceva (Head of Youth Education for the Hermitage Museum, Russia)

Alexis Boyco (State Russian Museum, Russia)

Ben Street (Art Historian, Mediator and writer, UK)

Keiko Higashi (Powell Cotton Museum, UK)

Firstly what do we mean about mediation?

‘Mediation’ is in fact an ancient form of conflict resolution, which consists of the mediator positioning his or herself between two parties without taking sides, or passing judgement on either of them. An art-mediator thus facilitates dialogue and the exchange of knowledge by stimulating opinions through what the viewer sees and the associations they make.

The West and the East

Mediation is already prevalent as a museum practice in the West, much of the public are already comfortable with engaging in open discussions surrounding artworks. The Russian members of the panel suggested that mediation in the west is almost not required anymore, the contemporary as such a natural process of western culture – the people having been exposed to contemporary art for so long. Their experience Alexis Boyco contrasted to the Russian audience who had a significant void of 70 years in their exposure to contemporary art during Soviet times - from Malevich until the 90s. He told of how some people in Russia today still see a Matisse or Picasso and believe it is not art.

Boyco mentioned that even 25 years ago, when in 1990 they organised a course at the gymnasium at the Russian Museum on 'the problems of modern and artistic culture’ the majority of people still hadn’t reached a high opinion towards abstract art. Despite being more than 100 years old, it’s still not fully understood.

Guiding vs. mediation

As an organisation Manifesta has been practicing mediation for its last few editions and in the context of MANIFESTA 10 is attempting to implement the technique in the form of their art-mediators taking visitors around the exhibition. 

Prof. Alexis Boyco (State Russian Museum, Russia)

Nevertheless as Russian Museum pedagogue Alexis Boyco  commented ‘mediation is dependant on the readiness of the visitor to participate' - an observation particularly relevant since mediation in Russia is completely new compared to the long tradition of guiding.

In the practice of guiding, information is largely imparted to the audience by the guide as facts. The viewers are largely passive and the guide takes the active role an as the informed lecturer. Mediation defies this barrier between viewer and guide – the mediator provides information where it is relevant to the work visible in front of them and the group together arrive at conclusions as to what the work might mean.    

Art Historian, Mediator and writer Ben Street, who spent a weekend training new mediators for the Biennial, explained how that there is little point imparting the artists’ biography if it doesn’t help the visitor engage more fully with the work. The mediator wants to slow the visitor down in order to ask questions, gather responses and discuss varying opinions so that the groups’ own perceptions form the basis of collectively understanding and experiencing the work.

Engagement: Contemporary art as inseparable to mediation Ben Street emphasised the relevance of mediation - which he believes is the most appropriate way of discussing contemporary art: "...not to engage in a conversational way with art is to misunderstand its place art historically since most of contemporary art is built on a dialogue.”

Streetexplains how mediation is also important for works of the past and outlined his experience on writing audio-guide scripts for the Tate Modern. He discovered that he must connect each sentence to the art object so that the viewer doesn’t look away. "Every piece of information must bring you closer to the object, shorten the gap between you and the art work."

  Ben Street (Art Historian, Mediator and writer, UK)

Participation rather than passive viewer 

Sophia Kudriatseva emphasised the important levels of interactivity that makes up a mediated tour. She also emphasised that being a good mediator took serious training and that it was very hard to introduce any new methods to the historic Museum context. She explained how inspired she had become with the methodology of mediation on the realisation that it was what was needed  -  a method that could be merged with the existing classical education of many guides.

Sophia Kudriavceva (Head of Youth Education for the Hermitage Museum, Russia)

Ben Street is also mindful to the fact that people also have an immediate reaction to art – which mediation shouldn’t crush, "there needs to be a balance where mediation simply adds extra layers to the viewers’ own interpretation."

Now some questions from the dialogue’s audience: 

Q. What is the ideal mediated experience?

Ben Street elaborated further on how mediation tries to engender a new way of looking, a new way to experience art – agreeing with Boyko that only once there is a public which is prepared to engage in this open creative way, can they have an ideal experience with mediation. The ideal mediator must become ‘the third wall, hiding so as to allow the group to explore the themes with each other.’

  Q. How can an artwork can be mediated by someone other than the artist - how can mediation possibly be a part of the art piece with the mediator as co-author of the art?

“Since Duchamp, the art happens between the object and the viewer, Duchamp brought mediation into the very act of creation. As such mediation is embedded into the artistic practice.

Keiko suggested that in Installation art mediation was not necessary - believing that in such art the focus was on the experience of the installation itself - and that was enough. 

Marcel Duchamp, 'The Fountain' 1917

Ben Street agreed, linking the idea back to Duchamp – “the very genre of installation art comes out of the Duchampian tradition – with mediation being the raison d’être of the work – therefore the experience itself replaces the mediation.”

Thomas Hirschhorn 'ABSCHLAG' 2014

The fact that many of the projects in MANIFESTA 10 are new commissions and projects - suggests even more that the art might need mediation.

The artist’s work as being able to speak for itself was iterated by a quote by Barbara Hepworth “if I could talk about art it would be great - but it wouldn’t be in the world of art.” In this case it seems the mediator is necessary to make observations and points of discussion in order that people can look at the work in a critical way and allow it to speak for itself.  

Q. What’s the perfect mediation- have you experienced perfect mediation?

“I would have to talk about myself - I was with some students in front of a Matisse and having been initially sceptical about him, my students' questioning and discussion totally opened Matisse up to me.” Alexis Boyco

"The perfect mediation is a great act of improvisation - everything depends upon the audience - it is improvisatory – something that you cannot predict – it does not necessarily have to include art historical information, you need the audience to have felt the new work incredibly well so that they ask questions and feel close to it.” Ben Street

Q. Can you point out 3 main differences between the mediator and tour guide and/or 3 pieces of advise on how not to become an interpreter?

“The mediator must be responsive to what the group is doing in the present moment, they must understand the surrounding people, it’s about emotional intelligence, they must be incredibly alert. This differs from a guided tour the information tends to stay the same regardless of who you’re with."

"A piece of advice is about hierarchy - there should be no hierarchy of you as the mediator – it is a two way conversation, you are not simply imparting knowledge to another.” Ben Street

The question remains for the Russian panellists as to whether the Hermitage’s hierarchical and guiding traditions can be successfully changed, and indeed whether the museum employees would be ready for this.

Commenting after the Dialogue Sepake Angiama, Head of Education for Manifesta:

"I was really struck by the differences in approaches to engaging the public with contemporary art in Russia. The methodology for approaching artwork at the Hermitage has seemingly not changed for the last fifty years. Sophia Kudriavceva posed an extremely pertinent question 'How do you create innovation in one of the world's largest museums?' The Director of the Hermitage Professor Mikhail Piotrovsky has identified that Manifesta, coming from the outside but working within the institution may create the possibility for change"

Come and join our free M10 Mediated Tours of the General Staff Building which run daily: Tues-Sun 12.00, 14.00, 16.00, Wed 18.00 (closed Mon) (in English and Russian)

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M10 Summer School ‘Please Mine the Gap: Between the Artistic Enquiry and Engagement of Space’

MANIFESTA 10 recently held a two-week Summer School ‘Please Mine the Gap: Between the Artistic Enquiry and Engagement of Space’ which was attended by students from the Zürich University of the Arts ZhDK and the St. Petersburg State University. We asked one of the Zürich participants, Karin Kurzmeyer, about her experience of the school, the St. Petersburg context and collaborating with the other students.

"I was curious about the role Manifesta plays or can play in actual St. Petersburg discourse. How does Manifesta deals with certain restrictions, how do artists within their practice question the circumstances and do artists necessarily have to question them anyway?

Therefore the Summer School gave some opportunities to challenge different artistic approaches by listening to artist talks by Alexandra Pirici, Flo Kaseru, Kristina Norman and at the workshop with Thomas Hirschhorn.

Workshop by Thomas Hirschhorn 'Energy YES! Quality NO!'

M10 Public Program participant Kristina Norman talks to the students about her work including her latest project on Palace Square 'Souvenir' which is connected to a similar unfinished Christmas tree on Maidan, Kiev, the process of building was interrupted by the beginnings of the riots.

Prof. Christoph Schenker on the Swiss Education System

During my very short stay of two weeks I was interested in the perception of the contemporary in St. Petersburg. What struck me most was the discovery of the very varied interpretations of history. Therefore I appreciated the exchange with our Russian colleagues, who made clear that the diversity of memory in their environment is a subject they have to deal with.  In this particular case I found the senior role of the babushkas* as beloved guardians of cultural heritage relevant.

Photo by Joshuah Bearman

At the beginning of my stay I was also not aware of what background the other participants would have.  But I got the impression that each of them had a strong ambition to try to get involved with each other. We tried to take into account everyone's different views and approaches and to try and bring them together. 

On 24th of July renowned St. Petersburg artist and curator Petr Belyi conducted a tour for the students a tour of his latest exhibition Signal in a former soviet factory. After that he also gave a lecture on the 'Gentrification process in the city of Saint Petersburg'.

Manifesta gave us the opportunity to reflect on our brief stay and our experiences within the series of events of the project 'Apartment Art as Domestic Resistance' which is co-curated by Olesya Turkina and Roman Osminkin and is held in a formal communal flat reflecting the history of domestic and kitchen resistance through art exhibitions. 

For that we created a setting which tried not to impose a specific idea or attitude onto the individual participants but rather to let the individual participants develop this idea or attitude through their work.

Anna Bulina and Lenin, Razliv

We decided to base the project on the communal apartment setting - with the realisation that our (semi-)forced community is in certain, abstract ways comparable to a kommunalka. The setting allowed multidisciplinary, collectivity and at the same time individual engagement with the space. The engagement can swap, overlap, erase, negotiate etc. This proposal should invite those involved to investigate the potential of arguments in a setting given by the circumstances.

In this proposal we wanted to question the space, context, history and the contemporaneity of our actions in the kommunalka. It should allow enough space to interrogate different practices, strategies and also investigate the term of authorship. Hence the actions will endure from the beginning and until the end of the opening. 

Previous photos of the Summer School students' exhibition 'Notes for Neighbours' in the former Communal apartment on Marata Street, photos by Anna Gryzdeva

To sum up, I can say that the stay in St. Petersburg was rewarding and generated a differentiated involvement with issues raised by the supporting programme, by the encounter with our colleagues and with the marvellous team of Manifesta."

Karin Kurzmeyer

Some of the students of the Summer School

Sergey Fofanov (Art Historian and curatorial assistant to Kasper König for M10) conducted a tour of avant-garde soviet architecture of the city.

*Babushkas (Russian elderly women/grandmothers who are often invigilators at the various museums) 

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Alexandra Pirici comments on her participation in MANIFESTA 10

Having finished her series of sculptural additions for MANIFESTA 10, Alexandra Pirici wrote some thoughts on her experience and on the context and the controversy around the Biennial taking place in Russia:

On the subject of calls for a more radical program that specifically addresses the Ukraine situation she comments that: “There are, of course, limits to what it can be done in Russia today with state funding - there was a commission that had to approve the exhibition in the Hermitage and authorisations that needed to be given for all works in public space (as is the case in most places, when concerning the “public” space). Could Manifesta have played a card to avoid this? No, I don’t think there was a card to play as the benefits of having a contemporary art biennial here are hard to emphasise and stress to a majority that strongly disapproves and feels offended by contemporary art and its proximity to the Hermitage (even the taxi driver picking me up from the airport at 2 in the morning had to explain, two minutes into the trip, how disgraceful he finds the whole situation and how everybody thinks Piotrovsky is crazy for letting this happen).

Alexandra Pirici's Soft Power. 2014. Sculptural additions to Petersburg monuments at the Bronze Horseman, St.Petersburg, June 28,2014. Commissioned for the Public Program of MANIFESTA 10 With the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute.

My last intervention at the Bronze Horseman (as minimal as it might have been) – for entangled reasons, was not given permission anymore by a governmental committee two hours before the scheduled start of the performance and then re-approved by a phone call. Whomever thinks it’s not a big deal to sunbathe near the statue I would invite there (not to Berlin), and suggest to protest against a law that apparently puts people in jail for 15 days for it (as we were told by a policeman checking our authorization) and that forbids people to even sit on the grass.

Agreeing to do the action, even in adapted form (as we weren’t allowed to climb on the stone as I initially intended) is not self-censorship but my evaluation of the situation as still being enough to produce something.  I do believe that given the context of the artwork, exposing the performers and pushing it into a scandal or outrage - which would make the whole thing stop in 5 minutes, also with consequences for the other people and projects involved - would not have produced a more interesting or significant change.  

Even the contradictory reports from the opening – The Calvert writing that my work made a solid point about the interaction of the human and the monumental but failed to attract enough attention - at the same time as Der Standard writing that a passer-by had already insulted and yelled at the performers – both represent a situation in which people also see what they want to see and emphasise what they want to emphasise.  

(The previous photos) Alexandra Pirici. Soft Power. 2014. Sculptural additions to Petersburg monuments at the Bronze Horseman, St. Petersburg, July 31, 2014. Commissioned for the Public Program of MANIFESTA 10 With the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute.

To prove that there is censorship and a very brutal propaganda machine at work in Russia today is obsolete. Everybody knows it is there – except for a lot of Russian people who only access information from the media. But the huge support for Putin and Russia’s actions in Ukraine might have multiple and deeper rooted causes that might have to be addressed less abruptly and less directly. This support might be related to a more general fascination with grandiose enterprises and strong leaders, an idea of beauty that is related to greatness and big size (hence the ever-present longing for recovering the empire), my intension was to ‘impress upon or soften’ the strong, unquestionable, unmovable, brave characters and personas and their grand gestures.

Alexandra Pirici. Soft Power. 2014. Sculptural additions to Petersburg monuments at the Lenin Monument (Finland Railway Station), 3 July, St. Petersburg, 2014. Commissioned for the Public Program of MANIFESTA 10 with the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute.

And what we find beautiful and ugly, right or wrong has, of course, a crucial role in determining how we act and what we support. When we are still fascinated by the neo-classical and the baroque, when we still have a taste for the monumental (be it in the Winter Palace or for Voina’s bridge/phallus work), when you think of less loud gestures as weak and of the minimal and the low-key as ugly, you might also have a taste for corresponding political actions. So aesthetics is political and exposure to different dynamics, different aesthetics and a different discourse might make sense, even if this enterprise is a drop in the ocean considering the level of exposure to the other toxic discourses and the danger of being appropriated and misinterpreted. But who can really quantify the impact and consequences? Given the general audience’s conservatory discontent with the whole event (the Biennial), even if this reaction would be all that Manifesta could produce, I still think it’s more than nothing as it’s also an exercise in tolerance: allowing something to exist even if you do not like it and you do not understand it.

The Biennial, with all its problems and limitations, might be the only politically progressive gesture forced out of Russia in these times of radical conservative backlash. So it might also be a gesture that allows for progressive ideas to be alongside each other and recognise themselves across borders and within different contexts.

Of course, one has to accept this will not save, neither revolutionize the context here. On the symbolic level, an art biennial in Russia might have too little of an impact on both high and low politics. But just as Voina’s phallic critique against the regime turned into support and “masculinity” and patriarchy overcame less important differences and turned old enemies into friends, maybe we should also start looking for allies and similarities rather than agonizing over aestheticizing the political. I respect and understand boycott positions but I honestly think the very little steps and attempts that can be made within Manifesta (and not even those would be possible otherwise) were worth the try and maybe they are more important than the damage we are afraid it might have done. And the appropriation battle is one that we fight everywhere, on all levels, and one that we cannot stay out, even if we wanted to, without risking becoming completely paralysed. 

Alexandra Pirici. Soft Power. 2014. Sculptural additions to Petersburg monuments at the Monument to Catherine the Great, Ostrovsky Square, St. Petersburg, June 28, 2014. Commissioned for the Public Program of MANIFESTA 10 with the support of the Romanian Cultural Institute.

Last but not least: prescriptive ideas about political art – turning art into propaganda, in order to be more “efficient”, specific and un-ambiguous, might have helped winning some battles but it didn’t help end the war. 

A big thanks to everybody involved.” 

Alexandra Pirici

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The Inside Out workshops continue with famous cats

MANIFESTA 10 continues its series of 'Inside Out' workshops for people with disabilities from Perspektivy in Peterhof. This time we held a discussion about the "Life of great cats", finding examples fromsome of the famous representatives of the cat family.  

"Why do cat eyes glow in the dark and why do their ears move in different directions?"

"What is the most popular cat name in the world?"

These were some of the questions which interested participants and immediately inspired many to create new works for the exhibition, which opens in less than a month.

The Inside Out workshops are part of the community projects of MANIFESTA 10, outside the M10 venues but inside the community of St. Petersburg. 

Follow us on facebook: www.facebook.com/manifestabiennial

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Inside Out workshop: art for cats

“Art for cats" is the preliminary name for an exhibition that will be organized by a group of Perspektivy residents, a charity organisation for people with disabilities.  In the summer of 2014 MANIFESTA 10 will hold several workshops with a group of residents from Perspektivy. In the first session one of the MANIFESTA 10 Art Mediators visited Perspektivy and met some of its residents. The main goal of this first session was to get acquainted with each other and with MANIFESTA 10 and contemporary art. 

Interestingly, it turned out that things that may first have appeared strange or puzzling to others evoked great interest amongst the audience of Perspektivy. For example, having a closer look at  images of Ann Veronika Janssens’ works, the residents admired the way she used electric light to draw on walls, the onlookers were not less perplexed by and interested in the endless lines by Otto Zitko, or the ruins of Hirschhorn’s  ‘Abschlag.’

  It was very clear from this first meeting that the people of Perspektivy are very interested in contemporary art. Having been introduced to MANIFESTA 10 and its artists they showed a very open attitude towards contemporary art. The resident cats of Perspektivy were also present in the first session!

For the second session the people of Perspektivy visited the main venue of MANIFESTA 10.  No longer meeting between the walls of Perspektivy: the residents came in person to the General Staff Building, to see the main exhibition. “The photos would look better if given some fresh touch”- said Vasya, one of the group. The excursion entertained a friendly discussion, where the participants were encouraged to share their ideas and interpretations about the contemporary art works. The MANIFESTA 10 art works certainly inspired the participants who will now also create their own art works based on their visit. Viewing each new exhibit made it clearer and clearer that the participants tend to regard Manifesta's artists as their equals: indeed, they are artists too.

The most prominent focus of the guided tour was devoted to the work ‘Tunnel’ by the Dutch artist Erik van Lieshout. Erik lived in the basement of the State Hermitage Museum with its resident cats for 2 months. This basement has been home to the Hermitage cats since the time of Catherine the Great. During his stay with them van Lieshout tried to improve their living environment.  This work by van Lieshout will be the starting point for the exhibition that they will develop at Perspektivy together with an art mediator from MANIFESTA 10. Stay tuned for more information about the result of their workshops and their exhibition with the Hermitage cats.  According to the new project's developers the hope is that this future exhibition will become the sequel to the ‘Tunnel’.

Elena Leskova - M10 art mediator

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MANIFESTA 10 Dacha @ Stereoleto 2014

Last weekend, the MANIFESTA 10 dacha made its first public appearance. For two days the mobile pavilion opened its wooden doors at the Stereoleto festival where Biennial art mediators Xenia Remezova and Natasha Sobolev held workshops to create 'stop motion' animations. Guests visiting the dacha included the duo from the Ukrainian band, Dakh Daughters, who made their own version of Erik van Lieshout's Hermitage cats video. Search for yourself creating animations in our photo album. В минувшие выходные мы впервые выкатили нашу Дачу МАНИФЕСТА 10. Два дня мобильный павильон провел на фестивале STEREOLETO 12-13 июля 2014, где арт-медиаторы Ксения Ремезова и Наташа Соболева провели мастер-классы по созданию stop motion анимации. В гостях у Дачи побывали участники фрик-кабаре из Украины Dakh Daughters, которые сделали свой вариант видео с эрмитажными котами. Ищите себя за созданием роликов в нашем фотоальбоме.