Questionnaire: Anastasia Ryabova
Anastasia Ryabova is an artist, Kandinsky Prize winner (2011) and curator of the “False Calculations Presidium” exhibition. She lives and works in Moscow, Russia.
1. How have you maintained your practice in your country with its changing economical and political conditions? I started my artistic practice in mid 2000, when structures supporting young artists practically didn’t exist. None of the existing art school suited me. And I was not a natural artist who stored his artworks behind the wardrobe and then was discovered by a gallerist. Since the very beginning the tactics and strategy of my work was based on the practice of validation and reviewing the existing conditions of artistic production. This is how artistsprivatecollections.org project has started. It was a sort of micro model of an alternative infrastructure legitimizing and demonstrating art works.
The next step for me is to create a strong competitor to the existing infrastructures, a real collective actor that won’t only highlight the drawbacks of the current system or suggest new ideas but will test and check institutional changes on its own. The task is very difficult as you are not an average person in specific conditions anymore, but a creator of these conditions, and this is a challenge. In other words you have to replace responsibility from the shoulders of institutions to your own shoulders.
2. If there were an international governing body of contemporary art policy making, what would your concerns be? Practically every international body is haunted by similar problems. Being global on the one hand, on the other they always support the interests of the strongest countries. I would not play with the fantasies about international governing body, rather talk about multiplicity of networks, that would develop diverse types of grassroots artistic policy. 3. To what extent does your government participate in producing contemporary art infrastructures? It's difficult to answer and the difficulty starts with a question – where are the borders of influence and responsibility of Russian state laid. Is it a collaboration between power decision-making and big business, which is based on exploitation of state resources? It might sound naïve, but for me the question of who rules the cultural policy in Russia is still open. 4. How do you move across different funding systems to produce your projects? My experience with funding institutions is not so extensive. Usually local private foundations supported me. Also I have some experience in working with European state institutions. Though I cannot compare. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Usually it takes a good deal of management and tricks, it requires new types of money flow. Managing that is art in itself already. This anarchic economy adds a specific poetics to the artwork that is being created in these conditions. 5. If you could work with a local policy maker, what would you desire for the future of contemporary arts funding-give your forecast? I would suggest giving every art worker 5000 euros per month without demanding any explanations!