Eda Čufer: A conversation with Olesya Turkina

Apart from being an art historian employed in a museum, you are also very active on the so-called 'live' cultural and artistic scene of St. Petersburg, which is renown already from the 1980's onwards. Can you in short present yourself and the cultural space in which you operate?

It is true, on one hand my life is pretty usual. By profession I am an art historian and I have completed my studies at the former Leningrad state university. Of course, during our studies we did not have any lectures from contemporary art. Even more than that. As future art historians we did not listen to any lectures on 20th Century art at all, not even on socialist realism, which you will probably find hard to believe. For us art ceased to exist with the end of the 19th Century. I met my current friends and co-workers during the perestrojka period. This was a very unusual period, when we could not believe what was going on. Perestrojka emerged as some sort of a 'good joke'. Nobody believed that the changes will last. We imagined that this open state would last for two, three years, and then everybody who is be active during this time would be sent to prison, be persecuted by the KGB, or punished and disabled in some other way. That is why we were (a group of critics and artists, who gathered together at the time) extremely active and productive. Taking into account our belief that we had a very short time available we wanted to make the best of it, enjoy our work and leave something behind. We started setting up contemporary art exhibitions. The circle of people was small and it was composed of students of Maljevič's students and various people who represented a kind of a cult of contemporary art. Timur Novikov, Sergej Bugaev a.k.a. Africa and Sergej Kurjohin were the younger fraction and these boys always surprised me, for they had no fear at all. They dared to do anything. They lived for eternity. They never complained as regards the Soviet reality, they did not explain to anyone that they were non-conformist artists, that they were repressed and so on. No, they even glorified this Soviet leadership, which represented such agony for all. Similar to your NSK (Neue Slowenische Kunst) they toyed with the symbols of the authorities and thus caused that the remaining non-conformist and dissident artists turned against them in anger. In 1987 we, with a group of younger colleagues, organised an exhibition entitled From the unofficial art to the perestrojka. We collected over 2000 works of art from the entire post-war period right to the new contemporary artistic trends, represented by Novikov, Bugaev, Yufit and others. This exhibition was a great success. In the winter of 1987 and 1988 people waited for a number of hours at 25 degrees Celsius below zero, just to obtain the tickets to see the 'forbidden art'. Soon after that the first conference entitled New Languages in Art was organised in Moscow. At this conference I met my husband Viktor Mazin. After that Viktor and I organised a number of exhibitions.

You are a co-founder and a very active member of the magazine Kabinet. We know that the magazine had a very specific design and role and that the recent number will be published during the next few days. Can you describe this project and tell us if is it coming to an end?

The Kabinet is a typical product of the transition period. During the perestrojka period all previous artistic publications were terminated. There was a lack of ideas as well as money. The Soviet economy was on the rim of disaster and the bureaucracy found itself in panic. The permanent Soviet art magazines that used to be published on a monthly basis, began to be published once per annum. On the other side our circles had a lot of ideas, translations and people who wanted to write and publish. They had a lot of themes we wished to discuss and for this purpose we organised regular meetings in the atelier of Sergej Bugaev a.k.a. Afrika , apartment of Timur Novikov or in our apartment and the five of us (Timur Novikov, Sergej Bugaev, Viktor Mazin, Irena Kuskenaite and I) decided that we will establish a newspaper. In this period a lot of people were establishing newspapers and magazines, but all dreamed about millions of sold copies and one after the other they fell through in a very short period of time. The previous unofficial art dreamed that it would take over the place of the official art over night, address the million strong masses and take over the fame and richness of the former official artists and writers. We opted for a different strategy and published the first number of our magazine in only 20 copies. The magazine covered topics between science and art and within it we published articles on contemporary philosophy, psychoanalysis, cultural studies and so on. Of course we did not have any sort of copyrights and at the time this did not present any problem at all. However, regardless of this fact we principally agreed not to legalise the magazine, but to continue to (until possible) keep it within such an anarchic frame. We never collected any money for the magazine, we distributed it for free and anybody who wished to photocopy it was welcome to do so. Over time we realised that people who were drawn to our magazine started re-typing certain articles and spreading them through their channels. At that time we raised our edition to 99 copies. We also did not have any problems with the copyrights for translations. The Western intellectuals were glad if we translated their articles into Russian and they did not demand any fees for royalties. I remember the enthusiasm of Jean-François Lyotard when we showed him an issue with number of his texts in Russian. Apart from that we also started organising conferences. In 1993 we organised an exhibition of the French-Israeli artist Brach Lichetenberg-Ettinger and we invited J.-F. Lyotard, Rosi Huhn and Christine Buçi-Glucksmann to the accompanying conference. Nobody believed that all of them would actually come. But Lyotard and others are such a positive personalities that they came because they were interested in how it was and what was going on in Russia in the post-socialist era. During this time we started to organise exhibitions on a more regular basis and until today we have set up at least 15 exhibitions under the name Kabinet, however we still decided not to legalise it. In 1995 Russia was visited by Rudi Fuchs, the director of the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and he showed great enthusiasm for our magazine and projects. He suggested that we set up an exhibition of Kabinet journal in Stedelijk. And so we set up the exhibition and published an English language anthology of the magazine in 1997. After that we raised the number of copies to 1000 and our publisher started selling the magazine. We also published texts by Slovene philosophers and theoreticians, for example texts by Slavoj Žižek, Renata Salecl and Melita Zajc, all of which I would like to take this opportunity to thank them. We are in contact with Marjetica Potrč and Ljubljana is an example and a model which proves that a relatively small town can carry out a real intellectual and artistic revolution. The next issue is coming out soon. It will be dedicated to such subject as memory, amnesia, dreams, illusions. It'll be 300 pages volume with drawings, poetry, essays by critics, artists, psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, philosophers. Among them Slavoj Žižek and Renata Salecl.

In one of your articles you and Viktor Mazin interpreted the St. Petersburg neo-academic movement that you lectured about as an answer to the fall of 'great stories'. Neo-academism was supposedly intended to fulfil and reflect this emptiness and at the same time the human need for great stories, for history. What in fact is neo-academism and from what sort of a social experience did it emerge?

Neo-academism emerged in 1988, which was an especially important year for the perestrojka, when all the former great stories and the old regime simply collapsed. Entire populations lost all of their old political, economic, philosophic and other values. Nobody believed anymore in the good old times, in good and successful economy, social security, social utopia. And what was even more important, nobody believed anymore in eternal aesthetic values. This is unusual, for even in the last, cynical period of the socialist realism, the belief that some sort of eternity and beauty that should be discovered was still present. Historical avant-garde movements as well as the later Soviet art were still dealing with the sublime and with the idea that life should be made more beautiful and should be found a meaning. During the perestrojka period we were not only dealing with the fall of great stories, but also with the revival of old ideas. Timur Novikov decided that he would take upon himself a sort of ecological role. He declared that all old, classical images in art were suppressed and forbidden, because they were reminiscent of the totalitarian and nazi art. He emphasised the need to salvage these images and preserve them in the memory of mankind. This programme fitted in very well with the nostalgia that ruled the population. During the communist period, we, in Russia, lived in a constant future, the present did not exist. And then, when the communist regime started falling apart, only naked and unbearable present remained and people started feeling nostalgic for the great, brilliant past times. From this need unusual ideas started emerging, such as for instance the idea for the reconstruction of the constitutional monarchy in Russia. Or ideas for a new/old Russian flag. Leningrad became once more called St. Petersburg and so on. The old was returning as something new. A sort of semi psychotic state emerged, which was to a great extent conceptualised by Timur Novikov's neo-academism as a kind of an opposition strategy. You know, if life is on the downturn, one must find an enemy. In order to protect your position you must construct an opposition. Therefore Timur based his neo-academism ideology on such an opposition and stated that our European cultural tradition was endangered by the 'Coca-cola culture' and that it should be protected. In short, Europe is threatened by an American invasion and that is why neo-academism bound itself to an eternal battle against the American cultural hegemony. This slogan became extremely popular on a mass level. Of course Timur himself is not completely innocent. He is a very provocative type of person, but the reporters and the general public took his words at face value and enthusiastically applauded it.

This slogan would be popular also in Slovenia. The proposal of the Slovene cultural program also draws attention to the danger of the American popular and high culture.

This is really fun. This slogan would most probably be popular also in other places. An enemy, an opposition must be found. It can not be any other way. Of course all of the world cultures are being confronted with the invasion of American cultural goods. These are facts and this can not be prevented even if we closed the boarders once again. However, the response to Timur's provocation is interesting, it shows a desire to revive the imperial tendencies and it also points to the fact that it has a direct as well as a double meaning.

Ap art from the neo-academism also numerous other new artistic movements exist in Russia as well as in the broader area of the former Soviet Union, such as for example, St. Petersburg's necro-realism, Moscow post-conceptualism and actionism, Ukrainian art of the 90's. What does this post Soviet art deal with?

I am familiar with the St. Petersburg, Moscow and Ukraine art production of the 1990's. I am not so well acquainted with the scene within the Baltic states. Maybe not even as well as with Slovene art. But that is normal and therefore it is dangerous to generalise.
Necro-realism existed before neo-academism and its founder Jevgenij Jufit is in my opinion the best film director in Russia. He is the successor of Tarkovski and his method and philosophy are very complex. In his work Jufit really does use corpses, but not in a naturalistic way as for instance Andres Serrano does. Beauty and death, this is a truly typical Russian obsession, which is as a special, planned created opposition, joined by the St. Petersburg necro-realism and neo-academism. However, not everything is as simple and as polarised. In Russia we also have other artists. For instance, Africa does not belong to any of the aforementioned movements and yet he is one of the best known Russian artists. His work deals with mythologies and it is socially and politically oriented. He watches and paints the world and large mythologies from marginal positions. As you already know we also have a very strong post-conceptual art movement in Russia. In Ljubljana you saw Jurij Leiderman, who does not have any connections with the extremes of beauty and death. Apart from that there is also a strong post-actionist movement in Moscow. You have heard of Alexander Brener, Anatolij Osmolovski, Oleg Kulik and others. The Ukraine scene emerged from under the strong influence of the trans-avant-garde, so one could say that the post-Soviet art is basically heterogeneous and comes from various traditions.

How do you experience the East-West polarisation? What is your attitude to the Western artistic trends and the Western art system?

This issue touches maybe 200 people in Russia. And I would say that in the 1990's we have spent a great deal of energy to surprise the West and to show them who we are and what is our opinion of the world, to show them that we are different and so on. In the past ten years we have become exhausted from this need to constantly surprise someone. Now we want normalisation. We do not wish to surprise the West and we also do not want attention only because we are so wild, different, so poor or rich, beautiful or ugly. We are tired of extremes. We do not wish to be the 'new Russians' or poor beggars. We simply want a normal democratic life, which respects differences. And this central, normal level is slowly establishing itself. An art market is forming, as well as commercial galleries, art magazines and so on. Of course we can not compare ourselves to New York, but it is the beginning of something and it seems that this new social space is growing and developing.