On 15 November 2018, as part of the 7th Saint Petersburg International Cultural Forum, the General Staff building of the State Hermitage became the setting for an intellectual marathon entitled “Here and Now. How Contemporary Is Contemporary Art‽”.
The intellectual marathon was devoted to the discussion of a global question – the role of the word “contemporary” in the expression “contemporary art” in the present-day context of 2018. At the centre of all the discussions in the programme was consideration of the issue of topical relevance and the assessment of what it is customary to regard as part of the contemporary cultural process.
Anticipating the programme, Professor Lev Manovich of the City University of New York, an expert on new media theory, gave a talk about artificial intelligence and the future of culture.
In the course of the first discussion “Theatre+Performance/Director/Performer/Actor”, the marathon participants discussed how close and productive the ties are between contemporary theatre and artistic performance and whether there was a “generational conflict” between them. The moderator Yelena Kolovskaya (Pro Arte, St Petersburg) explored this topical pressing issue in a lively exchange of opinions between the theatre directors Helgard Haug (Germany), Dmitry Volkostrelov and Vsevolod Lisovsky on the one hand and the artist and creator of famous performance Yelena Kovylina on the other.
The following discussion “Museum+Topical Art. Curator/Artist/Designer” had seven participants – representatives of museums and exhibition projects of contemporary art, designers and architects. Among the priority topics proposed for debate by the moderator Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the Hermitage’s Department of Contemporary Art, were relatively recent new tendencies in the preparation and conduct of large-scale exhibition projects. In St Petersburg and Moscow these were “Not Everyone will be Taken into the Future” in the Hermitage, “Keep in Perpetuity” in the Manege, a series of exhibitions in the Tretyakov Gallery, at the Venice Biennale, and also Manifesta 12 that finished not long ago in Palermo.
The discussion began with a dialogue between Mikhail Piotrovsky, General Director of the State Hermitage, and Elena Kalnitskaya, General Director of the Peterhof State Museum-Preserve, about, among other things, the pluses and minuses of the current trend to theatricalize museum exhibitions, forcing curators to work in closer creative collaboration with theatrical directors, architects and designers and even to accord them the right to create the overall concept. As the participants noted, exhibitions of that sort draw a large number of interested viewers, thus increasing the significance of the contemporary museum in society. Other speakers in the discussion were Pavel Prigara (Director of the Manege Central Exhibition Hall in St Petersburg), Yevgeny Ass (architect and artist, Moscow), Yana Klichuk (curator at Manifesta 12), Nicolas Liucci-Goutnikov (curator, Pompidou Centre), Semion Mikhailovsky (rector of the Repin St Petersburg State Academic Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture) and Andrei Shelyutto (designer and artist, St Petersburg).
Concurrently, in the Large Hall of the Lecture Centre a third discussion began on “Cinema+Video Art. Director/author/media”. The moderator, Maria Dantsis of Saint Petersburg State University chose as the topic the issue of the convergence of the artistic language of cinematography and video art, to what extent will the boundary between them become blurred in the future. The participants were Olga Shishko (head of the cinema and media arts department of the Pushkin Museum), Dmitry Venkov (artist, Moscow), Yevgeny Sviatsky (artist, AES+F, Moscow), Victoria Smirnova-Maizel (cinema critic, St Petersburg) and Kirill Preobrazhensky (artist and curator, Moscow). The discussion ended with a showing of one of the works of the well-known Moscow-based group AES+F and also of the artists Marina Alexeyeva (St Petersburg), Maria Dantsis (St Petersburg) and Alexandra Mitlianskaya (Moscow).
The White Hall was the venue for the musical programme of the intellectual marathon – “Music. Creation/Formatting/Performance”, where the moderator was Dmitry Shubin (Museum of Sound, St Petersburg). In the theoretical part of the discussion the speakers were David Stubbs (music journalist, London) and Alexander Gorbachev (journalist, Moscow). The creative part of the programme – the composition Different Different Trains (a situational variation on Steve Reich’s Different Trains) presented by eNsemble & GhostNoir (Ladomir Zelinsky). A performance by Dmitry Shubin completed the programme.
The creative programme for the marathon also included two performances: Board of Honour by the prominent Moscow artist Elena Kovylina in co-authorship with Inna Yakovleva and an audio performance by the director and theatre critic Victor Vilisov (St Petersburg).
After the discussion in the Atrium of the General Staff building there was a showing of Anton Zhelnov’s documentary film Poor People. The Kabakovs, completing the extensive programme of the intellectual marathon.
The programme was prepared by a working group from the State Hermitage’s Youth Centre (Anna Tyrenko, Alexandra Sheveleva, Ladomir Zelinsky, Vera Zavarzina, Nadezhda Cherniakevich, Pavel Deineka and Yekaterina Panikarovskaya) under the guidance of Sophia Kudriavtseva.
