Just as the individual is born into language and, per French philosopher Louis Althusser, is interpellated by ideology, any contemporary art show is born at the behest of financial and political considerations into a world already filled with expectations for it. As a result, the big question is the surplus statement it makes, what it brings to the already formed field of ideology, politics, and economics, and whether it can somehow transform it. From the moment it was announced it would take place in St. Petersburg, Manifesta 10 has been surrounded by numerous expectations and scandals, but, alas, the surplus meaning that the show has itself produced is minimal. Amid the epic debates about the feasibility of boycotting a biennial slated to take place in a city (and, later, a whole country) whose lawmakers had passed a scandalous homophobic law, and the recent rows sparked by Russia’s imperialist actions in Ukraine, curator Kasper König’s main project comes off as insipidly proper, although it makes room for discussions of both homophobia and the Ukrainian crisis. The show apparently wants to respond to all the demands made of it right off the bat, but so gracefully that no one is ruffled. As a result, it inadvertently comes to serve the ideological and political fields that brought it into being. —Gleb Napreenko is a Russian art critic and art historian. He has studied in the Art History Department of the Moscow State University and has published his writings on websites such as openspace.ru, colta.ru, and periodicals such as Moscow Art Magazine, Artchronika, Dialog of arts, e-flux journal among others. He is currently author and editor of the website openleft.ru. Translated from the Russian by Thomas Campbell.
Posted on: Tue, 01 Jul 2014 03:02:15 +0000
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