Hostage in NAMU
Hostage in NAMU Series of performances in the National Art Museum of Ukraine
December 2010 – April 2011 Curator: Larissa Babij Coordinator: Daryna Yakimova
Hostage—a person forcibly deprived of his/her freedom (captured and held against his/her will by any person or group of people) under threat of death, infliction of bodily harm, further restraint or other violent actions with the aim of coercing a third party to perform certain actions. Administration of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine ORDINANCE On the ratification of Instructions regarding the use of weapons, military equipment, armament of ships (cutters), airplanes and helicopters of the State Border Guard Service of Ukraine, special means and measures of physical influence during the protection of the national border and exclusive (naval) economic zone of Ukraine (Instruction, n.1.3) 21.10.2003 N 200
The museum is an institution whose aims include the preservation of objects. Byzantine icons, 19th-century paintings, even documentation of performances remain in the museum unchanging, no longer free to vanish with the rest of their contemporaries (humans and other objects). Displaced in time and space, re-placed in the museum, each object is re-temporalized into the present and also into infinity. The museum attempts to produce an illusion of time that doesn’t move forward and disappear, of eternal time free from the transformations experienced by living things. Leading twentieth–century performance artists, whose iconoclastic mission was to highlight transience and immediacy in the art experience through live action, have been taken hostage by the museum. Their bodies, which by now have aged and/or died, remain trapped in documentation (photo, video, etc.). The live performer exposes and questions the “timelessness” of the museum. Performance is a time-based art; the performer’s body, even in stillness, is continually registering information from its surroundings and assimilating this information into each subsequent action. In performance art, a durational process—even if it is not perceptible to the viewer in its entirety—is integral to the work. From December 2010 – April 2011, Ukrainian artists Oleksandr Lebediev, Larysa Venediktova, Alevtina Kakhidze and Lada Nakonechna presented performances in the National Art Museum of Ukraine. The performances investigated the process of live artistic action in relation to the unique time and space of the museum, addressing such questions as: What does it mean to be taken hostage by the museum? What are the terms of negotiation? Strategies for escape? Where is freedom?
Hostage: NAMU
Mykola Skyba Deputy Director of the National Art Museum of Ukraine If we accept the classic division of the arts into spatial and temporal, then the museum and performance art appear to be opposites. Let’s say, the museum is first of all a spatial phenomenon. Here the museum is a physical place marked on the map (with a precise address, a building that maintains a constant temperature, humidity, lighting, etc.), a typical institution. Another important aspect is related to the content of the museum: through a “crystalline structure” of conceptually tuned exhibits, devoid of the “organic matter” of the creative process, the museum embodies the idea of overcoming time by freeing individual pieces of art from a succession of temporally conditioned changes. Performance, on the contrary, is action “here and now” that focuses attention on climactic moments or at least zones of tension between a particular time and setting. Combining these two, essentially antipodal, cultural phenomena (and their respective practices) often results in reciprocal repulsion; however, with a thoughtful approach, it may produce an unexpected effect on the senses that is significant for both participants of this encounter. So the basic antinomy between these two notions is merely the point of departure, a challenge to the agents of both contexts. In this case, the agent from the performative practices community was Larissa Babij, who initiated the project. The representative of the museum community was the National Art Museum of Ukraine, where this initiative became possible through the museum’s fundamental (although not fully comprehended) openness to contemporary art as a component of its development strategy. Precedents of this policy include the projects “Ukrainian New Wave,” “Great
Surprise,” and the exhibition of the classics of video-art Joseph Beuys, Nam Jun Paik and Wolf Vostell. The first was a sort of ritual consecrating the “generation of 1987” as classics. The second was an approbation of socially engaged contemporary art in the relatively hermetic conditions of a traditional exhibition, presenting the “generation of 2004,” with its respective critical practices, on the museum’s territory. The third project testified that art whose medium is the screen and video-projector can be perceived as organically within the walls of the classical museum as the customary painting, sculpture and graphic arts. And it was precisely in this third phase of the NAMU’s reconsideration of its own social position that the encounter (or collision) between the museum and artists for whom performance is the medium of their conceptual communication occurred. Of course, each side in this process had its own particular internal objectives, as well as certain apprehensions about and expectations of the other side. To what extent were they justified? For curator Larissa Babij, the project was about investigating how the living process of artistic action interacts with the space and time of the museum. The museum perceived this project as one more step in experimenting with the presence of contemporary art on its territory, as one more attempt to animate its static exhibitions. Initially, the NAMU team did not approach the project with any formalized research questions; but with time the experience of direct contact with performance art gave the team a decisive push to formulate objectives relating to the museification of contemporary art and to figure out optimal approaches and principles for guiding the expert selection, museification and exhibition of artistic practices not bound to classical forms. In this context the encounter between the museum and performance turned out to be a rather productive way for the museum to examine its own nature, an opportunity to elucidate its own boundaries and limitations.
Yet if we turn to the particular conceptual questions posed by Larissa Babij to each of the four performances in the series and the answers that the museum received, then they were not as focused and sometimes produced highly unexpected results. In particular, Oleksandr Lebediev’s work Beuys the Pilot—the first performance in the series “Hostage in NAMU”—cast its own hue on the questions posed by the curator: “What does it mean to be taken hostage by the museum? What are the terms of negotiation? Strategies for escape? Where is freedom?” These questions seemed edged with institutional critique directed against the museum perceived as a mausoleum or, rather, a peculiar Egyptian pyramid that mummifies the artistic process. Perhaps this explains the motif of the very long band in which the performer wrapped himself. Thus, like a Möbius strip, the timespace of the museum envelops the live person—this living subject of art—immobilizing him as an object. However, in the case of the NAMU the social aspect did not resound, for the museum has essentially rejected the discourse of domination and itself quite often ends up in the position of hostage before its visitors, their demands, and historical circumstances. Rather, this quasi-ritualistic action (facing the screen showing Beuys enclosed with the coyote, wrapping himself in a piece of felt, testing out the reaction of the totem animal) seemed more like an attempt at deconstructing the various rituals of auto-initiation performed by artists (by pulling the museum’s “covers” toward themselves) that are widely practiced in Ukraine. And in this case the metaphysical aspect of both the performance and the museum sounded more clearly. The next performance Let’s make a deal—you don’t see me, I don’t see you was interesting in that it transgressed long-standing museum conventions, above all the status of the viewer as subject and museum exhibit as object. Larysa Venediktova spent three consecutive
8-hour days in the galleries of the NAMU working as a museum exhibit. But this was not a static object like a painting or sculpture, but one in motion, endued with the energy of the gaze and the potential of hidden intentions. To the visitor entering the museum an hour or two after its opening, this “exhibit” was just as “immobile” as the others, since one didn’t have the chance to witness either the beginning or end of the action. Time in the sense of the performance moved more slowly than the time necessary to view the museum exhibition, so that whatever was happening in this time flow lost the quality of flowing, fragmenting into discrete acts that could be observed like film stills. The lines of force indicating the relationships that appear between the visitor and the museum were temporarily “interrupted,” weakening existent conventions, and a certain symbolic provocation to change or do away with them appeared. But I believe the most significant point arose not with the viewer but with the metaphysics of the museum space itself (for the visitor, this performance was perhaps the most hermetic). Practicing “slow art” on the territory of the slowed-down museum timespace, the performers made the latter’s hidden and as yet unclaimed dimensions reverberate. Another slow performance, One More Day, in which Lada Nakonechna methodically filled a white board with gray lines, marking for herself the monotonous time of being present in the museum space, in my view dealt with time and space less than emotions and existence. No wonder the lines drawn by the artist called to mind a cardiogram. But why did this impression turn out so unvaried? Is the pulse of the museum environment really like that, or is this a metaphor for the persona of the artist, say, the “productivity” of his/ her work? Or perhaps by demonstrating this process of “atomization,” it’s an attempt to show that each artifact is actually, above all, the concentrated life-time of the artist?
If this is so, then Alevtina Kakhidze’s performance (chronologically preceding One More Day) was an attempt to reconstitute the essence of the time and energy an artist puts into a particular work. Ultimately, it was also an attempt to overcome the fetishizing of the museum object and to look at it as a kind of membrane or medium. And I think that this approach turned out to be the most interesting for the museum from the standpoint of reconceptualizing itself, as well as in the practical context of functioning as a public institution. During the encounter with this performance, a rather fundamental aspect of the museum’s substance came to light: the close interdependence of its valuational and practical dimensions. The museum’s public activity chiefly revolves around the value (read—immaterial) aspect of art, which must have something that makes it important enough to be included in the museum’s collection, that justifies the costs of its acquisition, preservation, research, exhibition. In addition, the museum requires a strong and sound economy to maintain this artificial life of artifacts; it must function as a kind of mechanism, concerned with efficiency, and not just effects. So, while encouraging the consumption of symbolic capital, the museum is also a very material substance, even dependent on material resources. Artists who work with performance as a form of physical artistic practice, despite their emphasis on the body, are perceived as light wave particles against the background of the museum’s “corpuscularity.” So the meeting of the bodily-ephemeral and ideal-pragmatic truly provided an unusual, if to a large extent imperceptible, effect. The museum is a territory for “symbolic consumption,” where the consumer is offered neither a product’s basis nor functional characteristics, but a totality of signs, meanings, statuses, etc. And here the cultural product is accessed through “intangible means,” it is inseparable from the place where it is proffered, and there is only one way
to take it with you: by interiorizing it, whether as an emotional state, intellectual experience, or a change in self-regard, identity. In this the museum is not exceptional—an analogous process occurs when watching a theatrical performance or film. However, the theatrical arts have one essential difference and component—time. Their viewer buys time filled with particular impressions and experiences. The pace and rhythm of the action ultimately determines the means of consumption. From this perspective, performance is not a theatrical art; it is anti-consumerist. Its intention lies in resisting the attempt to appropriate anything in any way, even symbolically. For the museum, this poses a particular problem and challenge. It violates a certain agreement between the museum and the viewer, who brings his/her resources to the museum in exchange for the opportunity to consume a particular product. It is in this sense that the museum today has been taken hostage by the viewer.
Oleksandr Lebediev Beuys the Pilot 11 December 2010 Duration: 3 hours
Oleksandr Lebediev’s performance takes place in the exhibition “Beuys. Paik. Vostell. Action art and video art of the 1960s and 1970s.” In his work, he raises the following questions: Is there a difference between a person as artist and a person as person? Where can we find the artist before/during/after—in other words, in— his work? What remains in the museum that we can perceive as art? Is it a story, ideas, interpretations, objects, all of these together, or something else?
Theater, performance, dance all feed on time. They exist in time. One of their functions is the organization of time. Movement, including the movement of text (words), is time. In theater, one of the main purposes of composition is to organize the continuity of time. It seems like this is possible only in an enclosed space. Time flows differently in the museum than in the theater. In the museum, time essentially stands still. An ideally composed painting does not exist in time; it is entirely here and now, in this “instant.” Then it seemingly disappears until the next “instant” of perception. The museum is designed to save, conserve, restore, in other words, to combat time. It performs the function of memory, preserving the objects that comprise historical memory. Performance is directed against this particular function; it exists in the moment, and upon ending, it vanishes. One cannot rely on the next instant of perception. In this case the function of memory can only be performed by whoever observed the performance. Thus, the preservation of historical memory becomes a personal matter. Besides, performance is work that brings no results, that is, to some extent—meaningless work. It is an attempt to organize absence. What happens when this organized time moves into a space where time is not really subject to organization? And in what, precisely, lies the difference between the theater and the museum? What is the role of performance in the museum?
Larysa Venediktova Let’s make a deal—you don’t see me, I don’t see you 4-6 February 2011 Duration: 2.5 days
The museum as a place for keeping the confiscated, expropriated, estranged… To seize yourself, take yourself hostage. And see what you can demand, and from whom.
Larysa Venediktova spends a weekend in the museum without setting any particular tasks or questions before herself. The performer invites visitors to become notquite-viewers by not presenting them with any sort of “event� upon which to focus their attention. The anti-spectacular performance has the potential to captivate the visitor, to hold him/ her hostage in its paradoxical grasp.
The model on which the public museum was founded in the early 19th century—the organization of things and memory—no longer fully suits the present day. All possible objects have already entered the museum. The museum knows that it is neither a depository nor a common archive. It is potentially something greater. And so it must keep living perpetually. In this quest for life, the museum is turning its attention to live objects. Overall, our views of history and historical memory have changed. We exist in some kind of continuous present. It’s no longer about objects, but about processes, about something in motion. The museum is turning into a place of interaction between works, viewers-visitors, space… and time. In other words, preservation can no longer be a fact, but has become a process. The museum now has to deal with the process of thinking rather than its results. How does this function of memory work if, however you look at it, performance exists in time? How can something that is conceptually founded on disappearance be preserved?
Repetition is a process of preservation. But this process happens only through people. When information is passed from one person to another, it is transformed through subjectivity. And besides, this process of transferring knowledge from person to person resembles age-old customs. The museum thus becomes a special place for this process of transmission. It began simply as a place for keeping and displaying expropriated treasures, then its function changed—objects without inherent value became valuable when placed in the museum (like Duchamp’s readymades), and at this point it became a place of distinction; now its function is changing yet again—the museum is becoming a place for visible human (performative) existence and for the experience of perceiving it.
Lada Nakonechna One More Day 20–22 April 2011 Duration: 3 (8-hour) days
For the duration of each workday, Lada Nakonechna takes her place amidst the other artworks in the museum. While underlining the value of daily labor, she invites viewers to turn their attention from the result to the process. The artist’s process of making marks on the surface resembles inscribing text onto paper, marking the passage of time—the time that the artist is present at her workplace, spending a day at work. At the same time, the performance draws attention to the artist’s position in the system of relations between artist–art institution– viewer, where the art institution acts as mediator.
As people walk through the museum, they follow their own program, and take along their own time. In the museum the visitor is in a situation of monologue. People in the museum are a plurality of singularities that differ from one another. The difference between one thing and another is space. Thus, people go to the museum for space, to become part of this space, which means—part of history. In the theater, a dialogue takes place with this plurality, which has become a singularity, inasmuch as the theater can “only� deal with individual personal memory. The theater creates one viewer from many. This viewer can change over time, becoming different from the one who came to the theater. Thus, the viewer goes to the theater for time as a chance for change, if we consider time as the difference of a thing from itself.
Alevtina Kakhidze Museum Tour. NAMU 26–27 March 2011 Duration: 30 mins.
Visitors are invited to view the tradition of Ukrainian art presented in the museum’s galleries through Alevtina Kakhidze’s personal commentary. The artist guides visitors through the museum, telling them about what she finds most fascinating and disturbing in this place.
Artists have a secret desire and hope to end up in the museum, in this “holy of holies” I must admit that my work once hung in this spot, it was only for two months
And it covered this beautiful work by Oleh Holosiy, they said that was the only way. They hung it right on top. And from this moment on... It does not mean that you should not question everything that I will say
to you during this tour… Why? Because even if that work was good (It was exhibited in the
museum) it doesn’t mean that all the subsequent works—my works—will be good—including this tour…
(I even put on this emerald glove as a
visible reminder—question everything that I say during our tour) And now let’s proceed to the portrait of the artist…
Yevhen Volobuev, “Morning in the City!” The artist portrayed women sweeping the streets… He portrayed them as happy… I think that they look happy
Well at least we, viewers, are not fully assured… we can’t be sure that these women are satisfied with their lot
More likely, the artist himself is happy with this state of affairs, that he is an artist, and somebody else is sweeping the streets… If I, an artist of the 21st century—woman-artist (excuse my mistake!)—if I decided to make a work where I depicted women sweeping the streets, or talked about them I would take into account three things: First, sweeping the street is still easier than leading a museum tour And I don’t know yet how I will feel after this tour.
It’s not certain that I won’t experience “body trauma” – that’s the condition that master of performance art Marina Abramovic often talks about. Second, leading a tour through the National Art Museum of Ukraine is much more interesting than sweeping the streets… I have experience with physical labor and… this is more interesting… And third, I’d like to recall a contemporary of Yevhen Volobuev, the German artist Joseph Beuys, with his legendary statement:
“Every person is an artist!” “Every person can be an artist.” This means that even women who sweep the streets can become women-artists. (this time I didn’t make that mistake.)
The division of the theater and museum, like the division of time and space, resembles a ruined church from which the liturgy has been removed to one place and the iconostasis to another. Yet contemporary art does the work of reuniting time and space. It’s as though a reunion of the iconostasis and liturgy is possible only through the person, through his/her existential practice. And the person becomes the temple. It’s true that this is hard work, not everyone is willing to do it. Here, most likely, the reconstruction of the ruined church occurs in the perception of the one who is watching. And, actually, it’s not important where this happens, whether in the museum or in the theater, the difference between them disappears. And so it turns out that the main player in contemporary art is perception. More precisely—the potential of perception, because perception is in essence a potential phenomenon. This means that the temple always remains only a possibility, but that’s not so little as may seem at first glance. This text is based on a discussion between Larissa Babij, Larysa Venediktova, Olga Komisar and Oleksandr Lebediev in fall 2010.
1st floor
2nd floor
Larissa Babij
Oleksandr Lebediev
Larysa Venediktova
works as a curator, writer, artist in Ukraine. Her texts about contemporary art have been published on korydor.in.ua, www. artmargins.com and www.openspace.ru. In September 2010, she launched a platform for informal discussions about contemporary art “On the Floor” at the Foundation Center for Contemporary Art. She has been collaborating with TanzLaboratorium since 2008.
is a performer and dancer, member of the performance group TanzLaboratorium. He also worked in the experimental theatre “Vilna Scena [Free Stage]” in Kyiv from 2007–2010. In 2009 he received a “DanceWEB” scholarship to attend the ImpulsTanz contemporary dance festival in Vienna. He presented the performance 8 in the National Art Museum of Ukraine in 2009.
is a performer, founder and artistic director of the performance group TanzLaboratorium; she also publishes critical texts about contemporary art and dance. She has participated in festivals in Ukraine and abroad, including Week of Contemporary Art (Lviv, Ukraine); Days of Contemporary Art (Bialystok, Poland); ART-ALTERNATYVA (Donetsk, Ukraine); INFANT (Novi Sad, Serbia); Underground (Arad, Romania); Evolution (Tallinn, Estonia). She also worked as a director in the experimental theatre “Vilna Scena [Free Stage]” in Kyiv from 2002–2011. From 2003–2006, she studied and worked with Japanese butoh master Min Tanaka at the DO TANZA school (Moscow School of Dramatic Art). She edited the journal World of Art (1999–2001).
Hostage in NAMU Curator: Larissa Babij Coordinator: Daryna Yakimova Photos: Kostiantyn Strilets Olga Komisar Design: Kostiantyn Strilets Larissa Babij Special thanks to the staff of the National Art Museum of Ukraine, especially Maria Zadorozhna, for their support and assistance in realizing the project.
Lada Nakonechna
Alevtina Kakhidze
is an artist who lives and works in Kyiv. She was a finalist for the PinchukArtPrize in 2009 and 2011; finalist for the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award in 2008; winner of the Third Ukrainian Competition for Young Curators and Artists (Center for Contemporary Art at NaUKMA, Kyiv) in 2003. She has been a member of the R.E.P. group since 2004, and a member of the curatorial group Hudrada since 2008. She has participated in numerous international and Ukrainian art projects and exhibitions, including “Perspective” (2011, University Library “Albertina,” Leipzig); “2 Stories–3 Worlds” (2011, BINZ39 Foundation, Zurich); “IF” (2010, Museum of Contemporary Art PERMM, Perm, Russia); “Future Was Yesterday” (2009, Gallery SC + Gallery PM/HDLU, Zagreb, Croatia); “Another City. Another Life” (2008, Zacheta Gallery, Warsaw); “Exteriors” (2007, Center for Contemporary Art, Kyiv); “Postorange” (2006, Kunsthalle, Vienna). More information at www. ladanakonechna.com.
is an artist, laureate of the Kazimir Malevich Artist Award in 2008, First prize winner of the Competition for Young Curators and Artists (Center for Contemporary Art at NaUKMA, Kyiv) in 2002. She has participated in numerous international and Ukrainian art projects, including I’m Late for a Plane that Can’t Be Missed (2010, produced through the support of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation “Development of Ukraine”); “IF” (Museum for Contemporary Art PERMM, Perm, Russia); “1989–2009: Turbulent World – Telling Time” (Art Academy, Berlin; National Art Museum of Ukraine, Kyiv; National Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow, etc.); “Endless Sphere” (Center for Contemporary Art at NaUKMA, Kyiv). She received a scholarship to study at the Jan van Eyck Academie (Maastricht, the Netherlands) and has been artist-in-residence at Open House Iaspis (Stockholm, Sweden); Center for Contemporary Art “Ujazdowski Castle” (Warsaw, Poland). Alevtina is co-founder of a private residency for international artists in the village Muzychi and on-line publication about art www.kram.in.ua. More information at www.alevtinakakhidze.com.