moscow art
critic andrey kovalev
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"Sacrifice" - the Independent Newspaper, 24.04.1992 .I must admit that it wasn't only distress that I felt when I discovered the loss of the meat packages I was given at the Regina Gallery, it was also like a heavy burden falling off my heart. Although, strictly speaking, pigs are destined to be killed and eaten. The provocation took place at the level of the mass consciousness and it gratefully responded to it. Mass media, which is generally quite indifferent to the occupations of artists, got unexpectedly excited and rumors concerning the developments at the Regina Art Gallery acquired the range of a well - planned scandal. What made everything especially poignant was the fact that it was a private gallery, and it belonged to the world of brokers and joint ventures. Even the posters carried by the "green" who came to defend Piggly-Wiggly contained the typically environmental and vegetarian motives paradoxically interlaced with populist phraseology, One of the slogans supposed that we should not "humiliate" ourselves in front of the capitalists and should not take meat from their hands. I am a regular visitor to various artistic events but I have not witnessed so much agitation and excitement before. People were picketing the gallery and distributing pamphlets, journalists tried to get inside. The young tribe of capitalists was not lax and reacted according to the best bureaucratic traditions, posting heavy guards: only invitation cards could get you inside the gallery and people at the doors marked the card when you went in. Moreover, the planned action started during the night, as a matter of fact, when the doors of the gallery were solemnly smeared with, I beg your pardon, faeces. The criminals left a wooden ladle on the spot which was used to throw faeces at the door. Naturally the ladle immediately joined other documents of the action. The choice of faeces as such is an obvious proof that the artistic group which produced it wanted to appeal to the infantile complexes of the earliest (you remember Freud), the anal stage. Perhaps, the same group produced another action to frame the main one. On the next night the show-windows of the gallery were shattered with athletes' weights which were sawed into two halves. The weights carried the names of Sniff - Sniff, Snaff - Snaff and Snuff - Snuff. When I asked Vladimir Ovcharenko about it at the discussion of the festival, he told me that all the necessary steps were taken, the show windows were replaced, and an investigation is on the way. But I am afraid detectives won't help here... Despite the fact that the framing action was as much a performance, as the main one, the shadow of the innocently killed Piggly—Wiggly broke apart the elite of the opening day crowd. The greater part of it boycotted the Regina Art Gallery and spoke with indignation about latest outrages of 0. Kulik who passed all the possible limits. One could hardly disagree with it, but it is strange, to say the least, to defend the front line and to regard it as the greatest cause of your life when your potential adversary has left his front line long ago and went home. This, as it happens, is how our Ivans Ivanovitches and Ivans Nikiforovitches quarrelled because of a pig... ...The strategy was a smart shot, and 0. Kulik happened to be the first to publicly tear off the slippery mask of an augur and teacher of life and engaged himself in that very thing the contemporary artist is to engage himself in, i.e. in provocation, in tickling public consciousness which is always prepared to take a well-fed nap. |
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Andey Kovalev - [email protected], [email protected] |