Joseph Backstein: That’s Simply How It Is Now
25/09/2011
The 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art was unveiled on September 22, and will be open through November 30. The biennale’s central show is set up in two places in Moscow: on the fifth floor of the high-end shopping center TSUM and in the extensive industrial space of the newly opened ARTplay design center. During the short period between openings at each of the locations, the commissioner of the biennale, Joseph Backstein (1945), found time for a conversation with Arterritory.com.
Joseph Backstein is one of the leading figures in Russian contemporary art. He studied computer science, has a doctoral degree in the sociology of art and culture, and is the founder and director of the Moscow Contemporary Art Institute (established in 1991). Backstein also served as curator of the Russian pavilion at the 48th Venice Biennale in 1999, one of the curators of the first Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, in 2005, and commissioner of the next three (including the current biennale), as well as the curator of a whole string of exhibits.
This summer, a curator from St. Petersburg named Olesya Turkina was visiting Latvia during the Cēsis Art Festival. One evening she shared a bottle of Coca-Cola with a small circle of friends, saying, “Don’t be afraid of catching a virus; all of us have already caught the same illness—art.” Have you caught it too?
Working on large-scale projects, the risk is always there. Particularly if each biennale has a new location, which encompasses a whole string of unforeseeable circumstances. For example, the extensive space of the ARTplay design center, where a portion of the biennale’s central show is exhibited, only recently was still under construction. Extensive art projects always demand lots of efforts and result in enormous exhaustion, that is, if we are speaking about art as an illness.
What drives you to continue working, to be “ill” with it for so many years?
That’s my duty. (Affects being out of breath, and loughs).
An internally assigned duty?
Both that and a duty placed upon me by many biography, my involvement in Russian art history and theory since the early 1970s.
Bet why art?
You might even say that this happened accidentally. I’m not an art historian by trade. Yet things happen, circumstances coincide. I studied sociology, it was the Soviet era. I searched for an independent field of study, and in this way I discovered the underground—underground philosophy groups and also underground art.
The magazine Russian ArtChronics once called you one of the most influential people in Russian visual art. Perhaps this status also places upon you a certain responsibility?
I let that nonsense go in one ear and out the other. At my age, what else can I do? I don’t think about fame, I’m simply trying not to die yet.
In the 1970s, when you began to be interested in art, did you gradually begin to form a vision about something like the Moscow Biennale, which you could strive to work toward?
No, nothing like that; we didn’t think of anything like that back then. During the Soviet era, along with other people of my generation, we simply tried to get involved in interesting projects. What is more, my best projects have been realized without any funding. The biennale has a budget, but this immediately creates additional restrictions, problems.
Speaking about this year’s biennale, how do you understand its concept—“Rewriting Worlds”?
There doesn’t exist one dominating depiction of the world, one understanding of the world. It is no longer the case that a Western viewpoint or an Anglo-American viewpoint dominates. The scene is more global, more equal. Chinese artists think about Americans, Americans think about Russians.
And is this good?
That’s simply how it is now.
This era can be characterized by the names of renowned curators, strong personalities. Is there a threat that a curator could overshadow the artist, using him as a mouthpiece for his ideas?
It’s not that bad. The relationship between a curator and an artist is always a very individual matter that depends on the personalities of both people. That’s why there are many possible versions for their relationship. But to my mind, I don’t think you see just one distinct tendency in this matter.
The number of art fairs and biennales is growing very sharply. The curator Peter Weibel mentioned at the biennale’s press conference that twenty years ago you could count them on the fingers of one hand. What do you think this testifies to?
The situation has consequences for globalization and for the fact that everyone wants to intensify the local art scene. Everyone wants to be in the center, to be seen, to be recognizable. Moscow’s contemporary art center Garage, the Moscow Biennale, and other similar initiatives are efforts to prove that we, too, are a part of contemporary art processes.
But doesn’t such an explicit strengthening of power in the art market destroy the essence of art? I doubt the main function of a work of art is to be a product.
Yes, well, that’s how our “wild capitalism” is. The art market, particularly auction houses, are becoming incredibly influential. Even museums no longer have any say about what is what in art. Now the point of reference is determined by art fairs and auction houses.
And how does this impact art?
Poorly. Art is becoming a part of the anonymous machinery of the cultural industry, which is very dangerous.
In order to dispel the depressing tone: What is the most impressive experience you’ve had recently in art? Where and when did you experience it?
I can’t assess this biennale, because it is my project, so I’m not about to compare. Yet one of my most impressive recently experience in art was at the previous Moscow Biennale, in 2009. That left a very lasting impression on me. The curator, Jean-Hubert Martin of France, did a remarkable job.
