{"id":130,"date":"2014-11-10T12:14:57","date_gmt":"2014-11-10T12:14:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/curatorlab2014.wordpress.com\/?page_id=130"},"modified":"2016-08-15T14:18:06","modified_gmt":"2016-08-15T13:18:06","slug":"introduction-to-st-petersburg-exhibition","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/edu.konstfack.se\/curatorlab2014\/introduction-to-st-petersburg-exhibition\/","title":{"rendered":"CuratorLab in the Winter Palace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Manifesta 10\u00a0\u00bd<\/h1>\n

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Thurs, 25 September 2014. 16:00-18:00
\nThe Winter Palace, The Hermitage<\/p>\n

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“MANIFESTA 10 \u00bd. A Guided Tour of an Imaginary Exhibition. Envisages an alternative Manifesta that circumvents the particular set of institutional and political restrictions that have characterised the Biennial\u2019s realisation. The final MANIFESTA 10 exhibition had a slightly different result from the originally intended one due to a number of obstacles on both geopolitical and quotidian scales. With our project we go back to the initial idea of an exhibition that directly confronts the Russian imperial past, as well as its current echoes within the Tsar’s former Palace.<\/p>\n

MANIFESTA 10 \u00bd. A Guided Tour of an Imaginary Exhibition will consist of several invisible interventions throughout selected rooms in the Winter Palace, the largest building in the entire museum complex of the Hermitage and the venue in which Manifesta has responded to the historical collection as part of this year\u2019s Biennial.”<\/p>\n

The project is made by the participants of CuratorLab who have each have responded to the history, objects and atmosphere of one chosen room by imagining art works, objects and ideas within these spaces. The outcome will be a guided tour through the actual rooms of the Winter Palace with the virtual propositions for a show that seeks to engage the audience in a dialogue.<\/p>\n

\"MANIFESTA

MANIFESTA 10, zdj. Egor Rogalev<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Peacock\u00a0Clock<\/strong><\/span><\/h4>\n

\u201cIn classical science the emphasis was on time-in\u00addependent laws . Once the particular state of a system has been measured, the reversible laws of classical science are supposed to determine its future, just as they had determined its past. It is natural that this quest for an eternal truth behind changing phenomena aroused enthusiasm. But it also came as a shock that nature described in this way was in fact debased : by the very success of science, nature was shown to be an automaton, a robot.\u201d<\/p>\n

Order out of Chaos<\/em>, Ilya Prigonine & Isabelle Stengers<\/p>\n

Perhaps the days are not far off when the conquered phantoms of three-dimensional space, of the illusion of time formed like drops, and of a timid causality . . . will be revealed to everyone for what they have been all along \u2013 nothing but the annoying bars of a cell in which the creative human spirit has been imprisoned.<\/p>\n

Mikhail Maitushin<\/p>\n

The peacock clock appears in Eisenstein\u2019s October during the storming of the Winter Palace where it symbolizes the inevitable downfall of the provisional government. The bird both exposes and represents the vanity of its leader who refuses to realize what the Bolsheviks, who are about to repossess the Tsar\u2019s splendid wealth, let him know with a note: \u201ctime is up.\u201d As a tourist guide boat told us during our visit to St. Petersburg, anybody can now visit the palace at anytime, and in plain clothes too. Every Wednesday afternoon at six, all the rooms of the always crowded palace are emtied by a tide of people rushing to see the automaton peacock perform. The bird is watched and recorded through digital notepads while, assisted by a man who works there, it shows off its biomechanical imitations of organic movement. The scene is a reminder that Eisenstein\u2019s image of a history inevitably fullfilling its destiny fits easily into the scheme of westernization and neoliberal policies that present communism as an exception, a story of temporary de-railment, construing Putin as direct heir to the Tsar. Everybody is the owner of this decadent animal of luxury, but only in so far as all its parts and springs are gathered together in the hands of the sovereign, where it must remain if it is to work according to its destined function. For the common riches not to break down into chaos, freedom is played by an audience overseen by babushka security.<\/p>\n

\"busssybirds\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Peacock was chosen as motif for the clock as a symbol of the cosmos. Yet while for astronomy the revolutions of planets guranteed regularity and predictability, revolution on earth\u2019s scale meant the upheaveal of terrestrial order. Since the historical inevitability of communism can no longer be assumed, as it was by Eisenstein, perhaps communist time is instead folded into material complexity of lived experience that clockmaking could not capture. Such a model is better provided by Vertov\u2019s\u00a0Man with Movie Camera<\/em>, where barbers famously have their scissors interspliced with images of the film\u2019s editing process, so that their reproductive actions are animated by a omnipresent creative and connective potential.<\/p>\n

The clockmaking technique for capturing organic movements into repetitious activity was later used to integrate diverse practices within factories, prefiguring not least the biomechanical engineering that was being\u00a0appropriated by Soviet science and industry<\/a>\u00a0at the time of Vertov\u2019s film. Meanwhile, Man With Movie Camera<\/em> shows the miraculous root of likeness by way of self-moving matter and the soul of things. Among other things, Vertov is fascinated with fruits that pile themselves and a tripod that assembles itself. These animations may be said to present the peacock at the level of its mimetic function, to combine the craft of clockmaking with luxuorious appearance. The peacock contains both technique and spectacle, that is, one the one hand a defined way of doing applied to a certain material that \u201ccontemporary\u201d or western art supposedly transgresses through postmedia practices, and on the other the inexplicably dense visuality of multiple relations and determinations critical art practice seeks to unravel.<\/p>\n

\"Birds<\/p>\n

Birds in the Hermeitage\u2019s ethnographic collection<\/p>\n

By folding cosmic time into the different speeds, trajectories, scales, saturations, directions, and sensibilia of earthly existences, the peacock combines prosaic technique with fantastical expressions. Taken this way, the bird suspends the direct correlation between a way of doing and the action\u2019s performer, between a technique and what results, extending a surface where the different terrestrial registers come in contact to produce unexpected formations. In such a version, mimesis deals little with copy and reproduction through semblances of order. It rather animalizes Diamat, the \u201corthodox\u201d marxism of the Stalin period that regarded consciousness as a mere reflection of matter, a cerebral neurodynamic process that follows nature\u2019s immutable mechanisms.<\/p>\n

\"Kulbin\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Nicolai Kulbin<\/p>\n

The Soviet psycologist and \u201ccreative marxist\u201d E.V. Ilyenkov referred to the regular movement of the stars to explain how the ideal, or spirit and thought, existed objectively and were not the exclusive properties of the human mind. Ilyenkov\u2019s main agenda, however, was to introduce material activity as both an idealization of matter and, once that was done, a materilization of the ideal. Yet although the ideal can reside in natural bodies, material people and things have a roughness that reject to conform with it. The ideal never expresses identity but only processes of change and metamorphic relationships as different modalities of existence incorporate and act on each other. If Illyenkov\u2019s theories locate thinking, knowing and seeing within social de- and reformations of the body, this can arguably be seen in Claudia R\u00f6\u00dfger drawings on astronomy paper, were cosmic forces are extending in bodies, multiplying and separating the organs of iconic and folkloric figures, making little distinction between animal costumes and animals, biological mutations and the movements of human activity.<\/p>\n

\"Claudia\"yes\"<\/p>\n

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<\/h1>\n

The accident of \u2018The Institute\u2019<\/span><\/h1>\n

\"IMG_8604\"<\/p>\n

During our visit in St Petersburg, we were given a personal tour of Manifesta at the Winter Palace by<\/span>\u00a0curator and art historian\u00a0Sergey Fofanov<\/span>. After an extensive 3 hour tour, the last artwork to engage with was \u2019The Institute\u2019 by Louis Bourgeois. To our surprise there was no work in sight due an unfortunate and clumsy accident.<\/p>\n

Sergey explains how a Japanese tourist had accidentally backed into the sculpture while taking a photo of a rather large image opposite to it.<\/p>\n

Questions regarding security, access and insurance were asked and we had a short discussion about the placement of the piece, the damage and repair.<\/p>\n

I became fascinated by the Japanese tourist and his misfortunate accident. Something that could of happened to the best of us. I started thinking about the value of the art piece in relation to absurdity of the accident, but mainly to the tourist\u2019s life. His actions and his own being have now become a part of the artwork itself. A truth which might be forgotten, but regardless the happening remains. I\u2019m interested in the storytelling around this \u2019spectacle\u2019, how it is told and how\/if\u00a0the story becomes a part of the artwork.<\/p>\n

In this room I want to implement a site specific sound walk by Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller that mediates this story, perhaps leaving us to question and think about the authority and time aspect of \u2019The Institute\u2019 and all other works on display at the Winter Palace.<\/p>\n

\"Sk\u00e4rmavbild<\/p>\n

Louise Bourgeois,
\nThe Institute<\/em>, 2002.
\nSilver, 30.5 x 70.5 x 46.4 cm.
\nCollection The Easton Foundation.
\nPhoto: Christopher Burke,\u00a0\u00a9\u00a0The Easton Foundation
\n\u00a9\u00a0Louise Bourgeois, The Institute, c\/o Pictoright Amsterdam 2014<\/p>\n

Josefin Varg\u00f6<\/p>\n

<\/h1>\n

Queerfest at the Winter Palace: The Art of Being\u00a0Yourself?<\/h1>\n

\"qw\"<\/p>\n

(Image copyright Queerfest Russia)<\/p>\n

Our trip to Manifesta coincided with the 6th annual festival celebrating queer identity,\u00a0Queerfest<\/a>. For this year\u2019s festival they decided to reevaluate their activity and their position in their Russian context, and look back to their roots and their original slogan:\u00a0\u00a0The Art of Being Yourself.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Aware of the increasingly alarming political oppression in contemporary Russia under Putin, I was drawn in by this positive stance and very open social media activity, and decided to attend as many\u00a0of the events as I could. On 19th September this statement appeared on their website:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u201cQueerFest\u201d, the queer pride event of Russia, opened today in St. Petersburg with a bang. Over 160 people made it, despite the last minute change of venues, attacks by provocateurs, and insults by the usual guest \u2013 Vitaly Milonov.<\/em><\/p>\n

Yesterday, the organisers learned of the planned actions to foil the event by infamous homophobic activists, some of them, such as Enteo and the crew, coming especially for the festival from Moscow.<\/em><\/p>\n

The police and the ombudsman for human rights of St. Petersburg were alerted.<\/em><\/p>\n

Today started with a call from the main venue, receiving threats. 1,5 hours before the festival was scheduled to open, the owner of the building (same building that hosts \u201cManifesta 10\u2033 biennale headquarters) informed us through his representative that our contract was annulled. Reason given \u201ccompromised integrity of the arch over the entrance into the building, which may result in its collapse\u201d. Needless to say, this public threat did not impede all other events in the building to proceed as planned.<\/em><\/p>\n

Volunteers of the festival moved the exhibition and equipment to a new venue in under 1 hour.<\/em><\/p>\n

The ceremony was a success. While QueerFest\u2019s security barricaded the door from Vitaly Milonov and his friends, who proceeded to insult and push guests, representatives of human rights\u00a0organisations\u00a0and European and the US diplomatic missions in St. Petersburg spoke of the importance of respect for human rights and non-violence.<\/em><\/p>\n

About 20 hooligans sprayed guests with green substance and some sort of stinky gas. At one point, two foreign guests were being pulled into the venue by the security while being pulled out by their feet by the perpetrators.<\/em><\/p>\n

The police, who carried themselves professionally, were taking numerous statements by the victims, while St. Petersburg ombudsman urged more people to document violations.<\/em><\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the second venue also ceded to pressures, and most events are now homeless. But the organizers remain optimistic.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe feel exhausted and exhilarated. Thanks to the work of 40 volunteers, partners, and random kindness by strangers and by passers, our event was a success. People \u2013 their rights \u2013 but also their light and kindness, is what our festival is all about. And there are more of them around us every day. That is why we will prevail\u201d, says Polina Andrianova, one of the festival organizers.<\/em><\/p>\n

The organisers thank all partners, friends, volunteers, colleagues, and participants for today\u2019s support.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I arranged\u00a0a meeting with Queerfest\u00a0and arrived in their office, only to be told that they had been forced to suspend all public activity, meaning that the workshops and talks organised would either be cancelled, or be open to a handful of select people known to the organisation. With this is mind, and with an invitation from Joanna Warsza to introduce an imaginary piece of artwork to the Winter Palace, I felt there was more urgency to create a platform for a short public presentation by Queerfest to talk about what was happening to them.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

On 25th September, two representatives from the organisation\u00a0spoke (in a mixture of english and russian) to anyone who was interested in listening to them in the Winter Palace. They spoke of their struggles over the past days, with local authorities, protestors, and most worrying of all, the police force in St Petersburg.<\/p>\n

We continue to be in contact, and I hope to upload an interview with one of the directors, Ruslan\u00a0Savolainen, to speak about the events that happened after we left Russia, and their strategies for the future of Queerfest.<\/p>\n

\"photo \"photo<\/p>\n

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<\/h1>\n

Civilisation<\/span><\/h1>\n

Support for Vladimir Putin at the presidential polls was higher in rural areas and small towns than in the cities. It stood at 70 percent in the 2013. The Russian countryside is traditionally perceived as conservative, less-educated and strongly connected to the local Orthodox Church.However there is also another kind of tradition linked to the Russian countryside: one of revolts, rebellions, religious heresies and social unrests. Peasants were the most oppressed class in Russia for most of the middle ages till the modern times, which led to numerous revolts among which the most famous is the Pugachev\u2019s rebellion in the XVIII century.\u00a0In 1915 Kasimir Malevich and Vladimir Mayakovsky collaborated on a set of posters based on the colourful folk imagery of the\u00a0lubok<\/i>, or traditional illustrated broadsheet. Malevich shows peasant men and women sweeping out the invading soldiers with pitchforks:<\/p>\n

\"When \"What<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Today this rural tradition needs to be remembered more than ever. Bai Yilou\u2019s installation entitled \u201cCivilisation\u201d is a reminder of the fact that a great part of contemporary Russia has a very different past than the one represented by the imperial ambitions of politicians. Bai\u2019s Civilization is a haunting monument criticizing imperious power as a corrupted vision built on labourers\u2019 toil. Made from terracotta, classical busts pose as emperors, pierced through and defined by agricultural tools, a life force and bane. The artist introduces agricultural tools as weaponry, piercing and protecting itself from the busts of western classics.\u00a0In this one unforgettable image, he distils the eternal hatred of poor for rich, ruled for ruler, and ignorant for educated that has fuelled all revolutions from Spartacus to Mao:<\/p>\n

\"1\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Bai Yilou\u2019s installation will be presented in the Jupiter Hall\u00a0of the Winter Palace:<\/p>\n

\"Jupiter<\/p>\n

Dorota Michalska<\/p>\n

A Tribute to Mierle Laderman Ukeles\u2019 Manifesto: I do maintanence art 1 hour per\u00a0day<\/a><\/h1>\n

\"IMG_20140925_171625573_HDR1\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"photo<\/p>\n

\"Pagine<\/p>\n

On September 22, 2014 Mierle Laderman Ukeles (1939, Denver, USA) was invited to give a talk as part of the Public Program of Manifesta 10.<\/p>\n

Her 1969 Manifesto,\u00a0Maintenance Art<\/em>\u00a0\u2013which questioned the domestic role of female artists and in which Laderman Ukeles defined herself as a \u201cmaintenance artist\u201d\u2013 also includes the statement \u201cI do maintanence art 1 hour per day\u201d.<\/p>\n

On September 25, this artist\u2019s statement, printed on A4 sheets, was hanged on the walls of the Winter Palace\u2019s corridors, staircases, toilets etc. Through the reappropriation and reenactment processes, this intervention shed new light on the original statement; however, within the context of Manifesta 10, it aimed to be a metaphor of the work of the art professional as a domestic worker: is she\/he supposed to \u2018maintain\u2019 art or to challenge its limitations? It pointed out the relationship between freedom and every-day job, and the effects of our work in the public realm.<\/p>\n

To present my intervention I decided to wear a dress by artist Natalia Pershina aka Gluklya (The dress of the woman who became more then she is<\/em>, 2014). Together with Nikolay Oleinikov, Tsaplya Olga Egorova, and Dimitry Vilensky, Gluklya is part of Chto Delat collective, who decided withdrawing from Manifesta 10 on March 15, 2014.<\/p>\n

Valentina Sansone<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Babushka<\/h1>\n

Old women, old woman,<\/em>
\nsurrounded by art that they
\ndo not want to see.
\nOld women, old woman,<\/em>
\nprotecting the new pieces that
\nshould not be.<\/p>\n

The world looks on as the artists put in.
\nThe world shouts when the politicians take out.<\/p>\n

This in and out and in and out
\ndismays the\u00a0old women, old woman<\/em>
\n\u2212my old woman<\/p>\n

who carries out orders, shielding the young
\nfrom the pink, radiant flesh of
\ncherubs. Censoring children
\nfrom the teats of their own mothers:<\/p>\n

Madonna and Venus weep,
\nhiding their embrace,
\nshunned,
\nwhile Jupiter and David
\nlook on, ashamed.<\/p>\n

For the\u00a0old women, old woman,<\/em>
\nsitting and watching,
\ntheir toothless grin,
\nreappearing only when<\/p>\n

the new is out,
\nthe old back in<\/p>\n

by Yen Ooi<\/p>\n

commissioned by KTK<\/p>\n

Proposal for the basements of the Winter Palace \u2013 St.\u00a0Petersburg<\/h1>\n

The project proposed moves from the role that the basements of public and private buildings can have in the contemporary delicate Russia\u2019s specific context as places for the spread of counterculture values and actions in relation to the mainstream authoritarian national power.<\/p>\n

Everything started when I visited the basement of a club in Saint Petersburg, where for the first time since days I have been able to feel real and honest engagement, passion, art, love, criticism and liberation.<\/p>\n

The basement thus acquired to me the aura of a utopian hidden place where to spread countercultural ideas and alternative ways of living and thinking in a close relation between art and life itself.<\/p>\n

Both the works proposed for the basement of the Winter Palace building \u2013 actually closed and forbidden to the Manifesta 10 workers as well as to the public -, although with different strategies, call into question the institutional power and authority reflecting on the role of community and sharing in the construction of an alternative system of values, where art plays a central role.<\/p>\n

Mark Boulos \u2013\u00a0No Permanent Address\u00a0<\/em>(2010)<\/p>\n

\u201cThe characters in my films wrest their agency from the structures that would control them, including language, reason, gender, God, capital, and the state. Their action is also performance: they rebel against the small roles society has cast for them, they re-imagine who they are, then they perform their greater selves. Thus my work oscillates between fiction and non-fiction, or between mythology and history\u201d.\u00a0Mark Boulos<\/p>\n

For\u00a0No Permanent Address<\/em>, Boulos spent eight weeks living in the Philippine jungle with two guerilla squads of the New People\u2019s Army (NPA), a Communist insurgency currently designated as a terrorist organisation by the EU and USA. The resulting work ruminates on the persistence of Marxism beyond the Communism supposed death, focussing on the powerful personal narratives of the soldiers and emphasizing an aspect of love. The film\u2019s title intentionally mirrors the initials of its subject whilst referencing the necessarily peripatetic existences of the NPA, who abandon any fixed address and notions of home in order to avoid capture and death at the hands of the Philippine army. Members follow the theories of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism and willingly relinquish their personal desires and property, devoting themselves entirely to the Party and embracing an ascetic lifestyle.<\/p>\n

Rather than depicting military skirmishes with the Philippine army, Boulos gives us a more subtle, distinctly human portrait of the NPA, interspersing shots of the army trekking through densely vegetated coconut groves and undergoing weapons training, with emotionally evocative stories of love, family and sacrifice from individual members of the army. One soldier describes being forced to watch the murder of his family, giving rise to his joining of the NPA. Another discusses the importance of holding your allegiance to the party above personal relationships and ensuring that, ideally, any relationships formed outside of the party bring more civilians into the revolutionary fold.<\/p>\n

Presented in the basement of the Hermitage as a metaphorical place for hidden but fervent countercultural happenings in the contemporary controversial Russian context, this video work represents an alternative possible condition experienced by contemporary Marxist revolutionaries from Philippine, in the attempt to reframe the historical revolutionary past that characterized Russia in the early 1900s (1917 \u2013 1924, until the dramatic turn established within the Stalinist age).<\/p>\n

Curandi Katz \u2013\u00a0The Pacifist Library\u00a0<\/em>(2013)<\/p>\n

Valentina Curandi and Nathaniel Katz are an Italian and American collaborative artist duo.<\/p>\n

They have been working together since 2008, enacting momentary utopian gestures that emphasize a relational ethic, that focus on the warmth of relationships between individuals in community and in relation to institutions.<\/p>\n

In this context, the duo Curandi Katz would present a printed and bound version of twenty-eight translations of the book\u00a0From Dictatorship to Democracy\u00a0<\/em>(1993) by the American intellectual and philosopher Gene Sharp and create a platform for the sharing and the transmission of the written culture.\u00a0From Dictatorship to Democracy, A Conceptual Framework for Liberation<\/em>\u00a0is a book-length essay on the generic problem of how to destroy a dictatorship and to prevent the rise of a new one.\u00a0From Dictatorship to Democracy<\/em>\u00a0has been circulated worldwide and cited repeatedly as influencing movements such as the Arab Spring in 2011.<\/p>\n

It was this idea of subverting the role of an institution through the act of smuggling that led Curandi Katz to open a do-it-yourself editorial station in a museum venue.<\/p>\n

The audience is invited to retrieve material from the archive of the museum or from itself on the condition that they photocopy it (and subsequently bind it) directly onto the blank verso pages of the printouts of Sharp\u2019s\u00a0From Democracy to Dictatorship<\/em>. By this practice, the participating public can make a \u201ccustomized\u201d version of the book which was inspiring for the artists\u2019 practice while contributing at the same time to the spread of written knowledge in a subverted and unconventional way of the written culture\u2019s transmission, also transforming the space of the basement in a reading-room where to share and spread alternative and unconventional issues and topics.<\/p>\n

Chiara Nuzzi<\/p>\n

\"chiara \"chiara\"<\/p>\n

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Mark Boulos,\u00a0No Permanent Address\u00a0<\/em>(2010), video still<\/p>\n

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\"chiara\"c\"<\/p>\n

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Curandi Katz \u2013\u00a0The Pacifist Library\u00a0<\/em>(2013), installation views<\/p>\n

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THE KOLYVAN\u00a0VASE<\/h1>\n

\"sam<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In the room which hold the world\u2019s largest vase on the ground floor of the Winter Palace there will be a wall based work plus a re-appropriation some of the existing works in the room.<\/p>\n

The \u2018Great Vase\u2019 is the largest Kolyvan vase in the world. Kolyvan is a rural region of mid-southern Russia notable for both its natural beauty and its stone resources such as the marble from which the vase is made. Kolyvan\u2019s most significant industry was, during a vast amount of years, serving the appetite for this material of the Imperialistic powers in St Petersburg and Moscow.<\/p>\n

Upon hearing about the \u2018world\u2019s largest vase\u2019 I asked myself, what is the point in the world\u2019s largest vase? What is the value in a vase being any larger than any other utilitarian or even decorative vase? It seems absurd.<\/p>\n

It took two whole years for workers in the rural Kolyvan area of Altai Krai to cut this single slab of jasper from the rock, a thousand men to haul it to the Kolyvan lapidary factory, and another twelve years to produce the finished article. Its worth pointing out the challenge and extreme level of skill required to work with this particular type of material, where in which lies the material\u2019s appeal to the imperial culture\u2013 it is fragile to work with and extremely difficult to create the thinner parts of the vase without breaking it. Perhaps there is some poetic symbolism there. The rest of its journey, (including the walls knocked down in the Hermitage to accommodate it in 1843), you can only imagine\u2026<\/p>\n

I think of the size of the task and the futility of the enterprise together with the exaggeration of the object\u2019s scale and ornamentation this offers a surreal aesthetic I think. I can imagine it in the background of say, a De Chirico painting (pre-surrealist I know but you get the idea).<\/p>\n

\"1109\"<\/p>\n

Jeremy Deller,\u00a0We Sit Starving Amidst our Gold,\u00a0<\/em>2013<\/p>\n

The facile nature of a \u2018bigger is better\u2019 cultural attitude of imperialism around the world and throughout history is reflected in a contemporary subculture of modern Russian oligarchs such as Roman Abramovic, with regards to boats. Fully grown men who feel that the size of his boat is a sign of phallic victory perhaps?..<\/p>\n

We Sit Starving Amidst our Gold<\/em>\u00a0by Jeremy Deller will be painted across one of the walls, as a back-drop to the vase, unusually and notably small compared to previous incarnations of the piece. The piece has to defiantly deal with the lack of wall space and work around the windows and elaborated doorways to make its statement. If you\u2019re unfamiliar with the mural it depicts a giant-sized William Morris, the English textile designer, poet, novelist, translator, and socialist activist stood knee-high in the Venetian lagoon, throwing Roman Abramovic\u2019s private cruise ship in to the water with force, plunging it to destruction.<\/p>\n

\"garry_kasparov\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Placed somewhat strategically is an immersive installation of the room\u2019s smallest existing Roman 2nd\u00a0Century busts. Taken from their plinths they occupy the predominantly black and white floor tiles like chess pieces, only exaggerated chess pieces and again, surreal in their appropriated positioning. Collectively they pay homage to Garry Kasparov, widely regarded as the greatest Chess player in history. Well-known as one of Russia\u2019s greatest minds through his unprecedented chess career, he famously challenged a computer named\u00a0Deep Blue<\/em>. This wasn\u2019t the only time he was to challenge a machine. Garry later embarked on politics.<\/p>\n

Garry founded the\u00a0United Civil Front<\/em>, a movement under the \u2018umbrella\u2019 opposition coalition\u00a0The Other Russia<\/em>. A great player of a famous Russian pastime, Garry was outspoken in his new vocation, as is in the job description of a politician, and was publicly said by a former KGB general to have had his life in danger or \u2018trouble\u2019 due to his anti-Putin stance of preserve electoral democracy in Russia. On 14 April 2007, he was briefly arrested by the Moscow police while heading for a demonstration and was once struck over the head with a chess board while attending a promotional event. On 17 August 2012 Kasparov was arrested and beaten outside of the Moscow court while attending the verdict reading in the case involving Pussy Riot. On 24 August he was cleared of charges that he took part in an unauthorized protest against the conviction of three members of Pussy Riot. Relating to the Creman situation Kasparov\u2019s website was also blocked by the Russian Federation regulators<\/p>\n

So the installation acts as a kind of monument to Garry Kasparov and his political plights following his chess career and the cause of Pussy Riot.<\/p>\n

Sam Perry<\/p>\n

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING\u00a0CONTEXT<\/h1>\n

\"grayson-perry-over-rainbow<\/p>\n

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Grayson Perry,\u00a0Over the Rainbow,\u00a0<\/em>2001<\/p>\n

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Hermitage has more than 2.5\u00a0million visitors per year, the number of visitors that the museum can admit, despite the abundance of rooms, is limited and if the number of them increased greatly, then overcrowding would be inevitable. Hermitage has of course changed in all these years, but it has mostly preserved itself.\u00a0 The name \u201cHermitage\u201d means a\u00a0place inhabited by a\u00a0hermit, a place of solitude and peace, the museum tries to be just this so that a\u00a0person can come off the street and find peace and tranquillity, and can get away from the bustle of the street. The goal of the Hermitage is still the same, to heal the soul, teach good taste, an understanding of history and a\u00a0feeling for real things. This becomes more important with time, because the museum is one of the few keepers of reality, as opposed to the television and internet: things talk to people, without middlemen. Originals are becoming more valuable in an era of clones and virtuality and the authenticity of the cultural masterpieces remains an eternal value in our fast moving world. Every work of art has the same importance in the collection and each one is treated as a masterpiece, the public can choose how spend his time inside the museum and how much time dedicate to each single oeuvre, object or archeological evidence, but the collection is so large that is impossible to look at everything in a single day. These impossibility to catch the Hermitage in its entirety open up to the possibility to insert infinite numbers of work inside the exhibited collection. These can be an occasion to attempt an interaction with the mass of visitors, to catch their gaze and attention on the different objects, to try to insert contemporary artworks inside the ancient masterpiece collection using the rule of \u201cinvisibility\u201d as central idea. These operation of shifting the context leads to enrollment of new values inside the contemporary artworks.<\/p>\n

\u201cwhy do you need to put sex, violence or politics or some kind of social commentary into my work?\u2019 Without it, it would be pottery. I think that crude melding of those two parts is what makes my work.\u201d<\/em>\u00a0Grayson Perry<\/p>\n

Valeria Mancinelli<\/p>\n

\u00d6yvind and the\u00a0Egyptians<\/h1>\n

\"4\"<\/p>\n

\u00d6yvind Falhstr\u00f6m,\u00a0The Little General (Pinball Machine),<\/em>\u00a01967-68. Oil on photopaper on vinyl, plexiglas, metal, magnets, styrofoam floats with lead keels in a pool. 100 x 280 x 550 cm (pool)\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0Presented in room 100 (ancient Egypt room).<\/p>\n

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\"800px-8600_-_St_Petersburg_-_Hermitage_-_Egyptian_antiquities\" \"_DSC3220\"<\/p>\n

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In the work presented,\u00a0The Little General(Pinball Machine),<\/em>\u00a0\u00d6yvind Fahlstr\u00f6m examines the world with the model of a game. The floating pictures (of politicians, porn, celebrities and so on) invite the viewer to arrange the conceptual and\/or pictorial connections and by this create the viewers own way of reading the work, and as an extension the world. This type of invitation seems more and more rare in todays Russia. As a small pluralistic counterweight to this tendency I choose to present this work inside the walls of the state Hermitage.<\/p>\n