msdm: mobile strategies of display & mediation

My friend Zeigam Azizov has just sent in this review of the winter 2007 baku biennale where he participated with the work philosophy.

The Republic of Azerbaijan enjoys its 17 years of independence after thousands of years of existence under different colonial rulers. Each colony, Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Russian and Soviet has left strong traces and influences over this country’s culture, which was hybrid from the very inception. After achieving independence and after the exhausting war with the neighbor country Aremenia as a result of which Azerbaijan lost Nagornyi Karabakh, the republic took the way towards the intensive growth of economy and modernization of most sectors of society.

The capital city Baku plays the role of the bridge joining together different religious, cultural and political functions by its very geographical location. Today the city is one of the most intensive building sites bringing together architectural forms of all kind. Alongside with the post-Soviet style mixed with the oriental style architecture there is super-contemporary work by Zaha Hadid’s cultural complex gives a new shape to the city moving fast towards the contemporary life. Here everything is made in order to look contemporary, despite the strong conservative traditions adopted by Azeri people.

But what is the contemporary city without the contemporary art? The Baku Biennale which is opened by the 3rd December of this year created the interesting answer to the position of contemporary art in the globalised age: if in our days Biennale’s are becoming compulsory in each capital of newly re-made geography of the global world, it is because the contemporary art is the first sign paving the way towards contemporeinity, the barometer of becoming. This aspect of contemporary art is functioning well even after the critical context is taken out. The art maybe has gone, but the contemporary is still with us! Art is the last word of contemporeinity!

The 3rd Baku Biennale is organized by Leyla Akhundzada who has also curated Azeri pavilion at the 52d Venice Biennale. The title of the Biennale is “Reality of dreams”. Perhaps it is the reference to modernity’s dream to expand the art to all aspects of reality and to all four corners of the planet. Although it is already 3rd Baku Biennale, called ‘Aluminum’, this year for the first time the Biennale received a great support from the Ministry of Culture and other major sponsors. About 50 artists from 19 countries were invited to show their work in this event. The list of participants is including Canada, France, Georgia, Germany, Russia, Italy, USA, Korea, Holland, UK, Kazakhstan among others.

The exhibition took place in two very important buildings: the Palace of Shirvansahs, the XVI century palace of the Azeri king and in the former Museum of Lenin, which is now changed its status to the Museum centre. These two sites, first traditional oriental architecture, and the second the Soviet building and work installed inside these buildings is the combination of the old and new, traditional and contemporary articulated to show how much their relationship is intertwined to create the panoramic picture of the past-present-future perspective on the line, to use Deleuzian famous idea about time and it’s function in our days. In addition to these two galleries, artists from the Georgia exhibited their work in the gallery called ‘Apsheron’ (curator Magda Guruli) located in the narrow street of Icheri-Sheher (Inner city).

Rashad Alekberov’s piece ‘Looking at Two Cities from One point of view’ is using two lamps on both sides alternately turning on and off to show different sides of the same city sometimes oriental and sometimes occidental view of China, to show the West and the East confrontation from the point of today’s concentration on this part of the planet.

The old environment of the Shirvanshah palace is combined with the work made by new technologies, using screen, light and sound. Swiss artists Isabelle Kliegs’ installation ‘Bakery’ consists of bread dried out and plugged into the sockets to look like the traditional Azeri bakery. In Brice Mathew’s (France) installation Western toys periodically ’swimming’ in the oil tank and getting dirty in the oil rich Baku.

Russian artist Natalia Mali, who divides her time between Moscow, London and Berlin in the performance, ‘The Shooting time’ dressing Azeri women and men into the traditional dress as a resistance to brand culture, which has made everyone look the same. Some women refused to dress the traditional costume, preferring ‘Burberry’ t-shirt instead; some were pleased to do so. The result of the session is photographs looking like glossy magazine images. In Mali’s words ‘I had a feeling that they knew everything about the Western image of contemporary woman and try to copy’. In Almagul Menlibaeva’s (Kazakhstan) film made in London, the Central Asian woman changes her clothes in different spots of the city. In the face of hyper-contemporary London where everyone is used to changes everyday these traditional clothes are not perceived as an exotic, but as a changing and shifting fashion.

The work of most artists shares the similar idea of the Western mosaic and Eastern ornament becoming articulated in everyday objects. But today the sharp difference between the East and West is disappeared. Global brands, the common language and media have dominated the way people live and think in different parts of the world. American artist Paul Zogrofakis’s performance ‘The shining star’ refers to the ubiquitous phenomenon of our days: to become a star. Destroying all the light around him hung on the stage for the performance Zogrofakis leads the space into the dark in order to shine himself as a star. Very interesting reference to increasing obsession for self-expression in form of images in space of proliferated means of media, which allows everyone to became a ’star’. Becoming a star is the job of media from internet’s You Tube, My space, Facebook, Google to popular TV programs such as X-Factor, Strictly Come Dancing, Pop Idol, etc. While art is re-coding the image of the past as an arbitrary means for an expression, capitalism adopts their function to represent itself as an image.

Switzerland based Georgian artist Koka Ramishvilis’ video ‘Conversation’ shows Ramishvili sitting in front of the window and speaking, (about the crisis in art, perhaps!) Slowly his image doubles ad we realize that he speaks to his double, giving an impression that schizophrenia became a destiny of contemporary person. In Babi Badalov’s (Azerbaijan/UK) work similar thing happens, but this time the frustration of the person used to the Cyrillic alphabet in a society like Azerbaijan, which has recently adopted the Latin alphabet.

In the two channel video installation by the Spanish artist David Maroto, ‘Puzzle’ the couple are watching a film. To one of them the film reminds a book which she read sometimes ago, but she cannot remember the name of the book. This puzzle plays a role of the Lacanian object for David Maroto to help to find an answer in the second screen through the reading of Marcel Proust ‘In search of lost time’, the forgotton prototype in the first video.

Like in British philosopher Bertrand Russell’s mathematical paradox, making the namer and gatherer of the set stand outside, not to be defined by what he/she is defining. I must admit that my own video-installation called ‘A soft topology’ is also built around this idea. At the very point of identifying one needs to escape the identity. It is a very nature of capitalism or late global capital to move across the terrain of cultural consciousness, (in this case contemporary art), which has become schizophrenic or even, perhaps, shchizo-analitical Deleuzian device. While complex forms communicate ‘itself with itself’, the popular image allows ’subjects to work by themselves’ (Althusser). Since we don’t exist formally and art is increasingly becoming intertwined with life there is a shift towards the non-formal narrative, marked in the desire to be contemporary. Subjectivity is expressed in the action, in the practice, without the subject. Making art is pure politics, without the thinking subject the goal of which is to look contemporary.

Zeigam Azizov, Baku-London, December, 2007