Zbigniew Libera, "Moscow. June 2011", series of photographs, photo courtesy of the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw presents "Auditorium Moscow. A Sketch for a Public Space" a special project of the 4th Moscow Biennial of Contemporary Art
The project is organised by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw and realised as part of the International Cultural Programme of the Polish EU Presidency coordinated by the Adam Mickiewicz Institute.
The exhibition changes over time, combining pieces from the collection of the Warsaw Museum of Modern Art with newly commissioned work, including video installations and films by Aernout Mik, Artur Zmijewski, and Yael Bartana, and as well as Russian artists Sergei Bratkov, Olga Chernysheva, and Chto Delat.
Polish artist Zbigniew Libera presents new photographs of his view of contemporary Moscow. "Auditorium Moscow" opens with a mini-conference on "Institutions, Cities, and Political Culture", featuring Charles Esche (Vanabbe Museum Eindhoven), and Krytyka Polityczna (Warsaw). Miguel Robles-Duran holds a workshop on the problems of gentrification in Latin America. Dutch artist Matthijs de Bruijne attempts an artistic cartography through the eyes of Moscow's migrant workers, and report on the Migrant Worker Museum in Beijing. Berlin-based composer and filmmaker Christian Von Borries holds a workshop on auditory violence and urban soundscaping. Polish artist and curator of the forthcoming Berlin Biennial Artur Zmijewski holds a discussion of activists from Moscow and Petersburg.
At "Auditorium Moscow" in collaboration with Sebastian Cichocki, Israeli-born art critic and curator Galit Eilat presents Yael Bartana's trilogy "…And Europe will be stunned", as well as the accompanying volume "A Cookbook for the Political Imaginary". Along with the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Eilat recently curated Yael Bartana's exhibition at this year's Polish Pavilion at the 54th Venice Biennale. Her research interest focus on problems of social and political activism within the field of arts, as well as current politics in the Middle East.
With 14 million inhabitants and 101 billionaires, Moscow is Europe's biggest city, and perhaps its most contradictory. The former center of the socialist world once again goes global, with financial and cultural involvement in all the world's other capitals, and with massive migration of cheap labor from Central Asia. But at the same time, Moscow isolates itself from the world to which it belongs, constantly in danger of becoming a provincial megalopolis. More and more people realise that there can be no civil society on the basis of movie theaters, shopping malls, condominiums and fancy cafes alone.
In the project, the curators test the hypothesis of a new self-critical public platform for contemporary art, at the very center of the city and at the heart of its contradictions. "Auditorium Moscow" is a self-educational initiative, a place for meeting and discussion, and an exhibition. Over the course of a month, the Moscow public meet artists working with problems of urbanism and public space, as well as socio-political activism and its boundaries. The project's contributors collaborate in workshops with a special group of students, most of them from Moscow's two emerging art schools, the Moscow Rodchenko School for Photography and Multimedia, and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Moscow (ICA Moscow). The project features a specially designed open air auditorium by Slovenian born artist Tobias Putrih.
"Auditorium Moscow" is the first project at the historical location of the Belie Palaty, a 17th century townhouse whose gates have remained closed for the last 20 years and will now be opened to the public. The venue is at the very beginning of the city's so-called Golden Mile, where a fundamental gentrification has altered the dense urban fabric. A monument to Friedrich Engels sadly turns away from the reconstruction of Christ the Savior Church, in place of the unrealised Palace of the Soviets. At the same time, this place has a special meaning because it is where the human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov and the journalist Anastasia Baburova were assassinated on the 19th of January 2009. The curators preserve the improvised memorial on the building's steps in solidarity.
"Auditorium Moscow" was initiated by the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw in cooperation with curators Ekaterina Degot and David Riff. Established in 2005, the Museum is currently under construction, and located at a temporary premises. Its current programme is very much defined by the social changes in former Eastern Europe, and its main focus is on the initiation of public debate. "Auditorium Moscow" reflects the museum's interest in sharing knowledge on the notion of public space and understanding how it is reformulated in other societies under transformation.
Moscow's Biennale of Contemporary Art is a five week event, first started in 2005, with the great hope of reigniting the Russian contemporary arts scene and bringing new names, faces and ideas to the capital. Now in its fourth incarnation the Moscow Biennale (running September 23 - October 30) is now starting to hold its own in the international scene. With dozens of well-known political activists and controversial performance artists promising to attend, this year's Biennale with its theme Rewriting Worlds.
Yael Bartana (b. 1970, Afula, Israel.) lives and works in Amsterdam and Tel Aviv. She graduated from the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design and was an artist in residence at the Rijksakademie, Amsterdam. She has presented numerous solo exhibitions at the Moderna Museet, Malmö; P.S.1, New York; Foksal Gallery, Warsaw; Center for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv; The Power Plant, Toronto; Kunstverein Hamburg, Hamburg; Museum St. Gallen, St. Gallen; and the MIT List Visual Arts Center, Cambridge. Her work has also been included in many group exhibitions at venues such as: the 6th Seoul International Biennale of Media Art; Henry Moore Institute, Leeds; Museo de Arte Contemporaneo de Castilla y Leon; Documenta 12, Kassel; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis; Centre Pompidou, Paris; the 27th Bienal de São Paulo; Tàpies Foundation, Barcelona; and the 9th Istanbul Biennial. Most recently she was awarded the prestigious Artes Mundi Prize. She represented Poland at the 54th Venice Biennale in 2011.
"Auditorium Moscow. A Sketch for a Public Space" is curated by Ekaterina Degot, Joanna Mytkowska, David Riff in collaboration with Andrey Parshikov and Katia Szczeka
Artists: Yael Bartana, Christian von Borries, Sergei Bratkov, Matthijs de Bruijne, Tania Bruguera, Olga Chernysheva, Phil Collins, Chto Delat, Alexandra Galkina and David Ter-Oganyan, Sharon Hayes, Polina Kanis, Yakov Kazhdan, Yuri Leiderman and Andrei Silvestrov, Zbigniew Libera, Learning Film Group, Renzo Martens, Adrian Melis, Deimantas Narkevicius, Tobias Putrih, Haim Sokol, Hito Steyerl, Artur Żmijewski
Special guests: Charles Esche, Galit Eilat, Dorota Głażewska and Agata Szczęśniak (Krytyka Polityczna/Political Critique), Miguel Robles-Duran, and Sergei Sitar
The project is cofinanced by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.
The opening of "Auditorium Moscow. A Sketch for a Public Space"takes place on the 16th of September 2011 at 19.00. The exhibition runs through till the 16th of October 2011.
For a full programme of events see: www.auditorium-moscow.org
Belie Palaty, Prechistenka 1/2
Moscow
Source: press materials