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Addressing the void. Conversaiton with philosopher Mikhail Iampolski, by Hanna Zubkova


Hanna Zubkova spoke with philosopher Mikhail Iampolski in the framework of their exchanges for Udoli project

translation of the text for SYGMA, 2017

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Screenshot of the video conversation between Mikhail Iampolski and Hanna Zubkova, 2017

M: I recently went to a Marxist-activist exhibition in New York. I went twice, spent some time there, and—there wasn’t a single visitor. And they had important political themes, but they were being directed into a complete void, spinning on their own. This call to the masses had an ironic aspect to it.

 

H: Why do you think that is? Maybe it's not a problem for the exhibition itself, but rather a reflection of a problem from the outside? The mass perception, as described by Benjamin in crisis situations, is more dispersed rather than focused… Many people just don’t want to stop and take notice.

 

M: Or maybe the exhibition just wasn't interesting. It was created by conceptual people who care more about what is exhibited, not how. They don’t consider modes of perception. There were dreary photos of poorly dressed people, documentation of performances where nothing was visible, and volumes of texts, explanations of what these people were doing in the images. There aren't many people today who want to spend their time reading endless texts about vague images.

 

H: Some people do want to spend time that way, why not? Besides, there are artists for whom the lack of interest from the general public is more of a compliment.

 

M: In the end, that just justifies what is, rather than what they want. Here’s another example: Sasha Brodsky created an installation in the New York subway. The Canal Street station is closed, but there’s still a passage through it. He created something like a Venetian canal. He placed containers there, filled them with water, set up lighting, and installed figures... and people passing by froze: in this usual, unremarkable passage, suddenly there’s water, gondolas, shimmering light. It was, in a way, a shock—people stood there, hypnotized.

 

H: Doesn’t this hypnosis turn out to be empty? I don’t find it particularly interesting.

 

M: That’s not the point. There’s a moment of pure wonder, surprise, that makes people stop—pay attention. Without that, when there’s nothing at all interesting, the message loses meaning: even if it’s there, but it's extremely difficult to notice, it becomes, in a sense, invisible.

 

H: We recently discussed the idea that visual art doesn’t really exist at all, that there are only certain forms of practice. Sending ideas into the void is a form of practice, and it says something about the world in a specific place at a specific time. But then a contradiction arises: it’s obvious that, besides these forms of practice, there is a demand for wonder, for hypnosis—for images. For the consumption of images that are supposed to do something to our state, to our feelings.

 

M: Emotional impact is an essential part of art. I’ve said that art has stopped being something clear—I’ve just finished writing a book called *No Future*, where I try to make sense of this. Art has been distinct from other fields of activity since the Renaissance. It became separate because it became an object of the aesthetic. At some point, sculpture became the ideal, and it’s in this realm that the greatest masterpieces appeared. People swooned before Greek and pseudo-Greek statues. Then interest in them waned, and the shift towards painting began. Why that happened is another question. There was a separation from materiality, from stone. Painting began to dominate in the 19th century, gradually the focus shifted from line to color, and that lasted for some time. But then something strange happened: painting disappeared. And this aesthetic, which had been concentrated in painting, started spreading to things. Things became part of art. Duchamp, pop art. Or Tatlin’s counter-reliefs, where the canvas is replaced by relief, and the distinction between painting and sculpture is erased. The aestheticization of the material world began: hence design, fashion. The body itself became an aesthetic object.

 

H: So, it turns out there’s a profanation of aesthetics happening instead.

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Vladimir Tatlin, Corner Counter Relief, 1915 (reproduced in 1979) , iron, aluminum, zinc and etc. Yokohama Museum of Art

M: You could say yes, because aesthetics are very closely tied to consumption, to attractiveness. In Boltanski's book The Stylistic World, he talks about how everything becomes aesthetic. Politics becomes aesthetic. Benjamin talks about how fascism aestheticizes politics. When everything becomes aesthetic, art as an autonomous sphere loses its boundaries and disappears. You carried a beam on your back—it had nothing aesthetic about it.

 

G: I see it as the opposite process: not the transfer of the aesthetic to the world, but the reformatting of aesthetics itself. Something is called art, and that is a field of legitimization. It’s a convention, an agreement. It simplifies the process of perception for the viewer by delineating a field of knowledge from which to draw existing information, to somehow inscribe and live through something new. I see it as a convenience for the public, as a kind of infrastructure. When the public enters this field, they adjust to the fact that nothing here corresponds to its name, nothing has a familiar practical purpose. There are shifts—semantic, visual—and this creates a mode of perception with more allowance for distortions, for flickering. As for the beam: Axe de Révolution stepped out of the field of art into the urban space, but the aesthetic—if you like, the purposeless, unprofitable existence of this field with its disintegrating, indeterminate semantics—was carried across the entire city. What was it? I can’t say. Ask those who saw it.

 

M: You’re describing a blurring of boundaries and also a transfer of responsibility. In the past, the artist was responsible for their work, but now the viewer becomes responsible for turning something into art. Art has ceased to be a clear domain of something specific.

 

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Axis of Revolution, screenshot from video documentation, with Katya Ev, 2014

H: I love uncertainty. I don’t want to say anything other than: look at this, at this word, or this object, from this side and from that angle; look at yourself next to it or within it. What has changed? Perhaps the world grew larger at that moment, even though no new objects were added. Perhaps language itself shifted on its pedestal. What really fascinates me are boundaries, and the possibilities of passing through them, of seeping through. Holes, gaps—not the ones that already exist, but those that appear when a shift occurs.

 

M: What significance did the vacant lot in the center of Moscow, filled with trash, have for you? It definitely doesn’t emit anything or carry anything from any field without your involvement. You integrate it into an affective series: for me, this proves that there are no boundaries in art, which doesn’t bother me, although I love painting. Do I believe that it’s still possible? Not really. Painting has been excluded, and the only thing excluded from boundaryless art is what it once was.

 

H: I think the return to painting, to materiality, happens constantly, and it’s closely tied to the feeling about the world that you’re describing. This feeling is connected to working with matter, forms, colors, masses, because these geometric connections offer keys to understanding connections in the world. Art is a process of re-establishing connections, finding new ones, reassembling. What medium is at work—that’s a question of the precision of expression, like finding the right word. It’s a literary or linguistic approach. Painting hasn’t gone anywhere.

 

M: Do you imagine yourself standing at an easel, concentrating on solving purely plastic problems? For Cézanne, painting was also a way to grasp the structure of the world—it was a conscious approach to capturing the world. However, painting, when closed in on itself, is a practice that today is seen as a kind of eccentricity. Painters will always exist, nothing ever dies, and even what does die continues to live on. But I’m not sure art will once again revolve around such a privileged practice, or that it will become distinct again.

 

H: That’s tied to the structure and transformation of other spheres of life.

 

M: Yes. Art is an anthropological practice that arises in a certain social configuration and then changes, disappears, or transforms beyond recognition, although it may retain the same name. While we say that the greatest achievements belong to the Renaissance, during that period art was still so closely linked to power and the church that it didn’t possess autonomous aesthetic significance. The emergence of art is linked to the gradual secularization of the West: the function of the prophet or messiah shifted to the artist. In the Romantic era of the 19th century, the cult of genius emerged—writers, artists, composers became central figures, spiritual leaders. Everyone read Tolstoy, they flocked to him in droves, he began to replace the patriarch, and he was excommunicated from the church. But then this cult of art, as an autonomous sphere where one could glimpse spiritual depths, began to weaken, and the role of the artist diminished. The blockbuster of imagery, the Sistine Madonna, marked the beginning of the cult of painting; people died in front of it, went into ecstasy, all sorts of things happened. The painting itself was tied to Raphael’s divinely inspired vision, which he recorded. This visionary ability was incredibly important. It’s unlikely we’ll return to such things. Today, art is consumed by the market, and it exists between two foundations: state-supported policies, grants, scholarships on the one hand, and the market on the other. The forms of art are determined and integrated into social and market mechanisms. It’s the most corrupt area of cultural activity, the one most inflated with money, risks, and expectations. More and more artists are preoccupied with where they will exhibit, which museum will take them—because then they can sell for higher prices.

 

H: How awful!

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Paul Cézanne, Bibemus Quarry, c.1895, Museum Folkwang, Essen

M: It’s not that they are disgusting or unworthy. I don’t mean to say that everyone involved in the market is a cynic or a hack. Maybe they put their whole soul into what they do. What I’m saying is that both spheres—market and grant systems—are not neutral. For example, there’s the spread of political correctness, the demand for feminist or anti-colonial discourse. Officials embrace this willingly, with all their tendency towards a superficial understanding of what’s “right.” In a way, this is all cynicism. I don’t think it excludes sincerity or talent, but I do feel that institutions shape things, they set the tone and trend, and only in the rarest cases can an artist feel completely independent.

 

H: The demand for spectacle or didacticism and appealing to mass perception is also a trend. There's another trend of catering to requests for the portrayal of values, figures of power, etc.—or, conversely, for their scandalization and vandalism. Maybe art needs to be truly boring and not meet expectations to continue being a form of disobedience or independence.

 

M: Maybe. But when a very boring exhibition is made, with positive elements like feminism, political correctness, and the like, in some gallery that needs to check a box for conveying a message, the number of visitors becomes irrelevant. You can live without an audience. Meanwhile, art is becoming more like a fair, existing in the biennale format. Everything turns into a festival. It’s all done to make people come and consume. On the one hand, art masquerades as independent of the viewer, boring, and on the other, it gravitates toward spectacular, sensational events. Your project, for instance, is an event. It’s not quite like the Venice Biennale, where all the world’s idlers and partygoers gather, but they are similar: it’s something you can’t miss, you have to be there. An artificial regime of importance is created. Everything has to go through an event. Everyone will be there, and therefore it’s important. Something is happening there. And if nothing is happening there, then it might as well not exist.

 

H: I see an event as an occasion for a meeting, a moment of gathering that offers different conditions for a special interaction with people. I like this as a model of existence. With some skill, it can be introduced into life. It’s a model where everyone is committed to each other for a specific period of time. Not for eternity, because no one believes in that anymore. An event has no contract, no devaluing routine; it has an exceptional collective focus and a lasting loyalty to the moment where everyone gathers, as well as the acceptance of its end. We talked about morality in art, and we agreed that there’s no place for morality there, but in the process of working, I’d like to establish human relationships. As soon as something communal happens, art becomes a field of ethics where the world can be reassembled and tested. The event allows us to remain optimistic—because it ends. Relationships become a phenomenon of memory, of love, not a negotiation of hierarchical claims with plans for the future. Relationships happen. Then everyone can go their separate ways.

M: That’s true, an event can be defined in different ways. Phenomenologists like Claude Romano, for example, say that it’s something that changes our understanding of the world. And I agree with that: art should, in itself, be an event. But it’s an event that doesn’t necessarily involve a crowd of people. It’s more of a solitary event. Whereas at an opening, people come to socialize, which is a completely different experience, one that conceals rather than reveals something.

 

H: For me, the components of “event-ness” are the contextual parameters, with which I work on par with the geometric data of space and other givens. The duration, which is similar to theatrical temporality, where everything starts at seven in the evening and ends at ten, the collective experience, the social gathering—all these contextual parameters of the event are elements of the work. My task is to highlight the shifts, to exaggerate and intensify the experience of transition, of shifting the focus from the gallery space as a "place for art" to a space outside, like in the case of Udol, to the wastelandin the backyard. The number of people and the time were important. A technical detail: the vacant lot in the center of Moscow, right behind the Kremlin, was always closed off, it was impossible to access, and the rules governing its access were completely elusive. Standard fire safety regulations, which would have required it to be open for passage, didn’t apply. The event introduces a kind of state of emergency and overturns the usual distribution of power—it becomes a legal key to unlocking spaces, to passing through the grid.

 

M: In contemporary practices, the audience is part of the work, and their behavior is a component. You don’t have an object that is itself the event; everything passes through the body. You let people into different spaces, into different information. The key, aside from the vacant lot or “nothingness,” becomes the body.

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Udoli, screenshot of video documentation, view on the wasteland in the backyard of the Triumph gallery, 2017

Courtesy of Hanna Zubkova

G: In the square of spaces—police station, church, bank, gallery—where the performance took place, behind the bars of each is some form of nothingness. In essence, they are only something because they are filled with some resource, some expectation.

 

M: There’s a difference between nothingness in the form of money, power, or God, and the nothingness you’re trying to use in your work: the former types of nothingness always claim to be something, to rule the world. The route leads past these spaces, through the gallery to the vacant lot, which contains nothing and is a projection of these four nothings—you expose, you show that there is nothing behind the grid. A bank will never reveal that money is just paper, a church will never reveal that God is a fantasy. Power will never show that it’s just another paranoid figure and nothing more. It’s one thing to create illusions and inflate them, and another to reflect on them. All of them need to be unmasked. In the Orthodox Church, there’s an iconostasis, this wall of icons from top to bottom. It always reminds me that something could be hidden behind it. And also that it’s forbidden to look behind it, because you might discover your vacant lot. In this sense, the iconostasis is art that conceals the nothingness behind which lurks the image of the Almighty, the omnipotent Pantocrator. Instead of talking about spirituality, about a mission, about something beyond perception, your journey through spaces brings us to the vacant lot, incorporating it into this series of sacred places.

 

G: At the same time, they are quite earthly, mundane places: that’s their strange appeal, in the fact that they are simultaneously projected into both worlds—the sacred, the cultic, and the lower, consumerist one. In this topology of infrastructures, where spaces are essentially equivalent, like a cup turning into a donut—a bank turns into paradise, paradise turns into a vacant lot, the vacant lot turns into a police station, the police station into a gallery. Each of them is a kind of promised land, a promise: surely something must continue to happen, something must turn into something else. It’s impossible to conceive of nothingness. I often hear: what’s it about? What’s the moral? Is it good or bad?

M: There are commonplaces that are extremely important because they allow for the creation of mass appeal. Mass appeal is built on these commonplaces, which are not subject to criticism, including ideas of good and evil. I’ve grown accustomed to them in America: everything happens through moralizing, through religion. These simplifying forms are tied to ideologies, the kind of metaphysics Nietzsche fought against. The task of art is to oppose these commonplaces with its complete singularity. As soon as art starts to enter the horizon of commonplaces, it becomes as repugnant as ideology, as all those circulations of emptiness. I believe that art is one of the few activities meant to counter this. It must confront us with a reality that cannot be reduced to good and evil, friend and enemy, Russian and Jew, and so on. When it starts slipping into morality, it unwittingly becomes a servant of this force, which personally suffocates me. The second aspect is that art, especially in the 20th century, is crucified between conceptuality and affectivity. Affectivity makes the use of things beyond morality necessary. Removing these things means castrating art.

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a) Scheme of the iconostasis in the Orthodox Church of St. Procopius the Great Martyr in Srpska Crnja (author: Vladimir Petrović, The Provincial Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments, Petrovaradin, Republic of Serbia); Icons painted by Đura Jakšić: the central icon of the iconostasis (1), four throne icons (2,4,6,8), icons on the Royal Doors (5a,5b), and on the North and South Door (3,7); by Isidora Djuric

H: In your book From Chaos, you quote Dragomoshchenko: "Perhaps the Russian national idea lies in the notion of Paradise (a certain collective, communal 'body without organs'), and the asceticism of labor, the overcoming of one’s own nature, proposed by this idea, eliminates idleness just as Protestantism does, facing Hell every day…" This idea is tied to a kind of otherworldly morality that defines all earthly life. Paradise is not only a reward but also a punishment in the form of deprivation. This idea of retribution, of an afterlife that rewards or punishes, is a powerful moral blockade of anything human. Lucretius, who explained the possibility of freedom through deviation, also said that there is no afterlife, no promise—and this is wonderful, as it turns us toward earthly life. The second point related to paradise is the elimination of idleness. Art is the practice of idleness, of not working, of leisure where there is no profit, no purpose. The objects that exist in this space are devoid of their usual functionality—they are, through the lens of labor and reward, completely meaningless. Autonomous art is meaningless—this is where morality, the commonplace, leads us. Therefore, autonomy as such, the possibility of being otherwise, is called into question. A world that has a moralizing block in the form of an idea beyond this world makes idleness negative because it becomes a source of guilt. I often hear: go to work, stop messing around. This scolding for idleness. Whereas art, without the idea of something beyond its limits, opens up a space of leisure, of idleness.

 

M: There is an important mention of the body without organs in this phrase. This concept refers to Deleuze and Guattari’s Anti-Oedipus. The body without organs arises at a pre-individual stage: the body has no division into zones. Zones arise through simulacra, as they called them, and, in fact, through the individuation of desire. When desires appear, zones begin to form. The pre-individual state reflects the idea of a collective paradise where there is no distinction. It’s prenatal and, in general, probably quite pleasant—a womb-like state. Everything is still undifferentiated. This is the utopia of the Russian people, where no one is visible, no one is distinct, and happiness is achieved through complete undifferentiated morality in paradise. At the same time, this touches on idleness and labor. In The Human Condition, Hannah Arendt says that labor is a restriction of freedom. It’s the realm of unfreedom, the realm of labor. Politics arises only among free people, which means it’s a byproduct of slavery.

 

H: Like in Plato.

 

M: Yes, it’s Plato, but it’s also one of the sources of Arendt’s hatred for Marx. In Marx, there is no freedom. Freedom is consumed by labor. Idleness is an important thing for art because it is the realm of freedom. Paradise, where everything is the same, knows no freedom. Idleness is tied to the space of choice. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the exact context in which this phrase was written, so I can’t say more. You quoted it on its own.

 

H: It even sounds out of context in the book, or rather in its own peculiar context. The next sentence goes: "In this direction, experience suggests that a lot has been done, seemingly an incredible amount, but most likely 'not in the way it should have been.'"

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