This is the case when a minus times a minus gives a plus. It was an absolutely terrible decision to make a biennale with participants from Russia. In principle, biennials all over the world are done in order to invite artists from other countries to their country, and there is even an unspoken rule that there should be no more than 15% of local artists. This is its meaning, and thus the public gets acquainted with the art of different countries. It was an erroneous and bad, albeit in the spirit of the times, decision to make Piotrovsky curator. Of the anonymous composition of the curators, we know only him. Another idiotic decision: since the biennale itself is transnational, and the language of this art is incomprehensible to our new patriots. He was banned. It turns out that this decision is bad, then the decision is bad – and as a result, the right decision was made not to hold the Biennale in Moscow at all.
An attempt by the authorities to find good, but pro-government artists is on all fronts. On the other hand, what these artists are doing is actively disliked by the ignorant and paramilitary public from the Russian world. This is a very serious lesson for the artistic environment. In general, conformism will not save anyone, because art resists aggression at the level of language, and not at the level of narrative. You can come up with some kind of pro-Putin and pro-war narrative, but if you are a professional artist, then the language will give you away, they will come up to you and say: “In fact, you are not ours.” They need someone who is "ours". And the question is whether they will.
The Ministry of Culture in this case acted as a representative of this very public: he looked with his own eyes and was horrified. They will not look for a narrative against Putin, but will say: “Is this art? This is the influence of the West that we are fighting against.” There is an international language of art, like blank verse, where there are no clear iambs and choreas, and it is not art for them, and they are struggling with this. Abstract art and LGBT are almost identical concepts for them.
It seems to me that good things happened precisely because this was not necessary. Another meme got its symbol. Everyone is talking about the abolition of Russian culture, and the term itself has already been imposed on the language, but what does this mean? Where is Shostakovich being canceled? And finally, we know that there is a cancellation of the Biennale. While it was international, it was in Moscow in any weather, and so Piotrovsky decided to make this a biennale with Russian artists, and the Ministry of Culture forbade it. Now we finally know what the abolition of Russian culture means. There is some truth in every joke, because it is in Russia that the names of directors are blacked out.
The Golden Mask announced its nominees, and among them there are performances staged by Dmitry Krymov, but his last name is not. Opposite [the caption] "director" is written simply: "Director". To the question of how they imagine the play without a director, they replied that they did not nominate him for the Best Director nomination. What is happening now in Russia is what all the “enemies” of Russian culture and even sincere haters, the most ardent advocates of the ban on Russian culture, dreamed of. They could not even dream of such a ban on Russian culture, which is now taking place in Russia itself.