6th Ural Industrial Biennale

A few words about The Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art

Honestly, my head already hurts from two polar opinions, which are now being discussed in Yekaterinburg. And they are at completely different poles - from positive delights to the complete failure of the entire biennale.

For me, everything that is happening has also broken up into 2 parts. But not by assessment, but in relation to the curator-artist, external-intimate. Despite the fact that the program includes 3 components: the main project, the project of art residences and a special project, for me the main lines were 2. Rather, even so: I can give some assessment to two projects - the main and the art resident. The rest is not yet reflexible.

(On the Biennale website, the main project is divided into several sites. But most of them are at the Plant, and this is what should be further meant by the main project in the post)

So, 2 lines: from the curator(s) and from the artist(s). And/or integrated external and intimate local. That's right, not the "main project" and "art residential project."

The exposition presented at the Plant is a curatorial work (Adnan Yildiz, Chala Ilek, Assaf Kimmel), where the names of artists are often omitted. And the hottest discussion now is precise because the curator's gesture made (unsuccessful from the point of view of the discussion) an attempt to combine the incompatible. And the intervention of Turkish history in the Ural land triggers a lot of people. Rather, not even that, but a combination of "alien" history and local context. Yes, on one open platform, there are both artistic rethinkings of the consequences of nuclear tests taking place near Yekaterinburg, and military Turkish coups, and an intimate experience of loneliness imposed by the pandemic.

The second line is distributed in several cities, and listening to the description of the projects, you cling to the names of artists rather than the curator (Vladimir Seleznev). The artists were given various locations and their stories to create their own views. Yes, not everything was smooth there either, and some projects had to be changed in the process of their creation under the optics of partners, in whose territories everything was going on. But the centre of the art residential program is the artist, his previous experience and his reflection on local untold stories.

Moreover, foreigners are not officially allowed into the city where the Pavel Otdelnov project is located (it's me). Some say that you can not advertise and still come, others talk with fear of a "big brother" who defines a foreigner even by smell and "does pain." I'm a coward, so I watched this project from video documentation and photos.

I still have this picture in my head: there is a foreign curatorial project with an external view and there is something very intimate and close to the local community. Although... how different are the injuries of an "alien" country from the Russian ones? Doesn't the sound of another language, music, or the style of signs (texts) allow you to see common, understandable to people from different geographical locations?.. The absence of partitions and walls on the territory of the workshop, it seems to me, just about this... —— I can't say anything about performances in the circus, as the smell of "circus" and technical problems on the vernissage interfered with the perception of artistic meanings. On October 1, there were too many jokes about the fact that modern art stinks of manure, and I need time to forget this humour and understand what "the artist wanted to say" —— There was also a completely wonderful parallel program (special projects), but not everything has been reviewed about it either later.