Seeing red but playing it safe

The short history of Russian video art gets comprehensive treatment in this survey at Futura, curated by Antonio Geusa. Starting with seminal works from the mid-1980s, the exhibition features more than 40 artists, represented either by solo projects or as part of groups and collectives. The quality of their work ranges from crass to sublime.

Two pioneering short videos by Andrey Monastyrsky open the show: Conversation With a Lamp and 3' Fragment From 25' (1985). These works represent the initial attempts by young Russian artists to work in a new medium during a time of growing political and social uncertainty. First came Perestroika and a loosening of political repression, followed quickly by the collapse of communism and then the Soviet Union itself. The videos by Monastyrsky are self-indulgent monologues by the shirtless artist, sitting and smoking a cigarette. In one scene, he paints a fiendish face on his chest. Mainly, he rants in a low voice against the media and society.

In a few areas, in order to accommodate a large number of video works, multiple videos are shown on a single TV screen. Like a casino game, what you see depends on the luck of the draw. In this reviewer's case, the first offering - Oleg Kulik's Mad Dog, or the Last Taboo Guarded by the Lonely Cerberus (1994) - was a jackpot.

In Kulik's video, the artist is a wild, naked beast - a mad dog who barks and attacks everyone around him on a street in Moscow. With a chain around his neck, held in check by another artist, Kulik moves about on his knees, romps in the mud until he appears to be covered in his own excrement, licks men's shoes, knocks people to the ground and jumps at cars. In his vicious bark, he shouts to a shocked crowd: "Stupid art for stupid people in a stupid country!"

Many of the works, both old and new, offer similar critiques of Russian society while steering clear of specific political issues or politicians. In Viktor Alimpiev's Little Nightingale (2005), a crowd of hundreds is choreographed to move in sync like sheep, at times perturbed, other times in laughter. Their main activity is a procession of laying down plastic bags, as if they were placing flowers at a funeral, first solemnly and then at a frantic, angry pace.

Anna Jermolaewa's Commotion in the Hen House (2009) offers scenes of little chicks in an incubation box. A combination of dye and lighting renders them in different colors - green, purple, red - though most are white. Dramatic music matches the mood of their existence. The first scenes (and musical passages) with pecking chicks are pastoral. Then rocking movements of the box throw them into a panic. Hands appear and take some out, either to rescue them or perhaps devour them.

Other highlights in this extensive show include Dmitry Gutov's The Thaw (2006), which shows a drunken man on the verge of looking homeless, tottering and tumbling into an icy creek, practically drowning. Accompanying the scene is a somber verse sung to piano music by Shostakovitch.

At the end of a long, dark passageway, there is Vadim Zakharov's Apocrypha (2002), shot by tossing the video camera up into the air inside the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. The video is played at a snail's pace, with slowed-down music to match the slow-motion imagery. There are blurred glimpses of a dome, then dark shadows enveloping it; slivers of light turn to darker hues or textures of color in a slow-moving spiral, like a moving canvas with sighs in the background.

Another bit of apocrypha is upstairs, a single video in the top space of the gallery. This untitled loop (2009) is by the collective Bluesoup (Aleksey Dobrov, Daniil Lebedev, Valery Patkonen and Aleksandr Lobanov), and was inspired by the biblical tale of Moses parting the Red Sea. Using 3-D technology, Bluesoup creates a deep, undulating ocean, rising and receding as a barely visible wall emerges in the middle of the sea. There is no sound, but the force of the water in motion makes it easy to imagine the roar of the ocean.

Some of the videos in this show are crude and (at least for non-Russians) pointless. Others, such as 14 Performances in a Bunker by the notorious Blue Noses Group, manage to perturb and annoy. A number of the pieces are stunning in their execution, like Bluesoup's untitled loop, which conveys a sense of something unknown and mysterious. In that regard, it reflects the entire landscape of Russian video: At times it mesmerizes, but like the ocean, we can only see and grasp it at the surface.

It's impossible to view this exhibition without noticing that Russian video artists have chosen not to be overtly political. After so many years of repression, they've apparently decided to be pragmatic, avoiding direct criticism of Putin's authoritarian reign while pestering Russian society in general.

The best works offer a sharp critique of Russian society, particularly its sheep-like mentality. Too many others are little more than a vanity trip.

Tony Ozuna can be reached at
features@praguepost.com