Tatyana Moguilevskaya Art in the internet. Dynamics in russia

Introduction

Owing to the force of circumstances, the main information and discussion on relatively new phenomenon of 'Net-art' took place not in the published editions but at European forums such as Nettime and Syndicate with unfortunately few Russian participants. Too little people knew of it in Russia. Though today, in the end of 1999, due to efforts of Russian curators and artists as well as to media projects of the Moscow Soros Centre of Contemporary Art and the electronic publishing support programme of the Open Society Institute, we can say that a tradition of Net-creation and discussion of Net-culture problems has formed in Russia.

Appearance of Net-art

First art sites made in Russia are related to 1996. The very few creators were exclusively from Moscow. I became interested in their activities for a number of reasons.

First of all, at the time their work was developing 'on the margins' of the Moscow actual art mainstream. All of them more or less were engaged in media-art: Alexei Shulguin - photography, Tanya Detkina, Vladimir Moguilevsky - video- and multimedia-art. 

Secondly, these artists were united by interest to collective forms of creation and copyright: Alexei Shulguin made some curator exhibitions ("Who Am I? The Art of Choice", Schola Gallery and Union F Gallery, 1993; "Mon Amour Reproduction", Laboratory Gallery, 1994). Tanya Detkina and Vladimir Moguilevsky together with other artists worked on projects under a general label 'Cloudy Comission'. Vladimir Moguilevsky, Serguei Shutov and Kirill Preobrazhensky with my modest participation generated the conception of Art Technology Institute's work, and organized exposition of works of video-artists and the 'Art-Mif-3' catalogue in 1993. It was not by chance that Moguilevsky and Serguei Shutov became instructors at multimedia training shops for young artists in the Art Laboratory of New Media (1993-94, project of the Soros Center of Contemporary Art, Moscow).

In the third place, start of their work actually coincided with their total disappearance from the Moscow art scene represented by people that didn't use to peep into the Internet at the time.

If you went to the pages of the listed authors you could discover new virtual institutions in the Russian Internet sector - the Net-exhibition 'Hot Pictures' (Hot news or erotic hot pictures), which was the first Russian Net-gallery interpreting functional change and expressing photography devices in the time of new technologies in art¹; electronic gallery of works by Andrei Kazanzhiya 'Sea of Khrone' (on Russian provider server Sovam Teleport), 'Sensor Experiments in Digital Space' by Ruslan Rubansky. A bit later more comprehended in relation with Internet technology and ideology works came out: Moscow 'WWW-art center' supported by Alexei Shulguin, Alexander Nikolaev and Tanya Detkina, and 'Web Thief', electronic magazine by Vladimir Moguilevsky which presented works of young media artists Sandy Revizorov, Ruslan Rubansky, Misha Adyanov, Alex Zubarzhuk, ex-students of the New Media Art Laboratory.

The listed artists became bearers of ideology of the 'web artist' who not merely creates and loads his own works in the Internet but helps other artists that might not have mastered multimedia or Net technologies. This sort of activity met the desire to create alternative to existing institutions spaces for creation and presentation of art.

"This is more a technical work to connect the Internet, to set up necessary hardware and launch programmes, to organize independent multimedia centers and sites (site is a measure of space in the Net), where all that wish could not only consume but also create and publish what is, still lacking terms and criteria, called net-art².

Simultaneously rare artistic manifests appeared. One of them was abruptly published in the culture section of Moscow newspaper 'Commersant-Daily'. In that text Olga Lyalina and Alexei Shulguin gave the first Russian definition of Net-art: "Its basis is not representation but communication. Its infracted unit is electronic message, freedom and horizontal system of communication".

In the same text the notion of 'original Net-artist' is described: it is he who provides communication, bears a net type of mind, therefore gives up 'artistic' ambitions and focuses his efforts on "generating communicational spaces ready to settle and insert creative field of the Net³. 

The same year, pioneers of Russian Internet gave answer to the following question: "What is it that attracts you in the WWW, what interesting and new do you find there if compared with the sphere of 'contemporary art?'.⁴

As it turned out, in the first place, new media allowed the artists to get free from dependence on 'general' Moscow curators, to get straight access to data, and as a result to start joining international projects on their own. Tanya Detkina, for instance, who was one most active participants of the Moscow New Art Media Laboratory (1994) explained: "Through the Internet you can communicate those that are far away just for not much money at all... You don't have to address any go-betweens - critic, gallerist, curator. No-one coordinates your context, and your wealth doesn't depend on your adequacy to the context of your work... Each reply in the Internet sounds natural and full-fledged, there's no ideological discrimination. You don't need to present your CV to get a word there". She also underlines the economic aspect of the problem: "It's much more easily and quickly to make art in the Internet⁵.

Vladimir Moguilevsky assumed that "there's no such a phenomenon as professional art as it was understood in the 80s. More important is participation in communication, in something which lives and develops". He also put the question of incompatibility of the notion 'professional artist' with people generating art projects in the Internet: "Everything is changing so fast that I don't feel like choosing the definition. It's clear that most interesting works are made by non-professional artists... Best WWW sites were made by people that do not belong to the art world and are not poisoned with ideas that used to interest it in the 80s. Peculiarity of these works is in their adequacy to the hypermedia, they don't take it just as a traditional artistic technique or media⁶. 

That was what cardinally influenced position of some of these artists in the International art world. Alexei Shulguin happened to become the creator of a new genre defined today as Net-art by serious criticism. Number of his participation in various art media events is innumerous, and at present he doesn't feel a mere necessity of curators' support.

Search and popularization of Russian Net-art

With such a background as Moscow New Media Art Laboratory which was followed by Cross-Media Studio (Termen Center) where artists, apart from lecturing, are given access to multimedia equipment and technical support, the Moscow Soros Center preferred to take out production problems from the new project. Curators of the 'Da-Da-Net-1', first Russian festival of art resources and culture in the Internet, focused on search and publication of the data existing on the site which had been opened in July 1997 especially for this event⁷. 

Quite an unknown value of the time was the question whether there were any other, apart from the already listed, web artists in the Russian Internet section. Nominations of the first festival (art project, cultural resource, educational resource and a private home page) were a sort of a tenet which was used by the organizers for trapping 'geniuses of the Russian Net'. For instance, home page nomination supposed existence of creative people making interesting representations in the Russian Net though not suspecting that their work might be taken for contemporary art projects. 87 projects went through initial curator selection. Analysis of the results concluded that it was "necessary to revise significance of the existing idea of an artist, his origin and functions⁸. Only small part of participants were of contemporary art extraction, and the majority represented scientific and technical world and province. Member of the 'Da-Da-Net-1' international jury noted that quite often it wasn't clear from what point of view a particular project should have been judged. The project were'shifting towards unknown (genre)⁹. And more than that, "most of the participants in the art-projects seem to be quite allergic to the word artist, and rather ironical towards such a profession¹⁰.

Jury members also noted literary orientation of most of the projects. "Large number of texts is used not only in the sites on culture and educational projects but even in art projects¹¹, commented Tetsuo Kogawa.

One of conclusions was that the shift of art in the Internet diverted opposition between official and non-official art and simultaneously created new marginal field towards art circles, if take into account that Internet artists are artists who ran away from what they estimated to be a kind of art Mafia ti find refuge in the Internet, where no kind of authority is being exerted. But throuth the Internet, as we could observe it, artistic type of expression is not linked to the artistic profession anymore, but is accessible simply through a certain level of technical knowledge. This is the reason why the creative circle has widened, and through this process, Internet artistic expression becomes an alternative to institutional art¹².

The fact that absolutely opposite expressive devices were discovered in this new activity field, gave birth to hope for the future of Russian Net-art. "We hope that the festival made for popularization of Net-art projects in Russia, and that next year we'll see new extraordinary examples of Internet assimilating as an art field¹³, wrote Olga Shishko, curator of the last year 'Da-Da-Net' festival.

In 1998-99 in the Soros Center the MediaArtLab department was organized which moderated all projects concerning the Internet. Olga Shishko and Alexei Isaev (with active participation of Tatyana Goryucheva) organized two parallel Net-festivals - 'Da-Da-Net-2' and 'Trash-art'. Methods of work with the Net-art notion have become more flexible. Its right to variety and affiliation to any expressive genre has been recognized. And combination of Russian and international festivals took away the language problem of the last year festival limitating participation by Russian resources which made impossible for foreign specialists and users to estimate Russian artists' work. An efficient advertising campaign and system of wide announcement of possibility to take part in the festival brought into sight new generation of Russian authors that had chosen the Internet as a medium for work based on interactive communication. That was the reason why "the extent of media activity of a project was the main estimating criterium of the 'Da-Da-Net-2I'."

The 'Trash-art' international festival had a special significance. Held 'in the suburbs' of a more pragmatic and institutional event, the 'Trash-art' demonstrated openness, witness and easyness not typical for overorganized competitions with multi-stage selection and jury. In the long run, its mere idea and technology stands not far from a Net-art work as it is understood nowadays.

Experience of moderating such an art festival in the Internet confirms arising sensation and comprehension of perspectives of new technologies in respect of art. It's obvious that the former organizing and operating systems will not work for new types of creation. These perspectives are connected with new ideology and outlook, and new perception of relationship between the center and the periphery first of all, as well as with ideas of new fields of knowledge, experience and expression that are out of museum, gallery or art magazine, etc.

The subject of the festival might be interpreted as universal for aesthetics and art of the 20th century. This concerns 'garbage', 'trash', 'useless things' in the broadest sense of the word including the problem of marginality as a whole. Not little number of art trends were inspired by 'low' or 'folk' genres that were born by urbanism. All in all, in 'on the brinks' phylosophy and in experimental art this idea has been one of substantialities of development for the last years - the fields are the main resources of development. We can also remind here Jasper's 'frontier situations'. These are situations of human immediate existence when it is impossible to count on anonymous forces of science (=art), and therefore a human being have to stay on his own and to expose content which stays secret while pure functional application of science is targeted on mastering the world.
Alexei Isaev, author of the idea of the 'Trash-art' festival is known for his experiments with play art provocations and appeal to radical ideologies: performances in Moscow metro, installation 'Montage of Attractions' at the Manifest 1 using fragments from S.Eisenstein's pictures (1996, together with Valery Podoroga); video-installation 'Doctors' Case' at NewMediaTopia (1994, Moscow), and 'Annimation or 'Doctors' Case' at the Russian actionism exhibition at Sezession (1997, Vienna). His appeal to art 'beyond the art bounds', in this case from the point of view of a curator having a dialogue with an author, occured to be rather fruitful. 

Net and non-net art, come together!

In the already mentioned 'crucial' 1996 pioneer of the exodus from 'contemporary art' into the Internet Alexei Shulguin wrote: "WWW is a vast, rapidly developing space... There's no history here, nor fluctuating value system, nor routine. Therefore, there are rather no criteria. But there is a unique chance to percept art in non-contextized spontaneous form...¹⁴ Though it is the absence of middle-men which inspires it. "Criticism of art projects realized in the Internet is perhaps a more risky challange than production of the projects. And is less gratefull. Because critic is a parasite sponging on a healthy artist's body. And here, where is the body? And where's art?¹⁵

Nevertheless, in 1997 Alexei Shulguin agreed to join the jury of the 'Da-Da-Net-1' explaining this as follows: "In my cooperation with institutions one might see something contradicting with my former ideas. But on the other hand, I think that the more Internet develops the better is the art situation in the world, it becomes more open, new people appeared, and it stopped being so corrupt. In Moscow the like sanitating happened not due to the Internet development but because the cruel crisis which had struck Moscow art medium. Tensity in relationship and bureaucratic competition that had been so typical just a few years ago disappeared¹⁶.

In the middle of the 90s, Shulguin went into the Internet in order to escape the power mechanisms. Today, having attained a substantial independence, he may either cooperate with the power or 'to play' with its mechanisms. "In 1998, my participation in the festival was a sort of a political game. Some people have an authority to decide what is good and what is bad", I told myself. Initially I was willingly put in this situation when invited to join the jury. But it didn't happen for some reason. And it seemed interesting if I perform not as a judge but as an accused, bring my project and say "Honorable jury, have a look at this'. The conflict and the start of the game distanced the master, the member of the jury who considers himself a wise and understanding person, and the artist¹⁷.

At the first 'Da-Da-Net' curators didn't look for any other goal but aesthetical and targeted on receiving even some projects that could make pretence to be named 'art'. But Alexei Isaev, author of the 'Trash-art' festival, could initially reckon on a good catch. And the first experiment showed that many people in the Russian Internet were looking forward to such an event. In Russia the Internet is developing very rapidly, this giving way for appearance of new personalities, and the festival which had became international, and attracted the works from everywhere. Due to these factors Isaev got a chance of putting a trap for 'good' extraordinary works: "If I generate such a virtual junkyard, I thought, the most interesting projects would be there."
Isaev constructed the conception of an Internet event mostly as an answer to crises in the art medium. "Situation doesn't look happy - exhibitions resemble each other, most of them are topical. 30-35-years-old artists consider themselves masters and belong to art 'officials' this meaning that they have regular exhibitions and can find money for their projects. Moscow art people lack self-criticism. Before this year festival I addressed some of Moscow artists asking whether they have 'worthless' works or projects that hadn't been realized. One of them answered that, being a professional, he had no trash. Many people might find this situation normal, but it badly lacks energy. Yes, it is normal. But dull. Nevertheless, I'd like to make another try to draw attention of Moscow artists to the 'Trash-art' project by, perhaps, organizing a parallel expositional event accompaning the next festival¹⁸.

Festival curator Olga Shishko told us that actuality of the subject for Moscow artists grows step by step. Anatoly Osmolovsky has just published a catalogue on trash culture. Moscow artist Vera Khlebnikova is going to publish the 'Trash-art' catalogue. Curators of the 'Trash-art' are interested in contacts between two worlds - 'contemporary art' world and media and Net-art world artificially devided by lack of information about each other, or by snobishness and competity. It's not the first time that Alexei Isaev tries to solve this problem. In 1994 he organized 'The First International Festival of Experimental Video-, Computer Annimation and Project Synthesis' in the popular Moscow squat (Petrovsky boulevard, 1994). It's purpose was to organize not an incidental 'meeting' of some of Moscow artists and video art (A.Zhigalov, N.Abalkova, A.Brener, G.Litichevsky, G.Vinogradov, exhibiton and 'Videostory' film).

"In Moscow, it's always been a war between actual art, from one part, and, say, video-art from the other. Then actual art became nearly video-art. The same story is with the Internet. There's always the same opposition. But if you talk to artists, critics or curators they say 'If you're engaged in the Internet you're lost, you make something which is not appropriate for actual or contemporary art'. So, doesn't it mean that in the West it is professionally appropriate and an artist could use any technology, and his relation to actual art depends not on technology but on his choice of art strategy. And the Internet experience showed that you can use there all your off-line art background¹⁹.

In this sense broad international contacts helped Isaev to reinforce his own feeling about unity of the artificially divided space of contemporary art. "It was nice to discover that many media-art specialists are part of the Internet community, and of contemporary art. Take Janos Sugar, member of the 'Trash-art' jury, who was my box neighbour at the 1997 Manifest. For me the fact is psychologically encouraging."

Opposition of on-line and off-line authors used to take place in the Russian literary sphere as well, with a stipulation that it concerned not a specific mode of work or a creative medium but publication²⁰. In 1997 representative of 'serious literature' started watching literary life in the Internet. 'Net Literaturtraggeren' were accused not just of washing away the literary hierarchy, "meeting the desires of adherents of most radical post-modernist theories". But due to the latter, this hierarchy "becomes doubled, tripled, constructing puny and crooked pyramids on the sand. They organize competitions, generate their own authorities...²¹ On Alexei Andreev's opinion, this exposes "misunderstanding and purposed hostility of new net culture treasuring not the names and merits of real life but freedom of word and 'the drive' of a concrete work".

Alexei Isaev, Olga Shishko and Tatyana Goryucheva (MediaArtLab) are consequitively engaged in theoretical and practical experiment targeted on introduction of the ideology, philosophy and aesthetics of 'new technological art' into professional context of Russian contemporary art. Due to their efforts, amongst 'traditional festival institution' with its subject, nominations, curators and jury, a blinking figure of a 'media-active-artist' aimed on manipulative work with the Net context appears. "In fact, the main idea of this project is search of radical approach to the technology, to the environment of the project and the artist, to the Internet, its laws and forms of communication." This is a reflexive product depicting the Russian situation, and an attempt to solve some principal problems of Russian art community by means of the Internet. And first of all its main problem, marginality towards so-called 'international contemporary art'.

Not a significant international event of authority for this international world was held in Russia, nor initiated from Russia. "The keif is that this is an international festival initiated from Russia. If it were for a real, not Internet event it couldn't be easy even to imagine it since Russia is not able, especially at present, to make pretence for initiating an interesting and large art event of an international level. But it is possible in the Internet. I'm happy that this idea of a virtual exhibition hall was realized, and the exhibition hall gained a particular status, became a place which could be used in the future²².

This is a very important comment. The new geography of art starts showing its features due to the Internet development. This art can exists inspite of the 'globalized' contemporary art which undertakes trips from Venice to Kassel and New York. As the French critic Norbert Hillaire writes, "It would be great if our French doctors of contemporary art design to have 'an Internet user's look' at what's taking place in the former Soviet republics in the field of art and culture, especially with the support of the Soros Center²³.

Internet as a cultural policy instrument

It's impossible to talk of Russian cultural representation in the Russian Internet without stipulation concerning the situation of the same culture off-line. Russian cultural institutions can't afford publishing of catalogues, and the citizens that are able to personally create and generate data can't afford its promotion. Some institutions (museums for example) have been getting support from various foreign and Russian foundations for opening and generating Internet sites, and individuals for creating electronic editions on culture and art.

Nevertheless most part of the listed 'electronic editors' continues enthusiastically working. Dissociation in Russian cultural sphere dated by the beginning of the 90s, dubs itself in the Internet. The created sites stay unknown, and the creators do not communicate with each other. Though some of 'culture makers' start talking of necessity of overcoming cultural dissociation both off- and on-line. "We've got a feeling that there's no-one to build up something but ourselves, and it's we that must create new structures", Vyacheslav Kuritsyn says. A well-known Russian writer Vladimir Sorokin, talking of necessity of 'conquering the power' and 'building up parallel structures' agrees: "To make up small islands of soil on marshy lands and to connect them with bridges is the unique method of preserving aesthetical consciousness and avoiding the underground. And that is what is the idea of power. And there're such islands... In this respect the Net projects seem to be very perspective - only the interested users go to an appropriate site. The structure grows up naturally.... New subcultures are not underground. They develop into system, generate a different cultural space, a site actually affecting the society. The underground had no claims upon affection. At the moment, I think the idea of the underground is not productive²⁴.

Such an approach to the Internet seems to be a bit idealistic. Creation of a site is one goal. Organizing of its 'natural' attractiveness for the interested users is quite another one demanding special knowledge and efforts. Comprehension of importance of the straight efficient promotion of a site is reaching literary Net-community: "While publishing data in the Internet promotion turns to be a special goal. Internet is a medium for active data search. The endless space of the Net (320 mln documents) means that a person uses merely those pages and units that he knows or wants to know - and the rest part of the Net hardly exists for him. Putting your text on an unknown for users web page you get nothing but an effect of a bottle message thrown into the ocean. You might similarly print ten paper copies and throw them all over a metro station. But to be loaded into a prestigious electronic edition or a popular library your message has to be selected depending on its quality. In this aspect the general points of literary life - magazines, literary clubs, competitions - are not abolished by the Internet appearance but, on the contrary, become of a more vital importance for on-line literature than for the off-line one²⁵.

Informational support and expert encouraging of Net cultural resource creators is a very important factor for cultural projects today. In contemporary Russia the Internet is a medium of the young. "The age of 'young Internet geniuses' as a rule is not over 35 and correlates with typical age of the users²⁶.

Mode of popularization of cultural resources at the 'Da-Da-Net-2' festival might seem too official. But many artists agree that it is necessary to draw attention of the society to art events in the current Russian situation. This concerns one of the 'Da-Da-Net' goals - to overcome marginality of the Internet and its cultural section. "Being represented at official levels 'Da-Da-Net-2' stayed true to its goals. And presentation at the Anigraph contributed to it. Our cultural resources and art projects were competable even for such an ambitious event. Isn't it charming to see a young author from a small provincial town going up the Anigraph stage to get the award for his web work while the public is bursting into applause. 'Da-Da-Net' got its official status, and encounted 10.000 users in one month²⁷, explains Alexei Isaev. 

Alexei Shulguin, participant of the 'Trash-art' continues: "People realized that the phenomenon existed, it had a particular value, and you could get prizes if you joined it. But we must remember that most of works are still created by enthusiasts, and it's important to show the authors that there's need for their work, that it attracts attention of the society and not of a few friends praising it in e-mails 'Oh, that's a cool page!'. Such a festival is very important because people trusted and trust in institutions, they are affected with presentations and 'reputable' press conferences. These festivals are also good for promotion of material that doesn't match narrow boarders of search machine or reference. At the time when it was generated by enthusiasts the Internet didn't contain much, so you went there and immediately found what you needed. Now it is overloaded, and it's too complicated to realize non-commercial projects without data support and promotion²⁸.

Today the WWW is not only a space towards which the weakened by the crisis Russian cultural life is shifting, but it's also a place where it could come to necessary unity. Let us keep in mind that the Russian cultural life stays extremely centralized in Moscow, and its Internet representation could overcome this fatal Russian peculiarity. The Net could become the place of existence and survival of culture which is now being forced out from the off-line world called Russia. And we must take into account that the culture shifting into the Internet might be sacrified by political manipulations. New figures of the Russian political scene will be keen on using its young progressive community as potencial voters. If we attentively watch the 'thought-out and perfect policy' maintained by Serguei Kirienko, leader of 'The Union of Right Forces' (actively advised by Marat Guelman) it will be obvious that the 'Internet culture' is becoming one of the playing cards. Though in fact we doesn't know the true attitude of this political association to this culture...

1 T.Moguilevskaya, O.Shishko. On History and Development Perspective of Media-art in Moscow, in NewMediaTopia/NewMediaLogia, catalogue of the New media Art Laboratory, Soros Center of Contemporary Art. Moscow, 1996, p.21.
2 Olga Lyalina, Alexei Shulguin. Nets for Artists. - Commersant-Daily, September 27, 1996.
3 Ibid. 
4 T.Moguilevskaya. Russian Artists in the Internet. - Khudozhestvenny Zhurnal, ?10, p.48-52.
5 Ibid.
6 Ibid.
7 www.da-da-net.ru . The festival was organized by the Moscow Soros Center of Contemporary Art. Curators -Olga Shishko, Tatyana Moguilevskaya. International Jury - Alexei Isaev, Alexei Shulguin, Alla Mitrofanova, Tetsua Kogawa, Pierre Bonjovanni, Gilles Morel, Stephen Wilson, Lev Manovich, Adele Eisenstein.
8 Claude Ravant, Tania Moguilevskaia. The Intimate in Public. - SIKSI. The Nordic Art Review, XIII ? 3-4, autumn\winter 1998, p.18-19.

9 Stephen Wilson in Materials of Closed Jury Discussion.
10 Claude Ravant, Tanya Moguilevskaia. Ibid., p.18. 
11 Materials of Closed Yury Discussion.
12 Claude Ravant, Tania Moguilevskaia. Ibid., p.19.
13 O. Shishko. Da-Da-Net. Internet. - Zhurnal.ru, ? 1(7), Moscow, 1998.
14 Alexei Shulguin. Internet Projects.- Khudozhestvenny Zhurnal, ? 10, Moscow, 1996, p.40.
15 Ibid.
16 Interview with Alexei Shulguin, September 1999.
17 Ibid.
18 Interview with A.Isaev, September 1999.
19 Ibid.
20 Alexei Andreev. Dancing with the Giraffe. - Net-culture, ? 4, 'Pushkin' magazine.
21 Dmitry Kuzmin. Article in newspaper 'Literaturnaya Gazeta'. 1997.
22 Interview with A.Isaev, September 1999.
23 Norbert Hillaire. Le createur, l'ordinateur et l'oeuvre d'art. L'Apres-television. Multimedia, virtuel, Internet. Valence, 1996.
24 V.Sorokin, V.Kuritsyn. Let's take it.
25 S. Kornev.'Net Literature' and the End of Postmodernism. Internet as a Literature Environment. -Novoje Literaturnoe Obozrenije, ? 32 (4/1998).
26 Eugueni Gorny. Net-culture. ? 1, May 1, 1998, p.3.
27 Interview with A.Isaev, September 1999.
28 Interview with Alexei Shulguin.