Katya Bochavar. A word from the curator.

The first thing I would like to say in this brief introduction – I am not a curator. I am an artist, who took on an administrative function as part of a creative process. A huge space on Serebrianicheskaya Embankment, gave me materials that made me feel fear and excitement: an unfinished building of amazing beauty, 13,000 square meters of space, glass, and concrete that required a giant energy impulse in order to speak the language of modern art. Here one cannot remain unnoticed or just do an OK project. One can either prove or fail the idea of Art Squat Forum conceived by me as a practical study of art environment in a specific geographic locale at a specific moment in time. Only in such very challenging conditions, where to realize your plan, total concentration of will, and all your strength is needed, can you judge the level of interest of all the participants, their human and creative potential.

Each project participant of this art experiment was given complete freedom of choice in theme, form, and technique. Together with the unusual forum conditions this presented an opportunity to study the structure of elements in the cultural environment and the trends that are dominating it. Placement as neighbors caused the artists and curators to create a powerful space for communication, based on their collective experience as like minded colleagues. The desire to rally within the exhibition space, or in some rare case, a relative indifference to what is happening becomes more noticeable. Some used the freedom to create, and some – to be idle.

Squatting is a self-regulated community of people in a common space. ArtHouse Squat Forum 2011 made neighbors of projects that represent a certain slice of modern Moscow art environment and gave them cause to share a stair landing. There are veterans of group creative collaborations (FNO and ASE+F), societies of like minded curators (It will never be empty again, Sevan, Artodoks), self-organized groups gathering bright representatives of various generations (On/Off, Urban Fauna Zoo, Common Sense), artists united by an active leader (Beg) and political convictions (Precarius LIfe), a teacher and student collective (Fr/Br), a cooperation between husband and wife (Skepticism from a Sofa and Premonition), those moved by shared civic acts of heroism (PianoReCycle) and those devoted to a single medium (SaundArtist.Ru).

Quite a bit of time has passed since the end of the project, and conclusions are still being thought through, but even now it is clear to me that the value of artistic pronouncement does not depend on whether it is “right” or “left.” Artists who are declared “commercial” are very often driven by altruistic ideas, while at the same time their lofty words sometimes hide laziness and deficit of talent. Design, on the other hand, can excite thought and conceptual scholarism can surprise using new forms and beauty of execution.

Declared in the very name “forum” is a vision whereby the exchange of opinions exists between its participants. But we did not insist on real, physical meeting of the “squatters” at a round table. Without being pushed to fit into a general context, and by concentrating on their projects, artists support or contradict each other through their work. Performances, plays, exhibits, films enter into dialogue or willfully separate from the rest of the participants via monologue. It is impossible to hide the real meaning of what is happening. Everything becomes transparent: aspirations, hopes, goals.

I wanted for everything to be “in confusion at” the Grinevs’ house, and that it be joy to observe how theater projects get interwoven with exhibits through their titles. For example, the show Anonymous Society of Artists played in the space of the exhibit called Artists Anonymous. Performances and concerts were presented to the public in the site-specific exposition by Unearth, changing and rethinking landscape created by American artists. Participants of the concert of Petra Aidu and Herman Vinogradov became participants of a performance by Alexander Petlura, which then spilled over into a performance of a newest generation of art punks under the direction of Daria Marchik. Nobody felt himself a guest, but rather a participant at this amazing celebration of freedom of expression.

Andrey Parshikov. Arthouse Squat Forum co-curator.

Arthouse Squat Forum is not a simple exhibit, not just for the organizers, but, and especially, for the viewers. To view 13,000 square meters of art in one visit is not something everyone can do. And on our part, we (I and the project’s curator Katya Bochavar) have made the task even more complicated by offering to devote one building in its entirety to video installations and films. They had different lengths, from 2 minutes to over an hour. And all together they took several hours in total of the visitor’s time, which to me seems important for the project. An unfinished unheated building, darkness – all of this served as a great background for an uncomfortable but a very rigorous viewing. This way, the pieces look more real, more open, and one might say, naked, and one who saw it all even in more than one viewing, deserves recognition. I think that a viewer will get quite a bit by overcoming in this way, and, also, I am sure that the works would be more memorable.

This idea was one of the guiding ones in building the exposition. At the entrance there is a project entitled “It will not be empty again,” a project in development, constantly being added to with new quotes from its four participants. This is the most critical part about the problems of gentrification and about Squat Forum itself, part of block A, the “video-block”. When one sees such a powerful avalanche of questions about the inevitable change of a work’s status in a modern urban environment, about the possibility to create this avalanche to attract the audience’s attention, about special hidden marketing mechanisms of the “Modern Art” corporation, then one is convinced in non-compromising honesty of ArtHouse Squat Forum curators’ intentions. It gives a pretext to reflect on the location of the exhibit, which is opened by “It will not be empty again.”

Next, there is an exhibit of specialized artists’ communities: schools (Rodchenko, represented by the Vidiot project and by films of Marina Razbezhkina and her students); projects of curators, who work with the museums and study the existence of artists’ communities today; project of the community of artists united around a museum (Museum of Night Visions); communities working with video (FNO, Shanabrook and Georgieva, Anonymous Artists) that continuously develop new methods of collective creativity during the course of what has now amounted to many years; and, finally, a community of galleries, perhaps one of the most interesting on the American scene, Project Seven. The gallery project is here not by chance. Their community was formed as a response to the pervasive and agenda-driven US commercial art scene. Seven galleries got together and rented a school building for the duration of Miami Basel Art Fair. With the help of curators, they created an exhibit of their artists, had an opening night together, and continue to do quite a lot together. All of it is highly unusual for the fragmented gallery business. The story of these seven galleries gives us hope that there is a possibility of unifying creative artists’ communities to achieve common goals.

So too has the entire ArtHouse Squat Forum, exhibit of art communities, studied different ways of uniting artists’ communities on the background of Moscow’s rather vicious and evil fragmentation. This project presents the majority of active Moscow communities and several western ones. We would like to wish them all great successes, and to suggest to scattered individual artists to take a closer look at the communities. Then, perhaps, something in the art world will change for the better. At least in our measure, we see such a need.