Domenico Billari: "Change the car from the inside of the car"

Within v The Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art Swiss artist Domenico Billari, known in his homeland, presented the installation of “Inside and Outside as Frame, for a Glass of Water. It became part of the Biennale’s special project “Playing with nature”, where young artists from different countries (from Great Britain to Zimbabwe) think about how technologies control the human consciousness, form false needs and mania of endless consumption. The starting point for the exhibition, according to her curator Ekaterina Krupennikova, was the text of the philosopher Herbert Marcuse “One -Men” (1964). The project, posted in the recently opened center of contemporary art "Falcon", is a selection of video and spatial installations in which the authors develop the ideas of Marcuse in their own way. Olga Mamaeva talked with Domenico Billari about the Moscow Biennale, politics and "pollution" of art.

- You brought to Moscow a rather unusual project - a trilogy consisting of a video, sculpture and performance, in which technologies are endowed with religious meaning. What inspired you to this work and does it differ from what you did before?

- The mass of everything was the source of inspiration - both in art and in life. First of all, Switzerland, which has always been to me and will be the most important impulse for creative searches. Walks in the Botanical Garden of Amsterdam. Of course, the book of Herbert Marcuse “One -Men”, which has become the main impetus for this exhibition. In addition, I was influenced by Alfred North Whitehead, his concept of nature. And also a wonderful artist from Holland, Mariyka Appelman, whose work “nature copies us” made a space impression on me. We are very dependent on technology, we consume them with manic greed. This is what I wanted to say about. How accurate this statement turned out to be, of course, to judge, of course, to me. The project that I presented in Moscow conceptually continues my previous works - in them I often talk about how the outside world affects us. For example, in the performance “Walking on the Moon, but on the Earth” (“Walking on the Moon But on Earth”) , I, suspended in zero -gravity on red balloons, symbolically walked over the heads of people. The theme of this performance was a tremendous information pressure on our brains.

- And what can contemporary art do here?

- Look at everything critically. To influence the direction in which time arrows rotate in the minds of every person. We produce and consume technologies, but this means that we must think even more than before. In the end, it is nature that gives us materials for technological acceleration. What can artists offer? As always, only a mirror, peering into which, more precisely, we can see ourselves.

- It's clear. What else do you want to think about in your work?

- You will laugh, but I often think about what to do with those millions of products (let's call it) that artists around the world create. Marina Abramovich once called it "pollution of art." I agree with her.

-Is there any difference between how Russian and Swiss artists “pollute” art?

- I would not draw any parallels, each artist is separated.

-Well, but there are probably some topics that especially occupy your Swiss colleagues?

- The most diverse, but they do not have a national character. Members of the group of artists or just single intellectuals, they remain people living here and now, in the new moment, which we have not yet managed to know or explain. Everyone is trying to do it in their own way. By the way, John Baldessari very accurately said about this, speaking here in Moscow.

- That is, it makes no sense to talk about national art in globalization?

- I would rather talk not about globalization, but about “lobbying”, that is, the growing power of various political and economic lobbies around the world.

- Let's talk about the V Moscow Biennale ... You probably have the opportunity to compare it with other large -scale exhibition projects in Europe and not only.

- The Moscow Biennale is a very young institution, with its own specifics. It seems to me that she would fade if she had been shown outside of Russia. But in terms of organization, in my opinion, everything is not bad. I was struck by how many beautiful, friendly young men and girls work at different sites of Biennale. Youth here is in the air.

- Of course, you know about the political situation in Russia. So you came here. What do you say?

- I think that the political, social and, as a result, the cultural situation is not only in Russia, but is closely connected with the economy all over the world. Politicians are just losers, whose hands accidentally turned out to be economic power. If the economic pedestal collapses, everything else will collapse. This is not only my opinion, any guy selling newspapers on the street will tell you the same. In general, in truth, we all need direct democracy, as in Switzerland. That's what we must strive for this.

- How?

- You can change the movement of the machine only by being inside this machine.