Overdid it | Colta.ru

As the artist Yuri Albert wrote somewhere on the Internet somewhere on the Internet, art is not only shown, but also where and under what circumstances (I can’t vouch for accuracy, I quote from memory). Sometimes it happens that we can clearly feel this thesis.

On the day, when they just started, but they did not finish the announcement of the verdict on the case on May 6, Dina Karaman opened the “Cinema to Romantic” exhibition. So far, in walking distance from the exhibition platform, the anticipation of riot police and internal troops were dispersed along the arena, in the Museum protected by the FSO, they represented the next project under the “Big Hopes” cycle, which was called “a progressive platform for visual experiments and media investments of young Russian artists”.

The project itself is interesting. The exposition is similar to a board game: you need to walk on the arrows from one point to another. The space of the exhibition is several tents. In the first, the viewer sees a huge late-Soviet building, a glass box, and hears how children who are encouraged by someone adults learn “traditional values”, speak of the importance of the family. Next, the class with primary school students is visible, the text of Alexander Green sounds. In the last tent - a continuation of the story about the writer, reviews on his work. Everything is very calm.

In a small booklet released to the exhibition, two pages with curatorial explanation in Russian and English stood out. On top of the already printed text of Roman Minaev, paper squares with a new version of the text were pasted. If you look carefully, the previous version is visible - and you can determine what was removed. True, it turned out that you could not spoil my vision: I also found the old text in the “incoming” folder in e -mail. He was sent long before the opening. Corrections were made at the last moment, a couple of days before the vernissage.

Already by looking at the catalog on the light, I found the first change: at the very beginning of the text, the phrase “during the third Putin term” was removed, replacing it with neutral “these days”. Then it turned out that the mention of the United Russia party was cut out, as well as "Creativity <...> as a potential threat to the authoritarian system." And where it was said about the complex relationships of rulers and artists, the word “power” was deprived of the definition of “political”, apparently that no one doubts that any power is from God, not a human construct.

It is clear what considerations the bosses of the arena were guided by, engaged in such self -censorship, - they were careful. This is not the first time: something similar already happened when from another branch of the same Museum and Exhibition Association “Manege” on the eve of the opening of the Exhibition “International Women's Day” they hastily removed several works . In addition, the memories of how a faithful exhibition dedicated to the Romanov dynasty was not yet cooled down about how, with a frantic success. Apparently, because of some little things, I did not want to spoil the earned reputation with such difficulty.

This censorship seemed to me the most funny of the many that happened to date, because there are much more sad examples . If you read the text, which in general, no one would particularly study, if there weren’t these bills, then there can be no “crime” even in the conditions of the current exacerbation, sniffing enemies and conspiracies. In fact, the leadership of the Manege, editing the text, acted quite critically, although it did not fully realize this - this also happens. And it is the arena as an institution that is a larger seditious than the curator, which wrote the original version of the text for the exhibition. It was simply possible to add something like “the text of the curator does not always coincide with the opinion of the museum leadership”, it would not have turned out to be so radically, and funny, except other things. But no, in the arena decided that it was necessary to clean up all the annoying factors.

When we want to exclude something from our lives, to forget as a nightmare, we try not to talk about it, not to mention once again. This behavior came to us from prehistoric times. Wanting to avoid unnecessary problems, museum workers resort to censorship. But the arena not only hides the surrounding reality - it is accidentally denied: Putin does not exist and an authoritarian system. The opposition always and in all countries loves to include the name of hated power at any convenient case, and quite often this power is strengthened in this way, since in a conversation about what is happening in the country everything becomes connected with the same power, people cease to perceive life without immediate appeal to the rulers. There is a feeling that what is happening is now forever and inevitable, although this, of course, is not so. And so the Manege simply took and crossed out all these names and phenomena from history, deprived us of our illusion. They wanted the best, but it turned out - very good. Apparently, there is no greater threat to any authoritarian regime than its faithful servants, overpowering enthusiasts. It remains only to wish good luck to the Manege in the purification of our consciousness from any turbidity.