The winner of the European Theatre Prize in the main nomination is now determined by the host city, and St. Petersburg awarded the artistic director of the Alexandrovsky Theatre Valery Fokin / Petr Kovalev / TASS

Speaking at the opening of the forum at the Mariinsky Theatre, Russian President Vladimir Putin called it a "celebration of the arts and education" and recalled that the first forum, in 2012, was all held on one site and the number of participants did not exceed 300 people. Things are different now - according to Putin, the forum "is attended by 35,000 people, i.e. a 100-fold increase. That says a lot."

What about? The experience of attending round tables, panel discussions, etc., of which there were countless (and this does not include performances and exhibitions), makes one regret, first of all, that it is impossible to tear oneself away. The events were not recorded – at best, one could watch the live broadcast. The press center told Vedomosti: “Storing recordings is impossible! These are terabytes!” And there are no free terabytes of memory for everyone. As well as a magic “time flywheel”, like Hermione in Harry Potter, allowing one to be present everywhere at once. The formality of many of the forum’s initiatives, on the other hand, made them unnecessary. In principle, the scheme of the St. Petersburg forum can be imagined as a classical play – with a prologue, action, and a finale that is unexpected even for an experienced viewer who, it would seem, is used to everything.

Prologue

The forum officially opened on November 15, but it started the day before – at 10 am at a press conference in the General Staff Building they promised to declassify the details of Russia's participation in the future Venice Biennale: it will begin on May 11. But the question is left hanging in the air – journalists were not even told how many artists are participating in the Russian project. Obviously, the decision has not yet been made.

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Another thing is that the Venice Biennale, the main world event in the field of contemporary art, is apparently not perceived as such by the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. This can be judged at least by the new ministerial initiative – the prize in the field of “contemporary classical art” “Tradition” (as opposed to the existing “Innovation”), approved by the State Museum and Exhibition Center “ROSIZO” with the money of the Ministry of Culture. Vera Lagutenkova, recently appointed acting head of ROSIZO and who presented the new prize together with the chairman of the All-Russian Public Organization “Union of Artists of Russia”, sculptor Andrey Kovalchuk, insisted on the need to include in the context of contemporary art “the achievements of a huge number of artists working with traditional visual forms”. When asked how to distinguish tradition from non-tradition and whether the works of Russian avant-garde artists created a century ago can already be considered classics, both found it difficult to answer.

The prologue, not to the forum but to the future, was the Italian exhibitions in the Hermitage (Italy and Qatar are guest countries of the forum): two paired portraits of the doges by Jacopo Tintoretto (this year the world celebrates his 500th anniversary) from the Correr Museum in Venice became a preview of the Piero della Francesca exhibition opening in December, and the Pompeian frescoes exhibited in the Jupiter Hall hint at the future expansion to St. Petersburg from Pompeii and Herculaneum in April 2019.

Action

During the cultural forum, a couple of other important exhibitions opened, among others. “Unexpected Malevich” at the Russian Museum is a graphic from the collection of Anna Leporskaya, which was given to the museum and was finally shown. And the second is “Thirst for Antiquity”, open until December 16, at the museum of the Academy of Arts: brilliant graphic art by the architect Maxim Atayants, drawings of monuments of Ancient Greece and Rome, and in the center of the halls – restored and shown for the first time cork models of monuments, brought in the 18th century by Catherine II. Students studied on them, and six of these models were permanently exhibited – but in a quantity of 34 they create the impression of a single architectural environment. And how can one not return to the question of “tradition vs. modernity”, which is in fact artificial. The forum declared its commitment to modernity in technology – and indeed, many were given the floor: a separate discussion on the topic of big data took place, directors Dmitry Volkostrelov, Vsevolod Lisovsky, Helgard Haug (Rimini Protokoll, Germany) and artist Elena Kovylina took part in the marathon dedicated to contemporary art, music, theater and cinema, and architects Evgeny Ass, curator Yana Klichuk (Netherlands), designer and artist Andrey Shelyutto and others took part in the discussion on the topic of “Museum + Contemporary Art. Curator / Artist / Designer”. But it seemed that the organizers of the forum simply checked a box. They talked and went their separate ways. Previously, it was believed that the forum was one of the few ways to get in touch with the authorities, an attempt to find understanding. But is that so now? The program included inclusive theaters, and a lecture was given by Nika Parkhomovskaya, producer of the socio-cultural project of the Alma Mater foundation and the play “Apartment,” in which people with autism spectrum disorder participate, but it was obvious that inclusion here is a fashionable topic that does not touch on such simple and important things as, for example, the lack of elevators in many theaters.

Money

Of course, patronage was discussed at the forum. Sometimes in vain, as at the much-advertised Forbes business breakfast at the Faberge Museum: it turned into a formal get-together with Vladimir Medinsky and the publication's editorial director Nikolai Uskov, who looked the minister in the eye.

Unlike the breakfast, the panel discussion “Patronage of the Future: Best Practices and Effective Mechanisms of Public-Private Partnership,” dedicated to museum endowment funds, was the only one that was on point. The Vladimir Potanin Charitable Foundation, which organized it, brought top officials to St. Petersburg: the director of the department for relations with partners and patrons of the Louvre, the director of cultural projects of the largest banking fund in Spain, La Caixa, the head of the endowment fund of the International Council of Museums ICOM, and others. Yuri Trofimov, the Minister of Culture of the Omsk Region, who, when he was the director of the museum, initiated the first endowment fund in our province for it, also took part in this. Modest, only 9 million rubles, but at least something for a regional institution. Director of the Tretyakov Gallery Zelfira Tregulova, who was present at the discussion as an expert, admitted that the museum entrusted to her, “of course, does not have such a fund, because 9 million rubles is not enough for us.” – not the amount that will save us.” Yann Le Touet from the Louvre admitted that the Louvre’s endowment fund last year amounted to 195 million euros. It is made up of various sources, including crowdfunding and fundraising, but these opportunities are provided by French legislation, which has previously been favorable to donors and has given them a 25% tax break, and the updated law guarantees a 90% tax break for the purchase of works for the Louvre. Russia can only dream of this, but even without tax breaks for donors, the Hermitage endowment fund, together with the Potanin Foundation, jointly bought a work by Anselm Kiefer. On this optimistic note, one could have ended the story about the VII Cultural Forum, if history had not prepared a scandalous ending for it.

Epilogue

The European Theatre Award, which was presented in St. Petersburg as part of the forum, is one of the most prestigious in the world. The ceremony is held in a new location each time. The organizing committee is Italian, the jury is international. The award is presented in two nominations. The first is for the totality of merits, it was awarded to such masters as Peter Brook, Giorgio Strehler, Krystian Lupa, Patrice Chereau, Robert Lepage, Lev Dodin. A year ago, this nomination was deprived of the jury and given to the host city, which was then Rome, which awarded the award to Jeremy Irons and Isabelle Huppert.

And St. Petersburg awarded the artistic director of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, Valery Fokin, who just happened to have an anniversary. The theater community was slightly taken aback: given Fokin's position and influence, the situation looked as if he had presented the award to himself.

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In the second nomination – “New Theatrical Reality” – young and promising people are chosen, and the jury still works here. The 2017 laureate was Kirill Serebrennikov, who, for obvious reasons, did not come to Rome. But it was not very clear why his name was not heard from the stage. Was it really because the Italians already knew where and at whose expense the ceremony would be held next year?

The winners of the 2018 New Theatre Reality were Pole Jan Klata, Spaniard Nuria Esper, Portuguese Thiago Rodriguez, Frenchman Julien Gosslan, Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui (Belgium – Morocco) and Swiss Milo Rau. There was a scandal here too.

Rau was not granted a Russian visa. The director wrote an open letter in which he recalled that his visa problems began five years ago, when he staged the play Moscow Trials at the Sakharov Center, in which he cast a critical eye on the problem of creative freedom in Russia. Since then, Rau writes, he has been “barred from entering this country – be it Manifesta, the Golden Mask festival, or any other events.” Rau tried to pass the letter on to the organizers of the forum and the award, but his messages and calls were simply ignored. In the end, the director was only able to contact a jury member from Russia, the editor-in-chief of the Teatr magazine, Marina Davydova. She translated and published the letter, and the famous French theater critic Georges Bagnu read it from the stage. After that, the speakers spoke only about Rau, Serebrennikov, and creative freedom (the name of the disgraced Russian director disappeared from the simultaneous translation). Thiago Rodriguez read Shakespeare's 30th sonnet in Russian, dedicating his speech to Serebrennikov. And after that, all the speakers spoke only about him, presenting the audience with the main conflict of the forum - between the Ministry of Culture and culture itself. Which no one tried to resolve.

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