Approaching the Brink: Manifesta 10 and the Standoff over Crimea

En route to St. Petersburg on July 17, I heard the news about the Malaysia Airlines plane shot down in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, claiming 298 lives. The tragic incident colored my brief stay in the city and lent an added urgency to the Public Program of Manifesta 10 that brought me there in the first place. The host city funds the roaming European biennial of contemporary art, which celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2014. This seriously limited the organizers of the main event—led by veteran curator Kasper König—in their ability to voice criticism over Russia’s role in the 2014 Crimean crisis. As the conflict culminating in the annexation of Crimea in March escalated, the organizers were taken to task for their lack of resolve, amid calls to boycott the event.

IN THE AGE OF GEOPOLITCS: MANIFESTA’S PUBLIC PROGRAM

It fell to the somewhat peripheral yet vital Public Program to “respond to the current social-political circumstances, its conflicts and complexities, and the place of art within them.”¹ Speaking on the very evening of the plane crash on a panel alongside Russian artists and provocateurs Afrika (Sergei Bugaev) and Pavel Pepperstein at the Anna Nova Gallery, Public Program curator Joanna Warsza bemoaned the lack of discussion surrounding the events in the Ukraine: “It’s business as usual,” she pointed out. No stranger to controversy herself, Warsza was, together with the notorious Russian art group Voina, part of artist Artur Żmijewski’s curatorial team for the unpopular 7th Berlin Biennale in 2012, which, to their credit, did provoke debate.

Facilitating discussion and encouraging the exchange of ideas under politically fraught circumstances is what the Berlin-based Polish curator set out to do in the context of Manifesta 10. As Warsza explained that evening, she felt strongly that the political thing was to carry on, even though she shared some of the reservations made public by Chto Delat?. This locally-based artist collective withdrew their participation from Manifesta 10 in March, after the foundation announced its decision not to cancel or postpone the event, as had been the case with the second Kiev Biennale earlier that year (postponed until 2015); the public program of the 13th Istanbul Biennial, annulled in the wake of the Gezi Park Protests; or indeed Manifesta 6 in Nicosia, Cyprus, which was called off three months prior to the planned opening in 2006.

Designed to foster a sense of collectivity in a place where it is viewed with some suspicion, the context-responsive commissions, time-based events, performances, talks, and discussions staged in public spaces across the city over the biennial’s four-month duration as part of Manifesta’s Public Program, could be viewed as an exercise in “soft power.” Joseph Nye’s influential concept, which in international affairs designates the power to co-opt rather than coerce through cultural and economic clout, as opposed to military might or sanctions, appears in the title of Bucharest-based artist Alexandra Pirici’s Soft Power: Sculptural Additions to Petersburg Monuments (2014)—one of ten projects specifically commissioned for the Public Program.

A counterpoint to the main exhibition, showcasing the work of international artists from anywhere and nowhere, Warsza’s Public Program had a resolutely Eastern European focus. Unlike König’s largely unchanging exhibition, spread across the Winter Palace and the General Staff Building of the Hermitage, the more dynamic Public Program availed itself of various picturesque venues, historic monuments, and public spaces dotted around the city, starting with St. Petersburg’s Vitebsk Station. Inaugurated in 1837, making it Russia’s oldest railway station, the romantic building—with its lavishly decorated Art Nouveau interior, grand staircase, and ornate piano hall—acted as a hub for the Public Program.

More than that, Vitebsk train station’s destination board, indicating daily departures to cities on Russia’s...