Erik Hagoort

 

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Contemporary art cannot do without inertia. Art has an air of the stubborn, an ability to stay in place or keep on track. In spite of current rhetorics favouring art’s changeability and fleetingness, contemporary artists keep expressing a certain measure of opposition towards change and distraction. The manner in which artists develop this ability through their work and attitude, to what extent, with what effect and intentions: these are the issues which will be addressed in St. Petersburg, Russia (2006) and in Amsterdam, the Netherlands (2008).

 

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In common parlance, inertia has gained a negative connotation. Inert stands for unwieldy, sluggish, languid or passive. In contemporary art, calling an art work inert is seldom taken as a compliment. Although the days in which avant-gardes dictated the art world are long past, the notion that art always has to offer something ´new´ or, rather, ´something different´ is still alive and kicking. Today, this changeability is no longer looked upon as a succession of styles and movements, but rather as a dynamic and fleeting ‘anything goes’. As a result, anticipating changeability has become even more important in art.

At the same time, art is still expected to shy away from change and fleetingness. Viewers want art to take root, even if just for a couple of years. For art to help clarify, to incite critical judgement, to help reach a deeper understanding, or gain peace and quiet. But in order to do so, artists need to keep on track, to persevere in what they are working on.

 

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St. Petersburg is the ideal place to embark on this examination. In the last decade here, as in the rest of Russia, it was matter of weathering the extreme social, political and economic changes. In St. Petersburg, artists felt the need to take up a position in their work within the field of change, by adopting an attitude of opposition. The Russian language has a word for this attitude: ‘inertnost’. ’Inertnost’ stands for a personal attitude of inertia.

This attitude was expressed in widely divergent fascinations: for regression and aphasia (Sergei Bugaev Afrika), for death (Yevgeni Yufit en Vladimir Kustov), for antiquity and Byzanthium (Olga Tobreluts), for social realism (Georgii Gurianov), for nineteenth century classicism, czardom and the Russian Orthodox religion (Timur Novikov). However, ‘inertnost’ wasn’t limited to St. Petersburg. In Moscow the artists’ group of ‘Inspection Medical Hermeneutics’ intentionally cut themselves off from the outside world in order to preserve a subcultural form of art, striving to resist the influence of the West in Russia. Irony, coquetry and mystification were not foreign to all these artists. They also happily took advantage of clichés about the contrasts between East and West, to subsequently undermine these afterwards.

 

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Nowadays, the Russian art world seems to have less difficulty in complying with rhetorics of Western art, and this also holds good for the most ‘defiant’ among the said artists. In the meantime, Russia’s social life has somewhat calmed down, the political situation under the reign of Putin has even more or less lapsed into a coma. Within this context, adopting an attitude of ‘inertnost’ seems less opportune. However, to simply enter this attitude of defiance into the annals of art history would be wrong. On the contrary, now that ‘inertnost’ seems no longer an absolute necessity within the Russian context, the time has to come to hold this attitude against the light and examine its importance thoroughly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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As Isaac Newton determined in 1687, inertia is the property of a body to persevere in remaining at rest or in motion - depending on its state. Unless acted on by some external force, a body at rest will remain at rest, and a body in motion will keep on moving at the same speed and in the same direction. A body’s inertia is related to the measure of resistance it offers to an active force or torque.

 

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Art and artists are usually tugged at from all sides. The public, art critics and the authorities each have different desires and expectations. With their work artists are expected to anticipate new technological, economical, social and political developments.

The international discourse on the arts seems to be entangled in a rhetoric that overrates dynamic changeability and underestimates forces of stability, consistency and continuation.

To be open to the forces of change is placed at a premium. It is an aspect in contemporary artists´ work which is noted, examined and appreciated. There tends to be less interest in that other aspect, the ´inert´ quality of art, which is generally overlooked or brushed aside, although it is equally present in contemporary artists´ work. In short, for a good understanding of the contemporary artist, it is also material to examine perseverance.

 

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These artists formed an informal movement, which gained international recognition. Their work appealed to Western clichés about an exotic, closed, uncompromising Russia. Fortunately, a number of outstanding exhibitions passed over such clichés, such as the travelling exhibition ‘Selbstidentifikation. Positionen St. Petersburger Kunst von 1970 bis heute’ (1995), at among others Haus am Waldsee in Berlin, and ‘Kabinet’ (1997) at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. But after the boom in expositions about Eastern European art after the fall of the Iron Curtain, interest in the West began to dwindle. At the end of the last century, it was time for ‘something new’. Russian artists too, were expected to be with the times. That was when it emerged that their attitude wasn’t just a performance. Some even made an issue of their defiant attitude and produced work that was pretty much unacceptable, both to progressive westerners as well as to the Russian intelligentsia. Disconcerting art, rejecting the expectation of innovation. (See Erik Hagoort: ‘Inert Avant-Gardism’ in Metropolis M 2003 nr. 6.)

 

 

 

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But not from a distance. Artists and theorists from St. Petersburg do present the Dutch culture, which usually boasts a ‘tradition’ of dynamic progressivity, with the question whether inertia can be an inspiring attitude in the Netherlands, and if so, in what manner. Do artists in the Netherlands develop an attitude of ‘inertia’ too? Why, and in what way?

 

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This project takes up the challenge by bringing together art works by Dutch and Russian artists, first in Russia, then in the Netherlands, and by presenting side by side the insights of theorists and artists from both countries. A dialogue can be initiated about the importance of inertia. Clichés can be put to the test. In addition, the project can look into the similarities and differences in the manner in which artists and theorists of different nationalities give an interpretation of the theme of inertia. Such a comparison can lead to some surprising conclusions.

Different forces ask for different forms of ‘inertnost’. The artists, critics and philosophers participating in the project are, therefore, a diverse group. Therefore the project will offer a kaleidoscopic view, which might help to assess the value of inertia in contemporary culture.