Behind the Screen: an interview with a curator Robbie Schweiger
Full Moon is a series of screenings of video art which takes place every two months at Amsterdam-based cinema FC Hyena. The last event Full Moon #8: Northern Barbarians was focused on Central Asian art across Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, featuring works by Saodat Ismailova, Rustam Khalfin & Yuliya Tikhonova, Yerbossyn Meldibekov, Almagul Menlibayeva, Anvar Musrepov and Saule & Suinbike Suleimenova. Robbie Schweiger is a curator and art historian from Amsterdam who organized this programme with his colleague Marian Cousijn. Specifically for IADA he answered some questions and explains different conditions of seeing art at a cinema and his research into Central Asian art.
Firstly, I would like to say many thanks for organizing this screening. Central Asia is a huge region that has different layers of culture and political issues. But until today it is still a blind spot on the map of contemporary art world and also in a global cultural context. That's why every art event outside of the region is important for the local art community since there are not so many opportunities to hear artists‘ voices. I would like to ask you how did you get the idea to show the Central Asian video art in Amsterdam? What was the initial thought?
My interest for the region started during my studies. I combined Art History with Russian and Eurasian Studies. The latter offered a course on politics and nation building in former Soviet Republics. I did some research into Uzbekistan for a paper and decided I had to go there the following summer of 2016. It struck me that this country with its breath-taking heritage and material culture was never even mentioned from high school to university. Two years later I crossed Kazakhstan by train for a travel report for a Belgian newspaper together with a writer and a photographer. The attitude of the photographer was really interesting. Even while being in Kazakhstan, his direct environment seemed to remain a blind spot for him, as he already knew what we wanted to capture beforehand. I had also researched the contemporary art scene in Kazakhstan for this trip but unfortunately, there was little time to further go into this during our short stay in the country.
In January 2019 I started working at the library of Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam as a researcher for the ‘Russian’ collections (archive, library and artworks). This label ‘Russian’ is tricky as it encompasses Russian avant-garde, Soviet art, Soviet Nonconformist art, and Post-Soviet contemporary art. The goal is to fill knowledge gaps and incite a pluralisation of perspectives and approaches to update the programme and collections. Together with the Van Abbemuseum and the University of Amsterdam we have the ambition to establish an international research platform around this, which is supposed to be launched later this year.
During my research into contemporary art from former Soviet republics my interest for Central Asia was sparked again. I got acquainted with a lot of interesting artists, researchers, galleries and other initiatives. Next to my part-time job at the Stedelijk I also work as an independent curator. I was really excited to show the things I encountered to a public and this resulted in the programme you were part of - Full Moon, which is a bi-monthly video-art programme (always during full moon) at cinema FC Hyena in Amsterdam, which I curate together with my friend Marian Cousijn.
I must admit that at first I was a little bit hesitant to program this ‘Central Asian’ edition of Full Moon. I’m aware that it is a geographical label for a very diverse region. At the same this ‘frame’ does shine a light on the common histories that the countries of this region share, and on how artists deal with this. It would also be a shame not to emphasize what is happening in the art field in this undervalued part of the world. I really hope that people who attended the event will stop overlooking this blind spot.
One of the repetitive questions in Central Asian art scene is how to represent local concepts globally. Sometimes artists feel like the meaning of local art is closed to be understood outside. Similarly, you mentioned in the description of the screening it seems like isolation. I’m currently studying in Vienna and I also often hear that my practice is too local to show my work in Austria and in general in Europe. How do you define international art and why do you think a certain art gets prioritized over another?
I don’t think international art exists. All art is situated in its own locality. People brought up with the Western canon, including myself, have Western art movements as a point of reference. These became ‘universal’ because Europe and North America forgot about/denied their ‘localness’. This predominant ‘universal’ (Western/modern/colonial) aesthetics limits the perception of your work for example, and dismisses layers of meaning simply because it does not get picked-up by someone from a different historical and social-political context. The result is a neo-Orientalist simplification of what you try to convey. The people who are in charge of the ‘international’ art world prioritize art that fits their ‘universal’ aesthetics. Realizing this will hopefully create more openness towards other localities and backgrounds.
Unfortunately, we are having this interview during the quarantine. How do you reflect on this challenge for the art environment?
COVID19 uncovers how vulnerable the art field has become (at least in the Netherlands) after being dismantled by capitalism, forcing art professionals and institutions to become ‘cultural entrepreneurs’. People in those precarious positions and especially smaller institutions now struggle to generate income and pay the rent. At the same time people seem to be more drawn to the arts in a crisis like this. I hope the importance of the art sector becomes clearer after all this. A positive side effect is how institutions are forced to think about improving online access to libraries, archives and collections. In other words, to connect with their audience on a different and maybe changed level.
More generally speaking I find it really interesting how COVID19 is an entity that doesn’t acknowledge national borders. When I discussed this with a friend last week, she added a really nice comment about how at the same time physical borders are now expanding to our very private space. The global becomes the personal.
Image courtesy of Marian Cousijn
The screening was conducted at the cinema and following your description, I absolutely agree with the opinion that during exhibitions audience is not able to fully see video works. This experience somehow feels like public intimacy and the condition of screening is different and specific. How did you personally discover this format of art representation and what does a screen mean for your curatorial practice?
My colleague and me were thinking of doing a project in public space in the North of Amsterdam. Cinema FC Hyena was situated next to the location we had in mind and we approached them for a side-programme with video works. When, because of different reasons, the bigger project didn’t happen, we decided to screen a video programme at the cinema. The first evening was such a success we decided to continue with it every 2 months.
As you mentioned the cinema creates different conditions for watching video works, simultaneously altering the works and how they are being perceived. You share the experience of watching the works together in an intimate but also public setting. People feel comfortable and have more patience then in a museum/gallery. It works really well. We always ask ourselves if these conditions and a work complement each other, which is not always the case.
The screen can be considered as a pretty environmental friendly, and cheap carrier for video art. Working with the cinema screen last year and a half has made it possible to work with a lot of people from different parts of the world.
After the screening you had a discussion, how did people find the program? What were the feedbacks? Could you remember some interesting questions or comments?
A few people mentioned being impressed the Central Asian Pavilion of different editions of the Venice Biennial – although nobody remembered the artists’ names and nationalities.
What I mostly remember is how both the introduction to the region by Fabienne Rachmadiev (PhD candidate at the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis. She is working on a dissertation on contemporary art from the former Soviet Union), as the screened video works were completely new for people. They were stunned! Moreover, they realized how little they knew about the region of Central Asia. Some photographs maybe from newspaper reflections on the political crisis between Uzbekistan and Kyrgyz Republic in 2010, but actually nothing about the art and art scene of those countries. Which is strange when you consider that a large part of our audience is quite familiar with art and art being global. Yet, not so global or international as we thought, which comes back to your previous question.
Anvar Musrepov is an artist, curator and editor of IADA-art.org
*edited in April 2020