STATE

—The relationship between the state and its SUBORs, or public cultural institutions, is much like the one between parents and their underage offspring. On the one hand, we must follow the rules as accurately as school children. We get restricted documents that tell us whom to avoid at the moment. Is there a legal basis? None whatsoever. On the other hand, we are treated like teenagers whenever we try to act independently. On paper, the policy of the institution is shaped by its director, and the Ministry of Culture has nothing to do with it. So whenever we get into a spot that the parent organisation does not like, we are told that we only have ourselves to blame and it is our own responsibility to find a solution. Being a parent is nice and easy: whenever there is something to impose, you use the seven-year-old pattern, while the fourteen-year-old one is perfect for renouncing. But we are grown-up people, established producers.

—I believe that civil service is bad for efficient people. When working for the state, you waste fifty percent of your energy on trying to get approvals instead of getting things done. Moreover, in Russia you still have to prove you are not an idiot all the time. Civil service is all right if you want to learn about the inner mechanisms of the state. But if you are a visionary, the best way to start is creating your own product right away. The sooner you move, the more time you get to experiment, risk, misstep, fall, get up, and win.

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I experienced a terrible crisis: instead of working on meaningful projects, all I did was trying to get something approved.

—While setting our priorities, we were looking at the local Centre for Contemporary Arts where all the departments were completely disintegrated, no one cared and no one meddled. Everybody was just keeping busy in their own corners. The same method is applied in the municipality and the city parliament. It says loads about the nature of political establishment in Russia in general.

—The idea is to tune out of the self-congratulatory battle-cries of the Ministry of Culture: let us make a list of all private museums, regulate their work, and everything will be fine… It is the worst thing that could ever happen! Imitation processes have already started at the regional level, and we are busy trying to keep up meaningful work. But we are not getting through: the state is not interested in the agenda we propose, we are blocked out. No one is willing to meet the needs and challenges of private cultural entrepreneurs and facilitate their dealings with the public sector.

—There were no lockdown subsidies for us: the museum as a non-profit entity did not qualify for support programmes as they only covered commercial companies.

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The creative sector was much impacted by the pandemic, but many of the artists listed themselves as unemployed, which was a smart solution.

—There is hardly any subjectivity. They would read the report, take out the name of the author and present it. The Ministry of Culture would then make a note of it: "We are making a comprehensive list, nothing to worry about!" But they would not assign the task to anyone capable of meaningful efforts. There are no authors at any level. We have unexpectedly found ourselves involved with the tourism market. It offers a fascinating experience of trying to link the cultural debate to down-to-earth economic issues. Everyone keeps going on about creating content. But managers do not create content! This is what authors do. The author, the artist, the curator must have a different profile and a higher status.

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I am not sure if the state has a human side to it, and if it does, I don’t know what it looks like.

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The blinds that they force upon us at the Ministry of Science and Education are appalling.

—How to deal with imitation projects? One can either play by the rules and tell straightforward lies, or do real work and report all the same. In my experience, ministers prefer real work: they get excited and look forward to more. So actually working is always better: otherwise people stop coming or even noticing you. One can be free and sly, but fabrications and falsifications are still bad. Freedom implies honesty, I believe. A free person cannot be dishonest, and a dishonest person cannot be free.

—I have everything I need for fulfilment in my state institution. It has its drawbacks, and many colleagues dealing with red tape issues have a really hard time, some of them even quit, so in the end I have no solid team. People cannot live with it for more than two or three years: they leave their positions or even the country.

But my freedom lies in the use of the institutional framework — the spaces, technicians, payroll staff, and financing — for projects of trial-and-error nature. Outside state institutions, I need more emotional and intellectual energy to prove that every cent of investments will pay off and every expense is justified. But in my field hardly anything actually pays off because we are experimenting, and my projects tend to be controversial. I do not do marketing studies to find out how many visitors the show can attract. From this point of view, state institutions are idle and slow: ambition and passion can get you quite far, because no one else really cares. The Garage Museum is a top institution, but it still has an owner, and the other owner under him, and the personal tastes of all these people inevitably shape the policy. In any private institution, you have to prove your point to the investors and adjust to their priorities. The mayor, on the other hand, does not really care whether I am doing this or that exhibition or not. My interests are miles away from government issues, the money I spend is not taken out of anyone’s own pocket, therefore the state does not want a report for every cent. I have to file a report all right, but the criteria are different.

The only other solution is building a strong economic basis like the one that Ayrat Bagautdinov developed for his Moscow With An Engineer’s Eye guided tours project. He built a very successful enterprise, but there is the flip side to consider as well: he has to spend every ruble to stay afloat and pay the staff, the promo campaigns, and the office rent; there are no funds to elaborate on his content, the development is extensive rather than intensive. Therefore, I believe state institutions provide a better framework: many things work automatically, without draining time away from creative development, even though there is a lot of bureaucracy.