“We have a much clearer understanding of what is happening with the Wall Street occupation right now than we do about internecine art world struggles over provenance.”
The St. Petersburg faction of Voina has accused Biennale organizers of putting “on display Voina works that had been stolen from the group by cops and police collaborators in May and November 2010.”
There is a single video in the Media Impact festival within Moscow Biennale, produced in 2011 by the Moscow faction of Voina. It is important to clarify that, at this time, there are two factions of Voina after the split in 2009.
The boycotting faction is claiming that work made by the others is not authentic Voina work. The boycotting faction also states that: “We’ve achieved a partial victory. The stolen works will be taken down. Curator Tatiana Volkova didn’t have the guts to act so insanely. But what they’re doing now is even lower…. Out of spite, the curators decided to present fakes under the name of Voina.’”
Not a single work has been removed from the exhibition because, apart from the aforementioned video, there have never been any other works by Voina in the exhibition. Contrary to what is claimed, no works have been added to the exhibition.
Visiting American independent curator, Nina Felshin, a participant in the Media Impact section of the Biennale states with concern that “it appears that one faction of Voina is using disinformation —the English translation of the Russian dezinformatsiya — to sway public opinion in order to discredit not only the other faction but the biennale organizers as well. Ironically, employing deception and false statements to convince someone of what is not true has been used by the governments of both our countries. Shouldn’t activist artists be focusing their energy on critical issues rather than attacking their former cohorts and folks who are supporting them and other activist artists?”
Andrew Boyd, artist-prankster, founder of Billionaires for Bush and a participant in the Moscow Biennale states that he “admires Voina’s work,” and has “read their recent communiques, but for the record, I’m here in Moscow at the Media Impact show that they’re railing against and, while it is a bit odd and disorganized, I’m meeting many fellow artist-activists, and haven’t seen a single oligarch or evil curator. So, if there’s a picket line, it seems I’m crossing it, and the more I learn, the more I’m OK with that”.
The Media Impact International Festival runs though October 10. For more information, please see the official website of the 4th Moscow International Biennial of Contemporary Art: http://4th.moscowbiennale.ru/en/program/special_projects/impact.html