Bad video art interview
Bad Video Art is an annual festival that takes place in various locations in Moscow, Russia. Recently, I spoke with its curators Natalia Monakhova and Andrey Schlachilin about what makes video art, bad.
The fifth edition of the festival will take place in September 2021 at the artist-run space Bomba at the CCI Fabrika. Their open call is open until 14th February 2021.
How did you get started with the Bad Video Art Festival?
Natalia: We are both artists, I work mainly with video, Andrey works with both painting and video. When we started the Bad Video Art festival in 2017, we were watching a lot of trashy B rated movies. Around the same time, we met Aleksandr Pavlov, who teaches at HSE University and in his free time he researches Russian cinema – he writes about trash, camp and cult films. Meeting him, was a catalyst for our interest in these genres.
I started thinking, can ‘badness’ be applied to video art?
Andrey had the idea of starting the festival as a video salon.
Andrey: In 90s Russia there was a culture of video salons, which showed films that were not screened in cinemas. Often the salons took place in basements, or near stations in small rooms. There were just a few chairs, a small TV and, for 1 rouble 50, you could come watch the Terminator. With the development of technology, video salons disappeared at the end of the 90s. We decided to revive the format.
Natalia: Well not exactly revive, just re-interpret it. Russia never had an Arthouse cinema culture, we had video salons. Our project combines the video and cinema cultures. Andrey designs (bad) movie posters for some of the selected works, we serve popcorn and candy floss.
Are you fully offline or do you also have online screenings?
Natalia: The festival itself is offline, but sometimes we collaborate with other projects, such as Visual Container TV. However, it’s very difficult, as we have to select which works will be screened – our full programme is usually too long. Some edits have also travelled to Nizhny Tagil, Vyshny Volochyok and Riga. We don’t want to lose the offline form.
How do you judge how bad a video work is?
Andrey: Of course, first of all, it’s based on our personal taste.
Natalia: When we first started the festival, we were curious to see what people would submit. Aesthetically we were looking for references to B movies, but also the general aesthetic of bad art, as presented at the Bad Art Museum. The submissions to the first festival had a big influence on what we consider to be bad video art. Part of the submission form is to explain why you consider your video ‘bad’ and the submissions made us understand ‘badness’ better.
When I was I reading about your project, I started thinking how could I make a video that would definitely be bad — What if it ends up being good?
Andrey: By creating this kind of festival, we put a question to our visitors:
Is what we are showing you bad or are we trying to fool you? Why would show something bad, if it is actually bad?
We still don’t have an answer to these questions. At every opening, we usually invite our friend, the artist Oleg Ivanov to do a performance. He always argues with us and says that we are scamming people by showing good video art.
So you are showing good bad video art?
Andrey: Overall, you can’t really judge contemporary art with these terms. But then art, as any product, can be well or badly made. Even the same artist has good and not so good works. We all make mistakes. But some artists also don’t do good works on purpose. Their decision is to make them worse. We want to support them. The festival itself is not interested in sustaining any hierarchies – we might show a (bad) work of an arts professor along with a work by a student that got critiqued in art school.
What kind of feedback do you get from your visitors?
Andrey: Most people enjoy it, maybe it’s just because it’s really unusual. We have our regular visitors, who come back every year, but we also have visitors who come in randomly. In Russia, contemporary art still generates a lot of rejection or fear; regular visitors come into the gallery with the feeling that they will, once again, be fooled. But we tell them straight away that we are showing bad works. And the visitors already start saying: ‘what do you mean, it’s bad?’ They are trying to come around the contradiction – if its being shown in a gallery, it means that it’s not bad? So they tell us: ‘you know, this work is really good, I liked it. This one, on the contrary, is a bit boring.’
What are your strongest memories of the previous editions?
Andrey: I have one very good one. Oleg Ivanov was performing at our third festival at the Zverev Center in 2019. The performance felt like a truly unique event that could never be repeated. It was as if I completely forgot that me and Natasha organised the whole thing and was observing the behaviour of the performers, who were performing Oleg's concept. The original idea was to do a performance that would gradually turn into a happening as a testament to John Cage. The performers almost didn’t have any restrictions except one: they were supposed to be guided by the lights being switched on and off and alternate movement with immobility. This simple concept quickly went out of control. Some performers continued to follow the score, but others unleashed themselves. Their actions were inspired by the Viennese Actionism, feminism and politics – as it was an independent gallery, people could be free. They were shouting political slogans, exhibition walls were destroyed, everything was covered in paint. Oleg was supposed to be a conductor, but his whole plan failed. He told me at the end of the performance: ‘Andrey, this was a very Russian Cage.’
Natalia: Mine is also connected to Oleg, the performance he did at the first festival at Gallery A3. We didn’t know what he was going to perform, except that he was planning to offer us some criticism. He sprayed the room in fake blood and spoke with such agitation that I realised that I was very scared. (laughs)
You have been running the festival for over four years. Do you feel like it has influenced your own artistic practices?
Natalia: For me, definitely. On the first festival, we had the ‘Really Bad’ section, composed of works that wildly mix incompatible imagery. Even though this type of juxtaposition was already present in my work, I now work in an even more fragmented way.
Andrey: On my side, my work has not changed. Maybe I started feeling more free in the way I work with my camera. Recently we were included in the second Russian Triennial and the curator, Valentin Diaconov, was trying to connect my work with trash aesthetics.
Natalia: He usually calls us trash-makers. But in the context of the Triennial, he told us that the works are a bit too good. (laughs)
Andrey: Which is funny, because my works are usually composed of clean high-res shots.
So you make bad bad video art?
Andrey: Yes, you can say it this way (laughs). What I can surely say is that now it is much easier for me to enjoy watching any type of content. I don’t find anything boring anymore.
Natalia: We are much more resilient.
Words: Polina Chizhova