I
Genealogy of Contemporary Art's Statism

The lack of cultural and art institutions was an urgent matter of debate and concern in Russian artistic circles throughout the 1990s and the beginning of the 2000s. But it wasn't until 2005 - in connection with the First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art - that a sudden shift took place.¹ State institutions, such as the Ministry of Culture and Rosiso (State Centre of Exhibiting Programmes), left behind their traditional indifference to contemporary art and decided to make the biennial the emblem of 'New Russian' progressive cultural politics. This coincided with the emergence of new galleries like Stella Art Foundation and Triumph Gallery in Moscow, whose founders emerged from the new upper classes.²

From the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, the relationship between progressive intellectual and art initiatives, on the one hand, and business and state, on the other, was effectively non-existent. Various artistic events and educational and publishing endeavours were self-organised, and either lacked any external funding or received occasional support from foreign foundations (the Soros Foundation, the Ford Foundation and the MacArthur Foundation). Perhaps because of this, artistic and intellectual spheres of production operated with relative independence, and, although lacking organisational capacity, were motivated by optimism and enthusiasm: these Moscow and St Petersburg self-organised groups included Logos publishers (founded in 1991) and Ad Marginem publishers (founded in 1993), specialising in philosophy and cultural theory; Visual Anthropology, a two-year laboratory of philosophers and artists launched by Viktor Misiano at the Philosophy Institute; TV gallery; Moscow Art Magazine (founded in 1993); groups founded by Anatoly Osmolovsky, such as the Radek art journal (1994-99), Radek