We publish a video recording of the conversation; below you can read its transcript.
transcript of the interview:
Archi.ru:
Rem Koolhaas announced a new theme and concept for the Venice Biennale. How can you comment on this?
Grigory Revzin:
There was a meeting with Koolhaas on Friday in Venice. You know, it was a very powerful lecture of his, quite fascinating; it is interesting to be there. It so happened that I was at the meetings of the curators five times and, perhaps, this was the brightest. Koolhaas was invited there many times [curator at the Biennale - Archi.ru], but every time he wanted more time. They didn't give him. And now they gave it for the first time. He has an idea to reform the Biennale. He believes that an architectural biennale should be different from an art one, because if it is made according to the same principle, then we just get installations from architects, which is not very interesting. Instead, he wants to focus more on research rather than on the artistic expression of the architect.
He sees architecture as his main theme, not architects. This is something like a biennial without names, without stars. There is, of course, the question of who is interested in this, and whether the Biennale will manage to gather about 150-180 thousand viewers, as they usually do. In particular, therefore, he hopes for students. Active student engagement is part of Koolhaas's vision.
He is reforming the entire Biennale quite strongly. In particular, Arsenal, if everything develops as indicated, can be said to drop out of the Biennale, because the theme of Arsenal is Italy. The idea is that Koolhaas "pulls" Arsenal in one line and Italy in one line, and it turns out that it is possible to arrange all of Italy in one Arsenal. We will enter from the north, somewhere through Milan, further through Trieste, and at the end, where the Chinese pavilion was, there will be the extreme south - Calabria, Bari, and so on. We will go through the Arsenal - we will go through Italy. It is difficult to say how it will look and it is clear that this is a slightly uncharacteristic topic for the Biennale.
The main pavilion, formerly Italian, will house an exhibition of Koolhaas himself called Elements. This is a dictionary of what architecture consists of - walls, ceilings, floors, roofs, doors, windows, passages - in general, an architectural vocabulary [dictionary - Archi.ru] in all its possible dimensions and interpretations.
He invites all the national pavilions to make one theme - the absorption of modernity. About how modernity came into the world. The topic is limited chronologically: from 1914 to 2014, i.e. until today. He showed a presentation: the world of 1914, where Moscow, Shanghai, Paris, London are very different from each other, completely different views. When we look at these cities today (he showed mainly business centers), it seems that this is one continuous City, everything is the same. The question is how this modernity has taken over the whole world.
Each pavilion is invited to tell its own story on this topic.
This is a design. Of course, he is not one hundred percent tough. Those pavilions that do not want to do this, do not. However, he suggested it. Representatives of 41 countries were in Venice, and there was no objection. On the contrary, representatives of different pavilions. You have to understand that before the Biennale is a little less than two years old, so somewhere there were commissioners, somewhere commissioners and potential curators, like ours, somewhere representatives of embassies, like in Ukraine - in general, they all accepted it. You can, of course, not accept, but you will look strange, like a black sheep. Thus, the Biennale, at least in the Giardini section “in the gardens,” turns into a history of 20th century architecture, unfolded into 40 pavilions, where we see different dimensions, stages, and influences. For example, Germany, when the Bauhaus spread to the whole world, then Japan and its metabolism, America - somehow these waves intersect with each other.
I am afraid that the catalog will be the most interesting in this biennale, not the pavilions themselves. For professionals, of course, it is very interesting to watch these exhibitions, but simply for the public it is not a fact. Although on the other hand, Koolhaas will receive the Biennale - the result of the 20th century. This is significant, it will somehow remain in history. Here you can understand it. This is what concerns the Biennale in general.
Archi.ru:
What did you suggest as the commissioner of the Russian pavilion?
Grigory Revzin:
Proposed this is strongly said, before the Biennale, I repeat, two years. But proceeding from the circumstances: there is Koolhaas as the chief curator and there is a request to focus on students, I decided to offer Strelka to exhibit in the Russian pavilion in 2014. You have to understand that when Strelka was being created, Koolhaas created Strelka, he did a lot of different research there and continues them. This connection between the national pavilion and the curator is quite useful for promoting the country and very productive. Based on these considerations, it seems to me that Strelka can do it successfully.
What exactly will it be? The commissioner's function is to select, and program proposals are the curator's function. Strelka has not yet identified a curator. We went to Venice with Varvara Melnikova, the director of Strelka. I'm not sure that she will be the curator, at least she did not say that she was going to be one. This is a question that will be resolved within Strelka.
The structure is more important to me here, because, I repeat, we are talking about students. It is clear that research should be launched at Strelka, somehow it is necessary to understand the material: what is modernism for Russia, what is modernity, what is modernity for Russia? And how it happened in the XX century. On the one hand, there are various attempts to instill in Russia a modern style in architecture - at the beginning of the 20th century we started it, adopted it in the 1960s, and adopted it again in the 1990s and created some models.
There is another, big, theme of Russia's modernization. I would say that no one has yet looked at architecture from this point of view, from the standpoint of modernization, at the Russian XX century. Everyone looked at how the avant-garde is being established in our country, this is an interesting and well-known story that was included in all textbooks. A completely different topic is attempts to make a modern state out of Russia. This is a topic that, I would say, is more relevant today than history and historiography. From this point of view, no one looked at Russia. It would be interesting to connect these two topics. Strelka has some reasons for this. Participated in the competition for the concept of Greater Moscow. And there, just, on the one hand, was Rem Koolhaas, and on the other hand - Alexander Alexandrovich Auzan, head of institutional economists, dean of the Faculty of Economics of Moscow State University, who turned this topic in this way. I think there is something to think about here.
Another question is how to represent all this? It is clear that if all the pavilions turn into catalogs of the history of architecture, then this is boring, although, of course, it is up to Strelka to decide. But since there is still a lot of time, there is still an opportunity to think about how it can be presented in such a way that it would be spectacular, interesting, understandable and enticing.
interviewed by Yulia Tarabarina, transcript by Alla Pavlikova
