Petition: To the organizers and curator of the IVth Moscow International Biennale for Young Art

To The Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation
The Department of Culture of the City of Moscow
National Centre for Contemporary Arts
Moscow Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Moscow
Curator D.Elliott 

Preparations are underway for the IVth Moscow International Biennale for Young Art, the opening of which is scheduled for June 26th, 2014.

The curator of the biennale, David Elliott has chosen the theme of the project based on Martin Luther King’s famous speech, “I Have a Dream.” In the open call for project, the curator claims that today’s world is as precarious, with “many similar examples of inequity and oppression that are still not fully resolved,” “while the compromises of life and politics seem frustratingly weak.” Therefore, Mr. Elliott encourages the young participants in the Biennale to “make things better,” as well as be active, courageous, critical and idealistic enough so that their art reveals “unexpected truths.”

The curator is right, artists, curators and those who are interested in the organization of the Biennale do have dreams!

And one of these dreams is that our work must be paid!

Even Martin Luther King would agree with us.

King’s his famous speech, “I have a Dream,” was delivered on August 28th, 1963 with the occasion of the March for Jobs and Freedom on Washington. Protesters then demanded an end to discrimination and segregation, equal civil and labor rights, and that measures be taken against unemployment.

Also, when Martin Luther King was assassinated in Memphis on April 4th, 1968, he had come to support African-American sanitation workers, who also demanded better working conditions, higher wages and union recognition.

Artists, curators and art workers in general involved in the production of large-scale cultural events in Russian contemporary art, live in precarious economic and social conditions. This particularly affects young artists and curators who do not have the support of galleries, private foundations and other cultural institutions which Biennale counted on. But what kind conditions does the Biennale create for these young professionals, so that they have the ability to dream, if the organizers do not consider the time and labor of its participants worthy of recognition and compensation? Or perhaps, Mr. Elliott is also not receiving any remuneration for his curatorship?

Social and economic inequalities within cultural institutions are only part of larger inequalities in Russian society – this is what the Moscow International Biennale for Young Artists demonstrates for the forth time in a row.

Young, novice participants are seemingly given the possibility to produce a project in an institutional art space in Moscow, but in practice, the reality is that they usually receive a meager production budget, they have to be day and night at the installation, they lack necessary materials and technical equipments, they encounter problems with finding accommodation and staying in Moscow, and difficulties in communicating with the organizers. They are expected to produce their work, install and transport it from their own funds.

This also increases the workload of the supporting staff in Moscow’s cultural institutions, most of whom are working on a small salary. All the while, their working day, seldom limited to only eight hours, means working well into the night and unpaid overtime.

This is what we call exploitation of labor. And we dream that this state of things will not continue any longer.

We encourage all concerned artists, curators, art workers to sign this petition! We are confident that this year, it will make a difference.

Evgeniya Abramova, art worker

Sergey Guskov, journalist, observer at Vedomosti newspaper, art editor at colta.ru

source: artleaks