Alexandr Roitburd    
1995

A ten-year experience of legal functioning of the modern art in Ukraine is a unique experience of failures. We haven’t had and we still don’t have any conditions for the normal functioning in our motherland and for the civilized integration into the world cultural process. Ukraine remains a remote art province, a wild steppe of the European culture. The split artistic community, domineering of non-topical problems, a lack of organization of art life, and absence of the modern art infrastructure – these are the realties of today. Independence of Ukraine has not led it to the factual appearance on the cultural map of Europe. We do not participate in the most important world cultural forums; we stay in the information blockade and none of the artists living in Ukraine has gained a real world fame, and nobody has got real and stable prices at the world market (we are afraid, it is not quite appropriate to explain what the Ukrainian art market is like     in the presence of the respected ladies and gentlemen). We don’t have all that and in terms of the logic of the modern art process we won’t have all that either. Only the art supported by the money of its country, recognized within this country and lobbied by it, is capable of entering the international level.  They say there is no money for culture in Ukraine. Really, allocations into this sphere have reduced but the traditional Soviet system of the imitation of culture is still there – from a country club to the state kitsch.
We create art which is able to properly present our state. But those who we intended to present either don’t know about our existence or consider us impostors. Ukrainian culture has other priorities. It actively elaborates a new state ideology (sadomasochistic habit of living in the ideology-driven society turned here into a physiological need).As to the new normative aesthetics, the process of its recognition and stiffness is going on in high tempos.
The appeared during Perestroika fashion for artists-nonconformists and independent intellectuals melted into thin air. Old artistic nomenclature embraced the yesterday’s ideological and aesthetical opponents from the national-modernist side, appropriated its ideology and made it serve the nomenclature’s structures. The demand for the optimistic, positive and intelligible art was brought back to life.
Everything came back. “Us” and “them” got back, too. Them – cultural establishment and us – the underground, marginal and homeless of the modern culture.
In their hands - censorship and association with power, titles and rewards.  In the eyes of our incompetent in cultural issues state we are dangerous because of our unpredictability and they are as safe as harem eunuchs. We have our own problems which are not understood by the state and our own crises which are not controlled by the Cabinet of Ministers. Why would the state deal with our problems when it has its own problems it can’t cope with. “They” are not liable to our crises. They appear in public in the glory of legitimate treasurers of the real folk roots, the carriers of spiritual values and space energy. It is much more understandable then our torments of dumbness, tragic energy and brutality, ready-mades and simulacra. We break our foreheads trying to break the stereotypes and give new dynamics to genesis. They feel easier in the new stagnation regime. They raise the inertia of their thinking to the rank of a national tradition and push it as it stands under the protection of the state ideological violence machine revived by them.
What is there for us to do? Do we put up with our role or shall we fight with them? We have already outgrown the short pants of underground. Let us either be the elite of our state and let the state admit it or if there is no place for us in this art and in this state we shall look for alternative ways of salvation. It doesn’t make any sense to fight with them for their territory. We’d rather live in the fresh air than acquire a housing space in the cemetery. We can’t defeat their system – it will make a muck of any winner in its own image and likeness.
The only rational way out is to build up our own territory. Modern art needs a modern infrastructure. But it can’t be created by means of cold enthusiasm of artists and activists. A lot of money is needed. It’s very unlikely we will be able to make it ourselves – our art is non-commercial in point of fact. Our new bourgeoisie is unlikely to give it to us – our art is non-bourgeois in point of fact. Charitable funds are unlikely to meet our needs either – there are few of them here, their resources are limited and the modern art of Ukraine is at the periphery of their interests. Soros foundation and its Social Studies Center is a good exception. Objectively, it is exactly the state which is the only force interested in our existence. We are able to create a more attractive image for it in the eyes of the world community. We are able to more efficiently solve the issues of establishing a new spiritual climate in culture and in the society; the climate which is required at the stage of formation and reforms. We are able to help the society get rid of the stereotypes and become more open and dynamic. We are able to efficiently implement into creation of modern culture meeting a European state level and give to Ukraine the topical modern art oriented at the world art problems. The art which already today may become a promoter of the process of Ukrainian integration into European culture and tomorrow it will become a foothold for our grand- and grand grandchildren. It will also become the topic for reflection rather than the reason for complexes of cultural inferiority.
We and the state are interested in each other. It’s high time to legalize our relationships. The course of the state cultural policy is to be corrected. We have to prove the necessity of such correction to the state. We have to persuade the state to shift accents to the support of independent initiatives. We have to undertake functions which can not be carried out by the state and market structures. The first – because the red tape apparatus is inclined towards over control which freezes any initiative and doesn’t favor the realization of innovative programs. The latter – because they are directly oriented at profit while serious cultural projects can not bring direct, moreover immediate return.
We can propose to the state as a transition model a two-party system of culture in Ukraine. We will not intrude into officious structures. We will leave present museums, Ukrainian houses and exhibition halls, academies and magazines, titles, rewards and orders to those who got used to them. Let us persuade the state to re-orient at least a small part of expenses aimed at the support of physiological processes in a lifeless body of the officious to establishing alternative structures for alternative art. Let it help us get and acclimate abandoned buildings, factory floors and bomb shelters without marble and bronze, crystal chandeliers and escalators. Let it pay allowance to our compact apparatus and take technical care of its efficient functioning. Let it establish for out activity the regime of preferential tax treatment. Our proposals are quite realistic even under the conditions of the acute budget deficit. Possibly, for that purpose something will have to be re-profiled, somebody will have to be challenged, and several dozens of impotents will have to take long ago deserved rest. Somebody might consider it non-humane. But is it human when people who have nothing to do with culture, privatized and now sell off the fragments of its Brezhnev’s “grandeur’ while the world level artists who could be a source of pride for any European culture have no opportunity to realize their own potential?
It is mainly our fault that the state so far hasn’t been aware of our needs or our abilities. Our projects have always stayed within the frames of our circle same as our in-circle polemics – in the course of it we have upset one another much more than our general enemy. By the way, we occasionally remembered about the existence of the state and got surprised – how come it has not yet presented to us something like Pompidu Center – we have been so convincing trying to prove to one another the relevancy of such structures in Ukraine. We just couldn’t find enough time to get to a certain level of contact with the state. We were bound up in our in-circle shootouts and lined up according to regional, ethnic, in-crowd, psychopathological and other God knows what non-artistic features. We haven’t realized ourselves as a new cultural civilization of Ukraine and yet we are surprised that this state looks at “them” as votaries and at “us” as seminarists who have not completed their study. Unless we formulate our own criteria system alternative to the officious, build up our own hierarchy and open our own “status factory”, we will stay at the place indicated by “them”.  
Today the state counts on the type of culture which has become organizationally, structurally, morally and ideologically out of date. Thus the state makes its not very attractive image even worse. Let us explain to the state that it is a crime to spend money on its own anti-advertising. Let us persuade the state to refuse the exclusive support of culture which is turned back to the past and looks for its identity there. Ukrainian history is not a safe ground for the simplified ideological constructions in accordance with “The Short Course of History of CPSU”. Contradictions ignored in the process of idealization of history may work as a delayed-action mine. Let us convince the state that it’s better to make efforts to achieve the spiritual unity of the society in future rather than create illusions of finding it in the past and thus take a risk of splitting the society today. Let us convince the state not to mix history with the present. As we know, the monuments to Karl I and Cromwell under the walls of the British Parliament are good neighbors whereas the artistic problems of the creative work of Gilbert and George, for instance, lie in a totally different plane. Everyone is entitled to love its own history and folklore but as to the level of folklorization of culture, we have already achieved the level of the third world countries. And Europe in spite of its generally positive attitude has quite a definite opinion about the level of art in those countries. Let us convince our state that cultural problems in the modern world are as universal as high etiquette and science technology. Let us explain to it that it is as shameful not to have a specialized structure of modern art as not to have a stadium meeting FIFA standards. That the game rules in the system of modern art are as universal as those in footfall and the national features in the play of teams are only latent. Let us explain that non-participation in the Venice Biennale or in the Cassel’s “Documenta” is as shameful for the European state as non-participation in the Olympic Games.  Let us explain to the state that to carry there the stuff it supports today is as crazy as take to the Olympics a team of cops and robbers players.
Let us begin a dialogue. Without our participation, nobody will solve the problems of our socialization in our favor.