Culture Politics: A time of mutation
Maxim Zhbankov

Summary

In culture, "dialogue" initiatives dating from the brief Belarusian "thaw" were brought to their logical conclusion in 2010. Active attempts to merge "legal" and independent cultural spheres as partners led to the appearance of overtly compromised and stylistically-vague products. These were incapable of arousing mass interest or "resetting" the Belarusian culture industry. Right from the outset, the "partners" were on an unequal footing, and had completely different agendas. Pro-governmental culture was commandeering and assimilating marginal trends for use as an extra resource to confirm its own viability. The independents invited to join in the "dialogue" were merely hoping to rehabilitate and legalize themselves as equal participants in a cultural process.

Such utterly incompatible intentions failed to give any significant results due to the prevailing administrative-command cultural policy. The presidential elections and related campaign mayhem simply confirmed Belarusian culture’s status as a hostage of ideological maneuvering. All of its internal discords and conflicts were demonstrated convincingly. One consequence of the pre- and post-electoral media pressure and militia crackdown was an increased trend for “concealed” self-expression, a means of creative survival in the aggressive environment.

Trends:

• Attempts to "liberally" resolve political and aesthetic clashes between various sectors of the official and unofficial culture industries have only revealed the futility of this unequal "partnership".
• Ideological confrontation was rapidly reinstated during the stormy election campaign and post-electoral repression.
• New "cultural partisan" strategies appeared in the form of experiments aimed at integrating the repressive cultural context virally.

1. The "thaw" game: experiments in friendship and unity

One of the year’s main trends was the loss of hope for a "new cultural unity". Cultural practices that emerged over the last year-and-a-half’s "liberalization" period may be described as the cautious convergence of official culture and marginalized intellectuals. The participants of this process were unequal from the beginning, which made any evenly-balanced dialogue or effective coordination impossible. Each side had its own agenda: pro-state culture upgraded itself by adapting and appropriating informal ideas, while "alternative" culture strove to rehabilitate and legalize itself. Logically, such a wide range of objectives led to numerous self-contradictory cultural products.

This tendency was at its most intense at the state cinema studio Belarusfilm. Over the past few years, its management has been desperately endeavoring to renew its creative resources. That mostly translated into inviting several "informal" directors to make full-length features, particularly Andrey Kudinenko, whose 2003 film Okkupatsiya. Misterii ("Mysterium Occupation") was previously banned from being screened. This "new wave" of directors included some big screen debuts: the experienced actor and director Alexandr Kolbyshev (like Kudinenko, a former director of Russian TV serials), and young Alexandr Kananovich, who made a splash in 2005 with his short Koler Kakhannia ("The Colour Of Love").

As a result, three films were released that were rather unusual for recent Belarusian cinema. Alexandr Kolbyshev made a standard post-Soviet festival film – the anti-Stalinist psychodrama Volki ("Wolves"), which was about 20 years late in terms of its message and style. Alexandr Kananovich approached the issue more radically: his Dastisch Fantastisch is a hybrid of Russian "youth" movies, Belarusfilm’s typical bucolic comedies, and absurdist adventure films with elements of fantasy.

The most interesting of the three was Kudinenko’s Masakra ("Massacre"). After Mysterium Occupation, where he had already tried to plumb the depths of Belarusian mentality, this ambitious director pursued the theme in a newly-invented genre – "potato-horror" [Note – Belarus is often identified with potatoes]. It was an attempt to reboot the usual model of "national cinema", which mostly implies ideological correctness and loyalty to the regime. Consequently, local color lost out to horror trademarks, and the incomprehensible plot ("censored" by numerous adjustments and approvals) distorted the overall message; the desire for genre-trickery seriously reduced dialogues "about our country and us". Given the modest budget, a simultaneous desire for commercial success (important for the studio), and conceptual expression (important for the director), meant Russian TV serial stars playing the leads, a DIY straw design for the "gothic" estate, and caricatured, comic-like acting. In this context, some of the important dialogues sounded quasi-comical.

Once entering the state cinema system, "brainy" Kolbyshev, "punk" Kananovich and "partisan" Kudinenko came across as being equally mediocre. This is perfectly natural: the failed "new Belarusian wave" had set their sights on the right kind of psychological cinema, or pretentious commercial displays, but ended up being totally incompatible with the inert mass of the state cinema industry.

The music project Ў ("Non-Syllabic U") is an equally significant liberal-synthetic private initiative. Formed in 2010 by the famous musician Roman Orlov (ex-guitarist of J:Mors), it unites Belarusian artists of varying styles and beliefs: from "alternative" Pomidorov to "poppy" Khlestov. Orlov, the project’s ideologist, explains that it aims to promote Belarusian music on the Russian market. Stylistically omnivorous and strictly apolitical, Ў embodies an age of fatigue from the politicized culture and stagnation of Belarusian show-business. However, the band’s debut album was no breakthrough, but more of an impasse: run-of-the-mill pop material with a compromised sound, in which the charismatic guest soloists are nearly lost, and blot each other out.

The wave of bands singing in English (Yellow Brick Road, The Stampletons, The Silicon, Green Pepper) continues to develop, and shows another side to the cultural dialogue: a quest to fuse a fashionable revival rock style with homespun material, to try and overcome the inertia of the local scene. In a conceptual vacuum, however, any synthetic projects inexorably mutate into agents of influence for stronger foreign trends, both Russian and European. Such a "conversion" of local initiatives only leads to "foreign" cultural expansion.

Worthy of note was a conceptual statement – the "Declaration on Cultural Unity" – adopted in Gottingen by Belarusian cultural activists, headed by Vladimir Matskevich. Its preamble states: "Poets, musicians and artists have been ‘tagged’, not according to their talent or cultural achievements, but for their loyalty or disloyalty to the authorities. Due to this, conflicts have been seeded at the linguistic, national and cultural level". Emphasizing previous disagreements between intellectuals in the country, the Declaration’s authors proposed that cultural figures unite in the face of globalization, and put an end to their ideological disputes. This text, a would-be manifesto for resetting national culture, was met with reserved enthusiasm from the "Gottingeners", a feeble discussion in informal intellectual circles, and dead silence from official cultural bodies.

The latter is perfectly understandable: for cultural policy, the state power pyramid is staffed by officials loyal to the regime by default, and thus incapable of independent action or effective management. The authorities are still inclined to regard "non-format" intellectuals as poor partners. At best, they might be treated like an extra resource for their own projects, but never as equal participants in a "constructive dialogue".

2. Back to the barricades: politicization reanimated

Inevitably, the internal "dialogue of cultures" was a fiasco, due to officialdom’s reluctance to make any serious reforms. All the authorities did was send out a series of signals to home and foreign audiences, like calling cards for a softer version of the formerly repressive cultural policy line. State media suddenly “remembered” the disgraced musicians, the banned directors returned to the cinema, there were several exhibitions of non-conformist art, and kiosks started selling the newspaper Nasha Niva again. This did not spread to the heart of cultural communications, however: for the past few years, they have been exceedingly bureaucratized, almost entirely state-controlled, centralized in form and orthodox in content.

The pro-regime Public Morality Council gained wide public notoriety for its stance on appearances by German band Rammstein and Elton John. In both cases, the Council acted as a tool to protect the “very fragile Belarusian consciousness” from injections of such undesirable culture. The aforementioned visitors were publicly branded as promoters of homosexuality, sadism and Nazism, and accused of cynically ridiculing May 9 [Soviet Victory Day] and March 8 [International Women’s Day]. Nevertheless, this failed to get the planned tours cancelled, which gave the situation an appreciable tang of absurdity: the concerts were held “by default” in the absence of any particular reaction from above (either for or against). The system was playing a double game: ideologically-consistent public rhetoric for the regime’s more blinkered electorate, plus a lucrative commercial venture for pragmatic new consumers.

Belarusian culture is still being used as a political resource, which became obvious during the last presidential elections. Not only did the authorities show that their traditional cultural resources had dried up entirely (they were unable to come up with anything other than nationwide tours of their pet pop artists), but also that they were prepared to "import creativity" actively from other sources. On the eve of the elections, ONT television launched Kukhnya ("The Kitchen"), a quasi-political version of the Russian talk-show ProjectorPerisHilton. Humorists of varying generations, joined by singer and presenter Georgy Koldun, actively made a mockery of the situation, turning the elections into an excuse for empty jokes, sketches and gags. However, one candidate was missing from this jester’s show and all its criticism – the Chief.

A key event in the pre-election campaign was when the radical duet RockerJoker appeared on The Kitchen, playing their song Sanya, written well before the elections [Note – Sanya is short for Alexandr, implying Lukashenko]. That was preceded by imposed regular airplay on the main FM stations for this "non-format" acoustic track, now renamed to Sanya ostanetsya s nami ("Sanya Will Stay With Us"). After the band’s TV debut, a music video was made for this "necessary" song, once again by ONT. The peak of the Sanya boom came during the finale of the Belarus Is Us! campaign, when the once independent track was performed by fully legitimate pop stars – Uncle Vanya and the leader of the group Tyani-Tolkay ("Pushmi-Pullyu"). They were singing directly to Lukashenko, who was among the audience. According to both members of RockerJoker, the politics didn’t matter to them: the main thing was to do a project that would sell well. But the political potential of Sanya was the main thing for those who rapidly bought the hit track from its writers, and used it to work with an audience new to the state propaganda machine.

Politicised aesthetics were reanimated in unofficial culture as well. The infantile art-pop band Detidetey ("Kidsofkids") were noticeably more adult on their farewell disc Ruch ("Movement"): they started to sing in Belarusian, and adopted an uncharacteristically edifying, didactic/sloganistic style. It seemed like an obvious anachronism in the heat of the "liberalization", but can now be read as an attempt to demonstrate the inherently conflicting nature of Belarusian culture. Lavon Volski, the top Belarusian artist of the past two decades, went back to social satire: on the eve of the elections, he released Belaja Jablynia Hromu ("White Apple-Tree Of Thunder") – a "non?party" album with lyrics by Belarusian classic writers – and began hosting his Sauka dy Hryska ("Sauka and Hryshka") spot on Radio Liberty, with poetic comments on current affairs. Following the arrests of demonstrators on December 19, Sergey Mikhalok, leader of the "cosmic outsiders’ circus" Lyapis Trubetskoy, made a series of pointed statements, and signed an appeal to the authorities (together with prominent Russian musicians) to request the release of the illegally-detained protestors.

Lyrical performer Zmicier Vajciuskevic was actively involved in Vladimir Neklyaev’s election campaign, and then played in Warsaw at a televised concert in solidarity with Belarus, together with the group Recha ("Echo"). After the "Belarusian resistance", the countercultural Free Theatre morphed into a flying theatre, and organized several large solidarity events involving famous film, theatre and rock stars in Europe and America. The most noteworthy exhibition of Belarusian art abroad (Opening The Door? Belarusian Art Today, in Vilnius, Lithuania) had a political flavor too: televisions showing Lukashenko, transparent ballot-boxes stuffed with rubbish, and graffiti reading "No News From Belarus" which disappeared before one’s eyes. They turned the exhibition into a collection of the traumas and phobias of "Soviet Wildlife Park" mutants. If seen from this angle, the country transforms into an art project conceived by the Commander-in-Chief, and political dependence mutates into aesthetic dependence.

3. A secret message: artists in the field of "police aesthetics"

The decline of the traditional official cultural code, though it is still formally dominant, has finally led to the formation of a niche for different culture. Most relevant phenomena of recent years have created their own kind of aesthetics outside the official culture industry. Unlike protest culture of the past, this could be described as a secret message: artists attempting to make themselves heard over the noise of the mainstream. The repressive context makes this pragmatic presence a replacement for depressive introversion or head-on revolutionary confrontation. Thus, artistic "choreography" can be an antidote to pressure from the thought police. It allows one to live between the lines, move within the loopholes of state discourse, and engage in low-profile partisan tactics in the shadow of Big Brother.

In Dastisch Fantastisch, director Kananovich showed us his multi-faceted thinking, combining the style of early Gaidai with the everyday absurdities of Belarusian reality. This commissioned "youth film" mutated into a cross-genre patchwork, described spontaneously by the director as "cine-hysteria". On the one hand, he was clearly not up to dealing with a full-length cinema debut but, on the other hand, the film is a fairly accurate depiction of the connotative, stylistic dead-end that "endorsed" culture has wound up in. Labeling it "cine-hysteria" is a way to escape responsibility and hide behind the mask of the director being mildly insane.

The musical pop-collages of the band Kassiopeya ("Cassiopeia") are another characteristic example. On their first official album, Stiven King i my ("Stephen King and Us"), old children’s counting rhymes, cautionary street tales, and disco-bopping fit together into an original mosaic. The tongue-twisting lyrics are intentionally devoid of any “exalted” meaning, yet reminiscent of the French surrealists and Russian OBERIU. The music is deceptively simple and demonstratively easy on the ear. With catchy choruses, unexpected rhythmical shifts, and complex vocal harmonies, three-minute tracks build up like multi-layered collage constructions clearly not intended for background listening. Their seeming air of infantility merely conceals the ingenuity of the song-writers.

Similar methods are used by one of the most impressive projects of recent years – the cabaret band Serebryanaya Svadba ("Silver Wedding"). Their 2010 release, Serdechnaya muskulatura ("Heart Musculature"), is open and ciphered simultaneously. Songs in the style of early Zhanna Aguzarova, mixed with lively marching refrains, saying hello to a sparrow, and a nasty chanson about a little pale-blue dress from the nearby dump. The booklet lists lyrics to songs that are not on the album, while the actual song lyrics are illegible scribbles crawling over one other on the cardboard CD cover. There is no demand for the usual "convenient" product format here. This is a deliberately inconvenient project: it baffles rather than entertains, even though it uses simple, commonplace forms.

Another example of a secret message is the creation of cultural apocrypha: Corny Busiel ("Black Stork"), a project by alternative musicians Sergey Pukst and Anton Kryvulya, is the score to an imaginary Belarusian film of the 1950s. Gothic instrumental pieces with an unexpected ethno-aftertaste and strange vocals (the unused soundtrack to Kudinenko’s Massacre) are presented as music of lost Belarusian cinema. And basically, they are. Pukst and Kryvulya are dreaming about everything at once: different Belarusian cinema, their alter egos being respected "legal" composers, and another Belarus where it would all be possible. Fake projects operate in a virtual cultural environment, imitating communication with the "high" culture of the authorities, even though there is no such thing.

More and more local cultural products are hiding behind imported masks. Both Kassiopeya and Serebryanaya Svadba released their albums on Russian labels. The trendy glossy publication Bolshoy successfully pretends to be like one of its Eastern neighbor’s "urban magazines". The most outstanding new book of the year, Zhizn bez shuma i boli ("A Noiseless, Painless Life") – an anthology of short texts by Minsk journalist and writer Tatyana Zamirovskaya – was also published in Russia. Zamirovskaya’s surreal stories are a mixture of naive cautionary tales, a teenage bookworm’s nightmares, and psychedelic rock lyrics. The writing is very Belarusian – texts from a country of blurred traditions and vague cultural reference points – but the book is from Moscow, where the best part of the print run is destined to be sold.

Long-awaited by many, Valentin Akudovich’s book Arkhipelag Belarus ("The Belarus Archipelago") turned out in fact to be a montage of his interviews from over the years. As a result, the strongest component of Akudovich’s writing – the paradoxical logic of thoughts that develop during conversations – was lost, since there are no conversations left in the book. The author (and editor) has disassembled texts from various dates, on a wide range of subjects, with different interviewers, and sorted them out into aphorisms and maxims. He then compiled them into new texts, to suit his own taste. Arkhipelag was a solo effort from beyond time and space, merely capable of confirming the fact that the author exists.

Conclusion

Attempts were made throughout 2010 to "unite" various cultural streams, even though the latter were asymmetrical and subject to the culture industry’s administrative-command system. These attempts proved to be ineffective, however. Even during the "liberalization" period, "non-format" Belarusian culture never ceased to be a creative ghetto; a detached archipelago that lacks contacts with the state cultural edifice.

In our climate of heightened political reactions, one observes an appropriate popularization of cultural activities. The idea of a divided culture has been reborn both locally and globally – a culture that is ideologically incompatible, stylistically-conflicting, and dissociated in its creative ideals and political leanings. This means that the future is likely to bring more contradictions within the many-sided Belarusian cultural environment, plus new repressive, prohibitive practices. The state culture industry’s final transformation into a "superficial and empty" project is preventing it from replenishing its resources and improving its quality. As a result, flamboyant resistance to Western and Russian cultural expansion (in line with the regime’s "independent" final political aims) is logically giving way to official and unofficial communities waging a competitive struggle for foreign funds in order to promote local creativity.