- Bookreview
This is not a book or a journey into the subconscious with Katerina Belkina
The book
My Work Is My Personal Theatre
Katerina Belkina
- von Aleksej Tikhonov
The object at hand measures exactly 33 x 23.5 x 2.5 cm, lovingly wrapped in paper. It’s difficult to imagine freeing the book from its packaging. The carefully thought-out wrapping of the work in a layer of foggy paper alone suggests something great. Once the book is unpackaged and lying on the tabletop, the high-contrast design of the cover immediately attracts one’s full attention, so that only on second glance does it become clear that the photographic image of Katerina Belkina is not monochrome, but in color. The tonal values on the cover have been tuned to a perfect harmony that leaves the viewer wanting more. The pages flutter from right to left like a flip book, resulting in a distinct fragrance. The nose catches the scent of high-quality paper and vegan colors. colors. The smell alone shows that the book is a masterpiece of the art of printing.
It’s called
»My Work Is My Personal Theatre«
© Saskia Bauermeister
Over around 250 pages, numerous works of art are accompanied by texts in German, English and Russian. The exhibits cannot be clearly categorized as photography, sculpture, graphic design or collages. Every single piece in this exhibition in print format defies the technical and conformist boundaries of the performing arts. Almost every page demands full attention. Is it really a train? And the factories on the horizon–are they real? Are they even human beings in the pictures or are they androids using the human form? Initially, many questions appear on their own. The textual building blocks do not provide any answers, but point to something else – “Ce n’est pas une pipe” or, in Belkina’s case, “Ce n’est pas un livre.” In his painting ‘La trahison des images’ (de.: The betrayal of images), René Magritte showed a smoking pipe and pointed to the automation of human perception with the sentence “This is not a pipe.” Because in fact it was not a pipe. It was a canvas with paint on it. However, while one of the most important surrealists of the 20th century made use of the still quite traditional form and technique, the Croatian-French photographer, sculptor and model of Pablo Picasso Dora Maar went one step further and merged the different types of art. In particular, ‘Untitled (hand and mirror)’, ‘Sans Titre (Main-coquillage)’ or ‘The Years Lie in Wait for You’ were products of a creative source that, at least today, make their male contemporaries, colleagues and admirers, such as Magritte and Picasso, look a little old or perhaps even “populist”. But of course this is debatable.
© Works by Dora Maar from the 1920s/1930s
Belkina also poses questions about her own role, mission and significance as an artist, mother and human being in social, historical or perhaps even political contexts. She answers these questions herself in her works. The pictures allow us to take a fresh look at ideas such as holiness and desire, indifference and conflict, gentleness and cold-bloodedness or human closeness and emotional distance. In her collaboration with SHIFT BOOKS Team, Katerina Belkina has succeeded in implementing classical techniques of the performing arts into the range of tools of the 21st century. Moreover, it is not only about the approach and the realization itself, but also about the content. After several attempts (see Dora Maar), the tower of autocratic dominance has been successfully torn down with weapons of patriarchal art. The Gesamtkunstwerk is probably one of the most important building blocks of the political, social and artistic upswing of the 2010s/2020s, which the entire osTraum, but above all Belarus, Estonia and Slovakia, are currently experiencing. This is not explicitly about emancipation, but about the creation of an interpersonal existence and the de-automatization of our perception. To do this, we need to know the past and live the present with an open heart and in a sustainable way, so that the future becomes a joy and not a barren reflection of our worldview. osTraum remains very curious to see what the future holds for Katerina Belkina and what works the artist will enrich the present with.
My Work Is My Personal Theatre
Katerina Belkina
30€
Authors: Katerina Belkina, Ani Menua, Anne Avramut
Languages: German, English, Russian
Hardcover with embossing
Aleksej Tikhonov is a linguist and Slavicist. He defended his doctoral thesis at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in 2020. Since 2020, he has been co-developing transcription algorithms at the University of Freiburg that automatically translate Ukrainian, Russian and Yiddish manuscripts into printed texts. Starting in Berlin in 2019, he has been continuing his habilitation project at the University of Zurich since 2023, which focuses on multilingualism in German rap and post-migrant society in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and how multilingual lyrics form hybrid identities. He has been writing poetry and prose since 2015 and co-founded the osTraum Journal in Berlin in 2016.
This article first appeared on the ostraum.com blog.
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