Oleg Kulik

Dog House

Fargfabriken, Stockholm, 2 March 1996

It was suggested that Kulik produce his Doghouse project within Interpol, an exhibition devoted to the problem of communication. The artist was invited as a sort of a ready-made to stay in a purpose-built house. The audience was warned that any communication with the artist who denounced the language of culture is dangerous and that no one should cross the borders of his territory. Following the logic of this action Kulik bit a certain Mr. Lindquist, who had ignored the warning. Kulik was arrested by the Swedish police. This performance and the exhibition as a whole aroused a scandalous response from the media. Interpol was called “an event that divided the art world into East and West”. Kulik published an explanation of his action in response to demands made by the Manifesta I curators.

Here is an excerpt of that letter, written on 15 March 1996:

Why Have I Bitten a Man?

An open letter of Oleg Kulik

/…/

I am distressed that an absolute clearness of my performance Dog House (within the borders of Interpol) hasn't saved it from being wrongly interpreted. Why did I stand on all fours? Why did I become a dog?

My standing on hands and knees is a conscious falling outside the human horizon, connected with a feeling of the end of anthropocentrism, with a crisis of not just contemporary art but contemporary culture on the whole. I feel its over-saturation of semiosis as my own tragedy, it’s excessively refined cultural language that results in misunderstanding, estrangement, and people’s mutual irritation.

I thought that in Russia one could feel these processes as nowhere else. I thought that we were Different, and the cause was inside us, in eternal ambitions of cultural superpower status in a situation of insolvent actual cultural events. In Moscow I became a dog, I growled there and demonstrated a dog’s devotion to an artist’s ambitions. I was not going to export an artist’s experience without a language outside the Muscovite context. But while getting to know the Western context I found out that my program is applicable there as well.

Art as an addition to a supermarket seems an impasse to me.

For me, “human” stopped being associated with the notions “alive”, “feeling” and “understanding” and started to be associated with the notions “artificial” and “dangerous”. I began to look for some basis outside the human. But over-human for me represents our bestial nature, which doesn’t need any explanation from the outside.

/…/

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Oleg Kulik was born in Kiev, Ukraine in 1961. He graduated from the Kiev Art School in 1979 and the Kiev Geological Survey College in 1982. Between 1990 and 1993 he served as the Art Director of the Regina Gallery in Moscow. He received the Berlin Senate grant (1995/1996) and the order of Officier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres, France. He lives and works in Moscow. He has exhibited widely, among others at: Art Riot: Post-Soviet Actionism. Saatchi Gallery, London, 2016; Frames, Regina Gallery, Moscow, 2013; Deep into Russia, Regina Gallery, London, 2012; Deep into Russia, Galleria Pack, Milan, 2010; New Sermon. Photos and Videos of Performances 1993–2003, Rabouan Moussion Gallery, Paris, 2008; OLEGKULIK. Chronicle. 1987–2007. Retrospective Exhibition, Central House of Artist, Moscow, 2007; Russia!, Guggenheim Museum, Bilbao, 2006; Berlin–Moscow, Historical Museum, Moscow, 2004; Live Culture, Tate Modern, London, 2003; Deep into Russia, S.M.A.K., Gent, 2001, I Bite America and America Bites Me (together with Mila Bredikhina), Deitch Projects, New York, 1997; Manifesta I (together with Mila Bredikhina), V-2, Rotterdam; and Interpol, Fargfabriken, Stockholm, 1996. His work is also regularly featured in major biennials of contemporary art: Moscow (2, 3, 4), Venice (47, 49, 50, 51), Valencia (1 and 2), São Paulo (24), and the 1st Kyiv International Biennale of Contemporary Art, 2012.