Issue 90 / July 2018

“I prefer works that
make you travel,
that tell a story,
that force you to
dream and take you
elsewhere”
ARTS CENTRAL
Beautiful world, where are you? asks the 10th Biennial. In the latest in her Arts Central
series, Julia Johnson looks at how a sense of location and time are rooted in the work of
an artist from Dagestan, which can help us reflect on our own place in the world.
One of the best things about LIVERPOOL BIENNIAL,
which returns in July for its 10th edition, is
the opportunities it provides for experiencing
contemporary art from across the globe. Beautiful
World, Where Are You? (as this year’s edition is titled) is not a
showcase of art about Liverpool, but that does not mean the city
does not become part of the work. “It’s the city which creates the
frame for everything we present,” explains Liverpool Biennial’s
director, Sally Tallant. “Either literally, because it’s inside the
buildings or in the streets, or that by being here, the kind of
narratives that emerge and the histories that define this place
and our city become the starting point for thinking. I always talk
about Liverpool as being a brain that the artists plug into; it has
lots of different kinds of knowledge.”
Out of everything that will take over the city for the summer,
however, TAUS MAKHACHEVA’s project is perhaps one of
this Biennial’s most ambitious in terms of considering what the
audience experience of art actually is. This isn’t the first time
Makhacheva’s work will have appeared at a Liverpool Biennial: she
came as the representative for the Dagestan city of Makhachkala
in 2012’s City States. She’s an artist gaining an increasingly high
international profile, and a person about whom Tallant is very
excited: “I think she’s really fantastic artist, very dynamic. It’s a
great moment in her career and for Liverpool Biennial to be hosting
her.”
Alongside a screening of her stunning 2015 film Tightrope at
St George’s Hall, Makhacheva is designing a new multi-disciplinary
installation for Blackburne House: a spa, where visitors can (should
they so wish) be treated to a full facial. This is a new way of
quite literally absorbing art: the treatment will include a specially
formulated moisturising cream named Painting In A Tube after its
art-based ingredients. “Basically, if you put a painting in a blender
and tried to make a cream out of it, it’s what would come out,”
Makhacheva laughs, over a cup of tea and a break from the final
preparations for the installation’s sculptural elements at Edge Hill’s
Metal space.
“I’ll start with a story,” she begins. “It’s only this year that I
think I understood abstract painting, that I really sort of felt that
it makes you present in front of it and that’s what it’s about, it’s
about the nowness. But I personally prefer works that make
you travel, that tell a story, that force you to dream and take you
elsewhere.” The idea of the spa is to take people on this journey, to
spend some time completely transported by sensual stimulation.
Much of Makhacheva’s previous work has been set in the
nature of her native Dagestan. In Tightrope, the land’s incredible
rock formations and big skies offer important context. The spa
seems, on first glance, to be born from an entirely different
concept, based on the small and intimate rather than the grand
panorama. In fact, Tightrope and the spa are two sides of the
same coin.
The undercurrents of meaning in the spa that we discuss
flow deep, but two in particular repeatedly rise to the surface.
One is the concept of “making time, about today’s relationship
with time and just accepting your own time and letting people
know that’s your time”. It was a very deliberate decision to create
an environment that takes half an hour to fully experience. With
time an increasingly precious commodity in our busy lives, and
with the temptation for Biennial installations to simply be ticked
off a list as ‘seen’, the spa demands you slow down and make
time for a different, empathetic kind of contemplation.
Time spent here, then, is to be time well spent. To ensure
this, Makhacheva has included multi-disciplinary features to
provide a sensory idyll of some kind or other for all visitors.
She is fascinated by the phenomenon of ASMR videos, widely
available online and specifically designed to stimulate the
sense in particular ways. “ASMR, for me, is this very peculiar
phenomenon about how to create this intimacy through screens
with complete strangers. There’s this comfort and presence...
that you somehow warm to.” Meanwhile, more direct experiential
contact can be made with the beauticians themselves, who will
double as storytellers recalling Biennial’s past and the history of
artworks which have come to be taken for granted as part of the
city’s landscape.
Another recurring theme of our discussion is that of
destruction. It’s a concept inherent in the theme of Beautiful
World, Where Are You?, which was a title chosen to reflect the
sense of instability of recent global conditions. “With these
changes which are happening, it’s destabilising for everyone
to think about what this new world might look like,” explains
Tallant, while also explaining why Liverpool is the perfect place
for artistic contemplation of the subject. “It’s a port city, an
international city and we are all global citizens.” The perfect
city, then, in which to explore what this uncertainty means via
perspectives from an international art community.
This concept of destruction will be physically represented
through furniture made in collaboration with sculptor Alexander
Kutuvoi, resulting from their experiments in physical destruction.
“We bought one sort of classical bust – which feeds into beauty,
perfection – from ancient Greece,” says Makhacheva. “We made
moulds and we started breaking them. We made copies of the
one that we bought and we broke about 20 heads to find perfect
shards, and the shards got enlarged.” Those enlargements will
form the very furniture that guests lie back and relax on.
Hand-in-hand with destruction goes rebuilding – an apt
enough theme in a city which has experienced its fair share
of each. Makhacheva has been very inspired by studying and
working with conservators: “The idea of a conservator is so
similar to the beautician. This notion that the person lying on
the beautician’s table... you are also a sculpture being repaired,
remodelled.” She also talks about taking inspiration from
Blackburne House itself. “It’s a very interesting space, the way
they rebuild and give new skills to women who are sometimes in
complicated situations.”
And another, more positive destruction is also on
Makhacheva’s mind – the destruction of barriers which hold
people back from being able to access art. If one form of
destruction is that of arts from school curricula, she hopes the
spa might encourage engagement from people who may not
typically want to access art: “It’s much more personal, trying to
break down a screen for any audience member that might come.”
This is one reason why it was important to place the stories
which are told in the mouths of the beauticians, with scripts
written by local writer David McDermott. “Usually it’s someone
you might not consider intellectual, so we’re twisting that. You
should never underestimate anyone.”
Multi-disciplinary, contemporary ideas, yet highly accessible.
The Biennial is all about bringing new and exciting work into the
architecture of the city, and Makhacheva’s ideas are a perfect
manifestation of what this might look like. !
Words: Julia Johnson / messylines.com
Photography: Tightrope (film still), 2015. Image courtesy the
artist
biennial.com
Liverpool Biennial runs between 14th July and 28th October.
Taus Makhacheva’s installation for this year’s Biennial will take
place at Blackburne House.
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