Matthew Stadler's Personal Weblog

The wireless works! Trying to get this Moscow trip blogged from Schiphol airport in Amsterdam. This place is huge; even has a branch of the Rijksmuseum - ten works by Dutch masters of the Golden Age. OK, as you all know I've just been in Moscow, where I had the chance to hook up with some colleagues -- Matt McCormick, Hans Ulrich Obrist, and Nicholas Bourriaud. All four of us were making the scene at the Moscow Biennial of Art. An article about a recent Biennial said these events manage "to momentarily unhinge the image of the contemporary from itself, causing it to split and mimic itself from one exhibition to the next." I really was hoping the image of the contemporary would get unhinged from itself again thie year, at least momentarily, because I don't even know what the hell that means. But I'll tell you what got unhinged, was Bourriaud! I was so excited about his talk; I loved the title of his exhibition with Paolo Falcone in 2006: "Are you experienced?" I was sitting next to Hans Ulrich Obrist in the hall, and I'd even brought along a copy of "Point d'Ironie" to flatter him. Lots of good that did me. So anyway Bourriaud is up there doing "The Representational Sun-Turn: Darkness in the Akron School," and he's into the political section, and I'm like, I have heard this before. And I'm trying to figure out where - and then it hits me: It's from that 1927 manifesto by Urs Heichmann Van Vanjiksweiden I wrote a paper on in grad school! That thing is so obscure Bourriaud must have thought nobody knew it! I don't know what came over me. I stand up and I shout, "PLAGIARIST! HE'S A DIRTY PLAGIARIST!" Pandemonium!! People leap up from their chairs and start screaming in Russian. Bourriaud runs out from behind the podium and freaking jumps me, right there, and Obrist is trying to hold me so Bourriaud can beat me up. He gets one good shot in at my lip, which starts bleeding all over everything, but I worm away from Obrist, and all I can think to do is get the hell out of there so I just run. I run out the door and all the way to my hotel room. After about a half hour the phone rings, and it's Matt. That McCormick boy is one of my peeps. And he's all like, dude, they want to kill you, and I'm all like, no way, and he's all like, way, dude, I would not come out here, I am serious, and I'm all like, well I didn't come all the way to Russia to sit in a hotel room, and he's all like, dude, let's go see Vladimir Inozemtsev, and I'm like, you mean Vladimir Inozemtsev the film-maker? And Matt's like, I know him, let's go meet him, you've got to get out of here. And so we do. He sneaks me out while everyone's at the afternoon cocktail reception, and we go have supper with Vladimir Inozemtsev. I don't guess many people know Vladimir Inozemtsev's work -- his films used to be quite highly respected in the 40s but he has fallen on hard times. He's in a little one-room apartment with a small gas cooker and a couch that turns into a bed. It turned out he didn't have any food other than a can of sardines, so Matt and I went out and bought potatoes, leeks, and chicken broth and whipped up some dairy-free vichysoisse. Vladimir Inozemtsev is brilliant, though it was hard to appreciate his genius since he doesn't speak any English and spent much of the time gesturing towards a small cat that was sitting on the radiator, trying to warm itself. When we went down the stairs to leave for the hotel, there was a crowd of peasant children who had prepared a small traditional cultural presentation for us. It seemed to have something to do with going around in circles and pointing at Matt, then laughing. Since I couldn't very well return to the conference, I decided my week would be well spent in working with these adorable little urchins. Matt worked it out for me to stay with Inozemtsev, and I spent a glorious three days among the people. We ate beets, danced, and built small fires in the streets. I taught songs to the children, among them "The Wheels on the Bus Go Round and Round," "Ring Around the Rosy," and the song that was the true cross-cultural triumph, "Baby Got Back." They in turn shared their dream for world peace with me and relieved me of most of my money. Yesterday Matt came out to pick me up. He really had my back through all this. He told me Obrist and Bourriaud had been walking around wearing signs that said MATTHEW STADLER IS A BIG FAT POOPY, and that they talked Daniel Birnbaum into drawing a highly unflattering cartoon of me and projecting it on the side of the Moscow Institute of Computer Sciences with my email address under it. Bourriaud apparently also spray painted PORTLAND SUX into the carpet in the hall outside my hotel room. Matt kind of threw me in the car and we made good our escape from Moscow -- I said he had my back, he even remembered a blanket for me to hide under. The airport was mostly fine and I got out OK, although the guy who stamped my passport saw the name and said with a heavy accent MATTHEW STADLER IS A BIG FAT POOPY, and his assistant said PORTLAND SUX. Although he pronounced it "sooks," which was kind of funny. God, did I ever need the vodka they gave me on the plane. Never again!