Konstantin Ernst's "Matador"

A junior alumnus of the team at Vzgliad/VID, Konstantin Ernst would eventually go on to become the most important figure in Putin-era television as the head of Channel 1, the centerpiece of Russian government television. As such, he represents the most salient example of someone who thought of himself as a “liberal” in the Perestroika and the Yeltsin eras, but came to serve an outright genocidal dictator in the 2020s. A look at Ernst’s 1990s projects might shed some light on this apparent transformation- in this case the show “Matador.”

Released between 1991-1995, produced by VID until 1992 and then by Ernst’s own company MasterTV until 1995, “Matador” was remembered as a highbrow show, made by an aesthete interested in famous arthouse filmmakers, such as Jean-Luc Godard, or to “scandalous” writers like Eduard Limonov.

At the same time, Ernst wanted to reach the mass TV-watching audience, had a clear sense that the aesthetics of post-Soviet mass television would have to change to keep up with the times, made his intentions known, and because of them was chosen to head ORT (which would become Channel 1) in 1995, shortly after the death of List’ev, his old boss at VID, who held the ORT job for about a month prior to his death.

The excerpted clip (made at some point in 1993-1995) about contemporary art not only gives a good example of the show’s style, but also gives over the sense of why someone like Ernst, someone interested in arthouse and high culture would want to become the master of Russia’s most important TV channel. For one, the show cares far more about framing, color contrast and shot composition than anything else in VID’s portfolio. Partly, this is part and parcel of making a show about art, but it is also expressive of Ernst’s own ambitions as a director and producer of high-grade TV content. For another, the content of discussion about contemporary art that Ernst chooses to focus on expresses a basic idea of what art should be about, and indeed what can be considered art. Management and business in post-Soviet Russia can be considered an art, we learn from one guest, precisely because it is called upon to carry out ridiculous, grand, demiurgic projects The tools necessary for this work can come from anywhere, including the Soviet past– thus, both speakers broadly speak in terms of postmodern play as the unbound language of the contemporary artist. But postmodern play also apparently has a telos (at among these speakers)– and that is, social reconstruction, rather than deconstruction critique. This conservative project of reconstruction and re-mythologization through playful postmodern means turns out to be the crux of Ernst’s subsequent work, including in his other 1990s projects, such as Old Songs About the Most Important and The Russian Project.