Do You Speak Synergy?
group exhibition at Harlan Levey Projects gallery curated by Denis Maksimov with support of Harlan Levey
Emmanuel Van Der Auwera. “Cabinet d’affects” (2010), exhibition view
In his essay “Cézanne’s Doubt,” l French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty describes Cézanne’s impressionistic and paradoxical approach to painting, and implicitly draws a parallel to his own concept of radical reflection. Looking at the relationship between science and art in the context of Cezanne’s struggle to apply “intelligence, ideas, sciences, perspective, and tradition” to his work, he concludes that theory and practice stand in opposition to each other. He sees art as an attempt to capture an individual’s perception, and science as anti-individualistic. From this perspective, natural science cannot grasp the profundity and subjective depth of the phenomena it endeavors to explain.
Ella Littwitz. “Uproot” (2015), exhibition view
Art and science may indeed oppose each other in certain senses, but they also share many things, for example a vigorous research drive that goes beyond practicality. In the currents of contemporary cultural discourse, this characteristic is becoming challenging to maintain, for science and art alike. “Key performance indicators” are applied literally to everything, including the traditionally metaphysical subjects of love and death. Art risks leaning towards the language of “social engagement” in regard to state funding, falling into categories of purely utilitarian design or vanity symbols for luxurious consumption. Science, on the other hand, is getting cornered exclusively into the “applied” category. This process is not a novelty: with constant re-learning and easy forgetting, valuable insights and original perspectives are often lost in favor of the “mode du jour” – sometimes by chance, sometimes in result of deliberate decisions by dominating institutions of a particular time.
Imposed planning and bureaucracy turn both artist and scientist into “eternal applicants” for grants rewarded to visionaries for design “solutions.” Research, findings, and output of each are quickly translated to market speak: Where is the business case? What is the product? Is there a customer for this? How are you going to promote it? The discourse of market economy is perhaps the most crippling enemy poetry has ever seen.
Benjamin Verhoeven. “Sculptural Movement, chapters I & II” (2015), still from video
Both art and science resist. Fundamental scientific research eludes pressure by forecasting long-term outcomes to illustrate a future where we’re all dead already anyway, and artistic energy continues to insist on the power of purposelessness in unveiling the truth content in art and commodities in general. A growing number of collaborations between artists and scientists, formed under the flag of “artistic research” firmly establish a vocabulary for this discourse. Following the logic of Merleau-Ponty, “Do You Speak Synergy?” aims to “return to phenomena.” It does this through a transdisciplinary conversation about the poetic essence of scientific and artistic investigation. The notion of “transdisciplinary” investigation is used more and more often in discussions about the future of research. However, the pathway towards meta-levels of inquiry is not so straightforward. Research has become the victim of an obsession with efficiency, predictability and target driven utilitarianism.
Haseeb Ahmed. “Fish Bone Chapel” (2013), exhibition view
The selected artists share the research language of transdisciplinary inquiry while remaining free from any disciplinary or corporate mandates. Modern physics calls this their “unified field,” ² which we refer to as “synergy,” where fundamental forces and elementary particles are approached as if they compose a single field – a field of truly universal language.
References:
¹ Maurice Merleau-Ponty, “Le doubt de Cézanne” in Sens et non-sens, Gallimard, Paris, 1945. English translation by Hubert L. Dreyfus and Patricia Allen Dreyfus in Sense and Non-Sense, Illinois University Press, Chicago, IL, 1964.
² Peter Weibel, Beyond Art: A Third Culture. – A Comparative Study in Culture and Science in 20th Century Austria and Hungary. Passagen Verlag, Vienna, 1997.
pdf version of the book “Do You Speak Synergy?” co-written by Denis Maksimov and Harlan Levey
more images from the exhibition
the world as it’s seen by (the EU): a contextualisation of geopolitics from the certain perspective
lecture performance & installation was presented by Denis Maksimov in December 2015 in Marres House for Contemporary Culture (Maastricht, NL) and in February 2016 in de Brakke Grond Cultural Center (Amsterdam, NL)
The end of the Second World War (WWII) signified the beginning of the new
era for the Europe and the world. Just over 60 years ago the continent was
laying in ruins - material, ideological and moral. Our grandparents worked
hard to rebuild the beauty of our cities. It was the age of profound reflection
and outstanding, unprecedented changes in our societies. Slowly and steadily,
we consciously decided to abandon the ‘realpolitik’ and nationalism in favour
of multiculturalism and integration.
It is not easy path in the geopolitical environment. Yalta agreements on the post-War world order were designed by the winners with the United Nations as the mediating institution in it’s centre. We hoped it will work much better than in did in the end. The Cold War turned Europe into ideological chessboard, the battlefield of capitalism and socialism. It’s hard to assess how much resources were wasted in this seemingly endless battle.
The collapse of the Soviet Union economic model brought us into the current age of the ultra-capitalism. The supremacy of the United States over the economic and cultural discourse brought us consumer-driven materialism, that we have never wanted to absolutise. But as Europe was rebuilt with American credits, we had no choice. Since then we have been trying to balance the cultural supremacy of Hollywood and financial domination of the Wall Street, offer alternatives for more balanced model of the global political order. We recognise: we were not that successful so far. Our decision was to lead by example: to demonstrate to the whole world, that economically driven process of comprehensive integration between so many and so different cultures, speaking dozens of languages countries is not only possible, but demonstrates the way forward. Not only for Europe - for the humanity, which faced difficult task of co-habitation. We have launched the most successful and outstanding project of multidimensional integration that humanity had ever seen: the European Union. We placed the principles of universalism and humanism in it’s core. So many wished we would fail, both internally and externally. So many still actively scheme and plot against our success, try to ridicule our achievements. They want us to feel alienated, ostracised and totally alone - but we are certain that our strategy of leading by example will crash all these doubts about us in light of our outstanding achievements, that first and foremost are driven by humane curiosity and desire to unveil our potential for self-realisation.
After the lessons of the the WWII, we pushed for diplomatic, conciliatory approach in every matter that requires collective decision. We have been called and insulted as ‘soft boners’, ’indecisive cowards’ (not only by ill- wishers, but by those who consider us their partners as well) for our conviction against any sort of aggression, that might have the slightest possibility of sparkling conflict. Maybe we are too slow, but we prefer to be rather accurate and avoid making mistakes with possibility of terrible consequences. We had survived through 1914-1918 and 1941-1945, we know what eagle-headedness and testosterone-driven emotions can cost to a society.
We haven’t forgotten our history and faults. We fully recognise our colonial history, we feel ashamed for it and as anyone who did something nasty in the past naturally try to avoid talking too much about the subject. Don’t judge us too hard for this: we don’t avoid the subject, but you surely can imagine yourself the complexity of the issue in our memory. It is widely researched, analysed and discussed in our societies at all the levels: from popular media to academia. And it will be continued until we will come up with the certain plan of compensating the damage we did, as we have been trying with the humanitarian and development aid.
It is not easy for us internally as well. We pay very high price for sticking to the core values of the Enlightenment and prepared to sacrifice even more if it’s needed. The barbarianism is not objectified or impersonated by someone specific - it actually exists in every one of us. ‘Jihad’ in Islam, despite what interpretation you might hear from Marine le Pen or Geert Wilders and similar individuals (who are entitled for their own opinion, but not for their own facts), doesn’t mean desire to kill ‘non-believers’. ‘Jihad’ means fighting your own demons and cleansing your mind and soul from disastrous darkness. This is something we might as well learn from the new cultures, that we are happy to accommodate in the extended family of based on the post-nationalist, multicultural values.
We might end up being martyrs of the civilisational decay, like the late Rome or the Ancient Greece just before the Roman conquest. We still need to figure out what do with the crises of the concept of inheritance and private property, as inequality will only rise if we won’t do something about it on the very fundamental level. We still hope that Hegel wasn’t absolutely right about history always repeating itself in vicious circles. We are committed to do anything in our power to avoid the repetition of horrific mistakes (that we have ourselves made repeatedly before) by us and all the other actors on the geopolitical field.
Underneath the socio-political matter of perceived reality: ‘video sculptures’
courtesy of Emmanuel Van der Auwera
Interview with Emmanuel Van der Auwera (EVDA) by Denis Maksimov (DM) / originally published in The Brussels Times Magazine (February 2016 issue)
Emmanuel Van der Auwera is a recent HISK graduate, and the winner of the 2015 Langui Prize awarded during the Young Belgian Artist Award exhibition. In Van der Auwera’s series of Video Sculptures, the notion of screen as window to reality is literally stripped of its flatness, symbolically revealing the underlying mechanics of the media through deconstruction by the artist’s hand. Prior to sculpting the hardware, Van der Auwera continues his extensive research of contemporary video content and identifies those he feels accurately reflect cultural currents in the flux of postmodern bizarreness. These range from all-encompassing, full of manipulative symbols messianic political events to cultural events and intimate confessional moments.
DM: Can you describe the process of making ‘video sculptures’?
EVDA: The screen, technically, composed of LED lights that lit up liquid crystal glass, two sheets of it. On the top of the screen there is an LCD filter. If you remove this filter, all you can see is a white screen - to catch the image you need to apply this filter somehow externally, for example by applying glasses with this filter. Depending on the brand of the screen the filter reacts very differently. Samsung screen is easy to tear off, takes half an hour, while Sony one takes a full day. I don’t pre-cut in advance - it’s not about creating the designed solution. I can only have a relative control over the process. In this way it reminds me of painting and drawing. I am organising it until I feel I reach sort of an equilibrium. It sometimes quite painful - right now I’m building the new sculpture and it’s Sony screen (the decision of buying which I almost now regret, for the reason given before), so the process is very complicated, kind of violent. I am shredding the LCD filter in separate pieces. I keep all of the remaining materials, this outer layers.
DM: Do you see that unpredictability of the result makes the process sort of impressionistic?
EVDA: Indeed. It’s an experiment all the time - I don’t feel control over the process of making. It’s reassuring, because it’s not an automatic gesture. There is no intention and possibility therefore of mass producing the sculptures, despite the fact that material is quite ‘industrial’ in a way. The magical in way transformation from the regular screen into the conceptual sculptural screen is done through the artistic process. There is an ambiguous border in the format of the work.
DM: Is there rituality in process?
EVDA: Yes, I always start from the around the screen with very precise cut. I quickly switch blades for cutting, depending on how the screen is reacting. There is something autopsic in it. An ambiguous border between painting and sculpture in my work is something that I’m still figuring out in the process of continuous work on the new pieces.
courtesy of Emmanuel Van der Auwera
DM: Do you have ‘the bank’ of the videos or the list of the subjects which you are choosing from?
EVDA: I don’t have a precise idea of how I put the videos and screens together, it’s quite empiric. For example with the video of President Obama first inauguration. Initially I received a lot of criticism from people that they don’t want to see this image, so embedded in reality of today. Instead of being reminded and pushed towards self-reflection, they would rather want to see some aesthetic abstract images, beautiful and completely open for the widest angles of interpretation.
DM: Have you ever made live performances?
EVDA: I am thinking of doing a performances again, with cutting the screen in front of the audience. The one I made where I was cutting the screen while it way playing scenes of the first night the American invasion in Iraq during the Second Gulf War, specifically the CNN cover of the intense bombing. I heard the gasp of people in the audience who didn’t realise what was happening. The tearing in Samsung was very easy and you could have heard these sounds of static electricity, those kind of broken radio waves sounds. It’s almost humanising and definitely relates to the anatomical theatre of the Renaissance, while the human body is replaced with the ‘moving pictures machine’, that is so mystified in contemporaneity.
courtesy of Emmanuel Van der Auwera
DM: How do you reflect on symbolism in your researches?
EVDA: There is sort of iconographic analysis. For example Kasimir Malevich, who was a spiritual man, was aiming to create the icon beyond representation. In my case of the white screen, the image is still there, but whiteness of the screen after the LCD layer removed and presents this cleanness of the surface. This what I connect to Suprematism of Malevich. You sort of see the magic and the awfulness of artificiality of the image which is represented to you on this screen - as soon as the top layer removed, you are confronted by bare whiteness of the surface. The image is still there - however to see it you need to apply LSD glasses.
John Carpenter’s demonstrates it interestingly in the cult movie ‘They Live’ - when the protagonist finds the box with glasses, that reveal him the nature of the control society around him. All the advertisements suddenly appear as ‘orders’ - obey, buy, consume, behave, etc. My work is the criticism of iconoclastic approach towards the everyday objects which we are surrounded with - I am bringing back the physics in the technology through the deconstruction of this ‘machine of illusion’, sort of an awful power of control over our vision of reality. Through it’s important to mention that I don’t have an ambition of patronising or teaching anyone - this is rather a critical assessment of the immensity of it’s impact on our perception of reality and everyday behaviour in modernity.
How to understand contemporary art critically?
courtesy of ENCATC and BRAFA Art Fair
‘Our speaker, Denis Maksimov, aesthetico-political theorist, critic and strategist introduce to our guest to the notion of 'the art world’, and gave a dynamic talk with the aim to foster reflection on the importance of questioning narratives in art history and contemporary art, the actuality of connoisseurship and expertise, and the strategies of collecting art.’ - ENCATC Secretary General, GiannaLia Cogliandro Beyens.
more information about the event
Fermeture exceptionnelle
The book is the result of spontaneous photo project that was produced by Avenir Institute on the morning of November 14, 2015, following the night of so-called ‘Paris attacks' that claimed lives of 137 people. It documents the life in the city several hours after the attacks. Traces of the media hype and official emergency safety measures (including closure of all public institutions) enter in dialogue with “business as usual” scenes of Parisian morning.
the world as it’s seen by (Russia): a contextualisation of geopolitics from the certain perspective
lecture performance & installation was presented by Denis Maksimov in December 2015 in Marres House for Contemporary Culture (Maastricht, NL) and in February 2016 in de Brakke Grond Cultural Center (Amsterdam, NL)
The Soviet Union collapsed a quarter of a century ago. It marked the biggest
geopolitical catastrophe in history: the balance of powers, that was driving
progress ahead, was demolished. Since then we live in the world where only
one, ultra-capitalistic superpower is dictating the way we consume food,
entertainment, information, and everything else. The plurality of choice, which
was assured before by the ideological dichotomy between socialism and
capitalism, disappeared. This was the biggest geopolitical and ideological
catastrophe of the 20 century and the consequences are still to manifest
themselves in the upcoming horrors of uncertainly, instability and chaos of
international relations.
We tried to integrate into this new reality. We accepted our defeat in the Cold War. We wholeheartedly offered cooperation - converted our political system into West-oriented democracy, allowed capitalism to take over the planned economy, welcomed Western-led international community to enjoy the riches of Russia.
What did we get back?
Neo-colonialist political and economic notations. Expanding NATO, despite your promises to keep it within the same borders. Selfish support of local corruption practices for the sake of short-term revenues by your ‘transnational’ corporations. Instead of helping us to grow new generation of responsible leaders, you have contributed and nurtured oligarchs and cronies, with whom you enjoy nowadays making selfies at couture shows, ‘Art Basel’s and Biennales.
Russia assumed on it’s shoulders sovereign debt of the whole Soviet Union, for the infrastructure that was built in all the corners of the vast territory during more than half a century. Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine and other newly established ‘nations’ left the Union ‘clean’ of financial obligations and debts because of it. They got their ‘golden tickets’ out, while Russia assumed all the blame and responsibility for economic mismanagement of the Union, which was a common enterprise.
We were promised that NATO will slowly transform into something else than instrument of providing nationalistic, missionary, neo-colonial agenda of the United States. That it will become international organisation focused on peace keeping. Instead of it, already for 20 years we see construction of new military bases around our borders and on the territory of former parts of the Soviet Union and Russian Empire. Instead of peace-keeping, we perceive walling us off. It all happens quietly, with your firm European smile - the same ‘good manners’ were used by you during the centuries of slavery and colonisation of the other parts of our planet. Your snobbism makes us sick. We are shamed by the West for our model of democracy. But think for a second - does your Western model of democracy, as universal as you think about it, works anywhere, even in your hemisphere? Africa is a complete mess precisely because you brought there institutions that are alien to everything that existed there before. France supported dictators in Gabon, Belgium murdered Patrice Lumumba, the UK systemically messed up the Middle East turning it into the geopolitical hellhole. The list is very, very long.
Your own youths are sick of inequality in capital and power redistribution. They are sick of your usurping elites, hopelessness for the future and postmodern disorientation in moral and ideological values. Our goal is not to replicate your ‘democracy’, but to build solid infrastructure of survival and further development of our own civilisation, not a cheap copy of your failed project.
We were cornered by you and left with no choice but to play the card of ‘national revival’, to build retrograde walls, because the partnership game you played with us appeared no more than a trick of coloniser, analogy of ‘beads’ provided to indigenous population for lands in America and Africa for their rich lands. And this is your ‘thank you’ for tens of millions of lives we’ve sacrificed to stop advancement of Napoleon and later Hitler?
Take the issue of the war in Ukraine. It was very corrupt place from the beginning: political infrastructure there is just rotten from the bottom to the very top. Instead of being focused on how to help it to develop and climb out of the systemic crisis, you are focused on taking it out of the ‘Russian sphere of influence’. For years, you actively supported antagonisation of the Ukrainian society towards Russia. When we offered three-partial integration of the economies of Russia, Ukraine and the EU - it was you who declined three-party negotiations prospects, saying that you will deal with each of the partners ‘individually’, therefore disrespecting decades of economic ties that were built between Russia and Ukraine at the times when we shared the same borders.
You say it’s we are who are reviving the geopolitics and act in the methods of 19th century ‘realpolitik’? But ask yourself, who was muddling cultural ties between Russia and it’s immediate neighbours, which we share with centuries long common history? If you were so keen on and open for cooperation with Russia in the first place, what made you so motivated to develop strategy of weakening strategic positioning of Russia in the Eurasian region?
Your irresponsible, unwise and selfish actions are the reason why we now look at Asia with a glimpse of hope of building constructive relations, based on mutual interests, benefit and honesty.
You perfectly know, that like in cosmology there is a dichotomy between Universe and Multiverse, in politics, which is to some extent is cosmology of human mind, also can be seen from multidimensional perspective. Look at ‘democratic’ India and complete devastating mess in there. If you allow Burma’s voters now to exercise their right to freely vote about the rights of Muslim minority, they will massacre all of them. Singapore wouldn’t have been that success story if it followed your ‘democratic patterns’. You own societies are falling into the orbit of almost fascist political groups - Marine le Pen in France, Donald Trump in the United States, and that’s only the beginning. Your short-term oriented, materialistic ’ochlocracy’ is still to unveil all the devastating consequences for your society. Maybe there is still time to re-evaluate your short-sighted, universalist, colonial approach to the world? Maybe you will finally understand, that we don’t live anymore in the world of totalitarian monopoly of your picture of the world and finally will demonstrate some respect to diversity of opinions?
We don’t fundamentally argue against your concept of the Enlightenment, but we ask for moderation and respect of other cultures. Your snobbish, non- constructive pretence drives our society towards ultra-conservatism as the only alternative, that is strong enough to battle your creepy monopoly over cultural discourse. Do you really think we enjoy it ourselves?
We still call you ‘partners’. We are open for dialogue. We are not part of the barbaric tribes that undermine ‘the light’ you bring in the world, as you media actively depicts us. We understand, that cooperation (even if not already desirable), is inevitable and vital for both of us in the light of current political changes. But if you continue to act like your position and understanding of the world around us is the only one possible interpretation of reality, we are afraid our orbits will continue to dangerously drift away.
Transdisciplinary research, curation and production
How to locate aesthetico-political phenomena in disciplinary map? How legitimacy of ideological milieus interconnects with legality of the power narratives? “Symptomatic” reading introduced by Louis Althusser is offered to be merged with contemporary vision of “synergy” as a functional grounding for transdisciplinary research as artistic and curatorial practice.
The talk was given at Jan Van Eyck Academy in Maastricht (NL) in the context of Marres Currents #3 exhibition.
Almanac of Contemporary Culture
Russian Centre of Science and Culture, Brussels
Modern media technologies push protagonists to become ‘smupid’ (term coined out of merging 'smart’ and 'stupid’ by Douglas Coupland) - 'I am really smart, there is just no wifi access here’. The abundance of media content and visual information in form of carpet bombardment from numerous screens contributes to losing the ability to focus and go in depth in understanding of essential issues. This leads to inevitable lack of comprehension of totality of ideological frame, which we inhabit. How to preserve the ability to self-reflect and deconstruct the attempts of manipulation in the midst of acceleration and attention deficit?
The Art of Sightseeing
Denis Maksimov. “The truth us a question of the standpoint”, business card for booking guided tour-performance, ‘The Game of Roles’ at ParisTexasAntwerp, June 2015.
Interview with curatorial team of Marres Currents #3 © by Denis Maksimov (DM) / originally published in The Brussels Times Magazine (December 2015 issue) and catalogue of Marres Currents #3 (in English and Dutch)
Marres Currents #3 was the third edition of the annual exhibition series titled Marres Currents. With this series, Marres, House for Contemporary Culture in Maastricht, presents recent graduates from art academies in the Southern Netherlands, Belgium and Germany. While offering emerging artists and curators a platform, Marres also aims to build an international infrastructure for talent development. Agata Jaworska was invited as guest curator for this year. Her exhibition In No Particular Order during the Dutch Design Week last year showed work of young designers. For Marres Currents #3, Jaworska gathered a team of curators around her. Ina Hollmann, Eva Jäger and Guillemette Legrand, (former) students of the Design Academy Eindhoven. Denis exhibited two conceptual artworks in this show and spoke with curators about their intentions and strategy.
DM: Why did you select these artists?
C: Sightseeing offers a series of probes and modes of inquiry into how to look at the world. We sought work that strove to understand what is happening in society, and manifested this through artistic practice. The participating artists manifest a multitude of ways of doing so - ranging from a simulated flight across the Earth to digging out a cubic metre of the ground. The works raise fundamental questions: how it is we come to get to know the world, and in this, what are the paradigms we take for granted. There is also a sense of adventure - from Fanny Hagmeier’s exhilarating experiments with her own body, to Stef van Dungen’s climbers that scale the Opel garage (painted white to evoke an icy mountain), and the installation by Jan van den Bosch that dares visitors to climb a scaffolding construction. Thrill, self-confrontation and risk are palpable. The works ask us to travel to unknown lands, to re-look at the past, to put ourselves in challenging positions, to question dominant ways of seeing, and through this, to inscribe our voices into the future history of the world.
DM: What role does story telling play?
C: There is a strong communicative aspect to the works. Darcey Bennett presents a story in the form of forensic evidence after the occurrence of an event. He deconstructs a tragedy, laying out all the evidence and asking us to piece it together. The message is fragmented and results in multiple inevitably incomplete versions. Struck by propagandistic accounts of national parks of Congo written during Belgian’s colonial rule, Alessandra Ghiringhelli embarked on her own investigation in the national archives. She presents her own account of history in a series of texts and illustrations. Well aware of the embedded bias of the author, she struggles with the impossibility of achieving objective representation.This exhibition is about embracing the instability of a journey - its narratives are not always proposing solutions or one immutable truth. The travel through Sightseeing is fragmented, sometimes incomplete and at other times confrontational. Visitors navigate between continents, virtual and physical experiences, past and future. They inevitably will compose their own version of the exhibition.
courtesy of Mikael Groc
DM: How did you approach the notion of ‘currents’?
C: The present is a compilation; it co-exists with our knowledge of the past, our memories, our ideas of the future and our life plans. Working with this definition, we view Sightseeing as a snapshot of the present. Some works are speculative - for instance in Treasure Island, Skye Sun envisions an island tax haven populated by extinct species. It is an isolated land designed to attract the world’s wealthiest elite, where, as Skye says, “they can rebuild their world in the image of their investment”. Though these islands are fictional, their power to provoke relies on the fact that they offer a critique of present-day reality. Another work that simultaneously plays with the present and the future is The Dutch Mountain by Mirte van Duppen. Van Duppen makes a documentary of a mountain that could arise in the flat land of the Netherlands. She does this by filming real scenes in the country, fragments of reality that gradually build an image of the mountain in our minds. These visuals are augmented with interviews with experts on the topics of tourism, urbanism and nature. Their specialised comments on how to make and deal with such a mountain in this country ensure the viewer that this future fiction could just as easily be a present day reality. Skye and Van Duppen use different means to construct speculative geographies. The value of their scenarios lies not in their capacity to actually predict the future, but rather, to enable us to see ourselves in a clearer light today. They offer us a mirror of the here and now.
DM: You were asked to make an exhibition of selected graduation projects from art academies. Why did you bring in design and architecture?
C: The interesting thing in projects such as Skye Sun’s Treasure Island or Anja Kempa’s Remembering Spring is that the emphasis is not on the architectural design of the buildings, but rather on the narratives that they carry. These projects are ultimately about how buildings and their surroundings can manifest our hopes and fears about the future, and in a broader sense, how our material world ultimately fulfils a psychological and social function. People are working with narrative structures regardless of their formal training and discipline. We felt it was not only our role to convey what is happening at art academies but also what connections we could make to the works we encountered. This is not a discussion that is solely relevant to the art or design field. It is simply about being human and responding to the world.
DM: Could you give us a sense of the experience you aim to create for the show?
C: The first image that will confront the visitors is We weren’t lovers like that, and besides it would still be all right by Roel Neuraij. It is a photograph of a globe that he has rotated so that the location of where the photo was taken is touching the ground. Normally we orient ourselves in relation to where we are in the world, but this image asks us to consider how the world is positioned in relation to us. We hope this image sets the tone, introducing a bit of disorientation at the outset.Near the entry there is a film of Neuraij’s father, a physicist who takes us through an equation in order to calculate not our weight on the planet, but rather the force of the planet upon us. In Neuraij’s words: “The scientific method has been designed to discover rules and laws that operate beyond the human, but because we ourselves are inadvertently human, so is our science.” Neuraij studies the space between the Earth as an astronomical object and as it is understood by humans. The exhibition continues to present an inherently human experience of the world. Fanny Hagmeier subjects her body to extreme conditions, whether manmade or natural. Naked, she stands in a car wash, she swims next to a sea vessel, she lies on frozen ground, all in search of her bodily limits, and the sense of being alive through self-experimentation. She subjects her body to various conditions not unlike a scientist that is testing how one body reacts to various environments and forces.
One area of the exhibition brings together journeys from various places - Iceland, Iran, Congo, Russia, Japan and the Netherlands. These stories compile an incomplete atlas of the world. They accept the fact that subjectivity is an inevitable aspect of observation, measurement, analysis, description, and other methods used to understand and depict the world. The sense of experimentation and exploration continues throughout the exhibition both in the approaches of the artists and - we hope - in the state of mind of the viewer. Seeing something familiar with fresh eyes is one of the intentions of the show. The artists we selected have constructed practices that are largely about re-investigations. As a viewer, your investigation of the show (as a sight seer) will also be informed by a willingness to suspend disbelief and explore with fresh eyes.
Transition de l’économie russe: état actuel et perspectives d’évolution
The lecture was devoted to analysis of modern administrative markets of Russia as a result of hybridisation between planned socio-economic system of Soviet Union and radical market reforms of 1990s. The scenarios of possible futures of EU-Russia relations and global positioning of Russia were also outlined.
Presentation slides (in Russian)