Russian Pavilion at 52nd Venice Biennale
RUSSIAN PAVILION
52 INTERNATIONAL ART EXHIBITION
LA BIENNALE DI VENEZIA 2007
10.06 - 21.11.2007
Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications of the Russian Federation
Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography
PRESS CONFERENCE & PHOTO OPPORTUNITY
Thursday 7 June, 1530hrs.
If you would like to attend please RSVP to
Anna Cusden
anna.cusden@kallaway.co.uk
+ 44 207 221 7883/+39 333 560 88 29 (contact in Venice)
Click I Hope, the Russian pavilion's group exhibition explores
what it means to live in an age of constant media bombardment and perpetual
connectivity through the internet. How do we navigate the volume and intensity
of mass media that assails us and how do we find a frame of reference
for deciding what to assimilate and what to reject? How do we interpret
parallel cyber realities that grow and mutate with a life of their own
and where do we find hope for the future?
The Russian pavilion has been commissioned by Vasily Tsereteli,
the acting Director of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art and curated by
Olga Sviblova, director of the Multimedia Art Centre, the umbrella
organisation of the Moscow House of Photography, one of the most dynamic
institutions in Russia.
This is the first year that Russian businesses have supported contemporary
art in Venice with such enthusiasm. Russian collectors are coming of age
and showing their interest in the country's booming art scene by supporting
multiple initiatives either by facilitating major art projects in Russia
or enabling Russian art to spread all over the world.
The Russian pavilion presents installations by AES+F Group, Andrey
Bartenev, Arseny Mescheryakov, Julia Milner and Alexander Ponomarev.
Alexander Pomomarev and Arseny Mescheryakov focus on the
relationship between the real world and the media. Shower, an installation
tiled with monitors that simultaneously broadcast 1000 TV channels from
around the world, demonstrates the absolute dominance of mass media, a
medium that traps people in an "information cell". Two switches
in the shower change the on screen content, allowing the viewer to choose
breaking news, sports, commercials, pornography, nature programmes and
so on. However, the shower cannot be turned off.
Ponomarev's Windshield Wipers and Wave offer ways of escaping
the media's assault on our senses. In Windshield Wipers television
screens take up the entire wall. Just as windshield wipers clear away
the dirt that sticks to a car's windshield, wipers on each screen wash
away transmitted programmes with a view of water. At one point in the
loop they are replaced by a live feed from a camera situated on the balcony
of the Russian pavilion showing the Venice Lagoon. The skyline is again
and again replaced by the media onslaught, despite the mechanical wipers
stubborn and methodical struggle against it.
Wave is an eight metre glass tunnel filled with water. The wave's
pulsation is dictated by the rhythm of the breath of the artist, whose
image is projected on the screen. This installation is a metaphor for
creative freedom and the demiurgical power of art. The wave, tamed and
controlled by the artist, redirects the movement "back to nature",
cutting through the pavilion's exhibition space. Ponomarev's Wave splits
both the media and the exhibition spaces, offering an opportunity to contemplate
the rediscovered horizon.
Projects by AES+F, Andrey Bartenev and Julia Milner variously analyse
the phenomenon of the virtual world, whose headlong expansion has created
eschatological prophecies and new visions.
The Last Riot by the AES+F Group (Tatiana Arzamasova, Lev
Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky and Vladimir Fridkes) is a 3D animated model
of cyberspace, generated by the media and the real world; it grows like
a laboratory experiment that devours its creators and mutates in inexplicable
ways. The fantasy landscape is populated by glamorous teenage-androgens
who live a timeless virtual existence. To the music of Wagner, these youths
riot and struggle in a war against themselves, a war without difference
between aggressor and victim, male and female, good and bad, fate and
free will. This is an eternal fight without blood or pain. Each generation
invents its own version of an artistic apocalypse in music, painting and
other forms of art. The Last Riot is a post-apocalyptic vision
that has come to replace them.
Andrey Bartenev's installation, Connection Lost is a glass tunnel
filled with fifty LED spheres with the words "connection lost"
circling in their orbit. A heart inside each sphere symbolizes the potential
frustration that awaits us in the world of virtual and indirect connections.
At the same time, the very message about lost connections multiplies and
reproduces itself with LED letters and mirrors, creating a new integral
connective structure. This magical discotheque, where all the revellers
are close yet dance alone, is a metaphor for the alienation of virtual,
simulative communities that exist to give constant hope of an encounter.
Julia Milner, the youngest member of the project, has created her
own version of a new cyber behaviour game, Click I Hope (www.clickihope.com).
Her installation is an LED display on the façade of the Russian
pavilion which broadcasts her online project. The sentence "I hope"
is translated into the 50 languages of the countries participating in
the Venice Biennale and scrolls across the screen. By clicking on the
words, or touching the screen at the pavilion, the words blink to life
and respond. A counter appears and shows the number of people who have
selected that particular language. The words in each language grow or
shrink in proportion to the number of clicks on them in different parts
of the world. A general counter on the screen communicates the number
of people participating in the project at any given moment. We do not
know what motivates people to click on the words "I hope" in
any language. But a click for "I hope" is not a click for "I
kill", which is what most computer games teach us to do. Click
I hope is a virtual accumulator of hope, an emotion that is so important
to each of us, our country and the world.
END
Further press information:
www.kallaway.co.uk/russian-pavillion.htm
Kallaway
Anna Cusden
International Public Relations
+44 (0) 207 221 7883 / +44 7967 836279
anna.cusden@kallaway.co.uk
Marka:ff
Bruno Stoefs
Coordinator International Group
+7 95050 3108
bstoefs@markaff.ru
In Venice
Anna Cusden
International Public Relations
+39 333 560 88 29
+39 041 520 77 89 (Fax number for Hotel Monte Carlo)
Interviews with the artists, curator and commissioner can be arranged in Venice from 4th to 9th June 2007. For more information contact Anna Cusden.
Vasily Tsereteli: Commissioner
Vasily Tsereteli is the acting director of the Moscow Museum of Modern
Art, an institution that in the last few years has managed to put contemporary
art on the map in Russia. The MMOMA attracts a wide audience of all ages
and shows both Russian and international artists.
Olga Sviblova: Curator
Olga Sviblova has been a driving force in Russian photography and
contemporary art since the late 1970s when she began organising exhibitions
for artists she knew, with her first official exhibition for young artists
taking place in 1987. In 1988 her film Black Square on the Russian Avant-Garde
received a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. She has also constructed
a photographic history of 20th century Russia from scratch, and in the
process rediscovered many avant-garde masters including Alexander Rodchenko,
El Lissitsky and Boris Ignatovich. The national archive currently has
more than 80,000 pictures, many of which were assumed lost forever, and
a permanent home at the Moscow House of Photography which opened in 2000.
In 2006 she was awarded the government prize for the best curatorial project
at the first Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art.
Last year Olga Sviblova curated the Max Penson exhibition in London, one
of the highlights of the Russian Act Festival 2006. This Festival celebrates
contemporary Russian culture in all its forms. The multi-disciplinary
programme brought Russian flavored dance, theatre, classical music, opera,
jazz and photography to London for the third year in a row. In 2007 the
fourth edition of the Russian Act Festival will present a wide variety
of events, among which a multi ethnic show produced by Andrey Bartenev,
swinging Russian jazz, pumping electronic music as well as an intimate
rendez-vous with Russian folk and a much anticipated retrospective of
Rodchenko, curated by Olga Sviblova.
Artists:
AES+F (Tatiana
Arzamasova, Lev Evzovich, Evgeny Svyatsky + Vladimir Fridkes)
Andrey Bartenev
Arseny Mescheryakov
Julia Milner
Alexander Ponomarev
With the support of:
Foundation "Russian
Avant-guard"
TSUM
Interros" Publishing
program
Art-Media Group
MasterCard Europe
Hennessey
TMK
RI Group
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