News from Garage departments | October 2020

NEWS FROM GARAGE DEPARTMENTS

In November, we are going to reveal some of our plans for the next season. Taking a stance about the still ongoing uncertainty, isolation, and locality caused by the pandemic, we will dig in the field of speculations, connect closer with private matters, and make a brave new attempt on international collaborations. While it's cooking, please check out what our various departments have been up to.

INCLUSIVE DEPARTMENT

At the end of September, Garage followed International Deaf week and Sign language Day with the Week of Sign Languages. The Museum hosted the first public linguistic laboratory to discuss the variability of signs and dialects in Russian Sign Language. The laboratory continued the research on the subject matter started earlier this year by Garage Inclusive Department with the all-Russian data collection in Russian Sign Language (RSL), aimed at studying the deaf community's regional and local signs. The department has been working on the inclusion issues of the deaf community for the past five years, and the study, education in, and preservation of the uniqueness and richness of RSL is among its main priorities. The program included the performance "Actor's Work on…" based on Polina Sineva's play A Foreign Voice. The play tells the story of a film producer who is shooting a remake of Mikhail Bogin's short Two (1965) for a charitable project, in which a hearing young man falls in love with a deaf girl. In the performance, staged by Elena Smorodinova, Moscow theaters actors, together with hard of hearing actors from Nedoslov Theater, apply the situation described in the play to themselves, aiming to understand what it takes to really hear the other.

EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

Following the opening of Tomás Saraceno's Moving Atmospheres, our Education department launched the imaginative public program which accompanies the project. Lectures, workshops, and discussions will look into the wide network that connects Saraceno's practice with philosophy, social and environmental studies, and the utopian ideas about the future of humanity in the air space. Architect Nerea Calvillo will talk about different ways of sensing the environment from the perspective of feminist and queer research—the lecture will be available online through broadcast on YouTube in Russian translation. Locally held events will include a talk by sociologist Lilia Zemnukhova about concepts of alternative worlds in relation to the Anthropocene; anthropologist Denis Sivkov speaking about techno-utopian flight projects and amateur aeronautics; the lecture of curator and architecture historian Aleksandra Selivanova on the projects for the conquest of the sky and outer space proposed by the Soviet Avant-Garde; as well as philosopher Eugene Kuchinov talking about panpsychism in connection with the ideas of the early twentieth-century Russian cosmists.

A special part of the public program is Aerocene Laboratory — an interdisciplinary project that investigates the notion of the Aerocene and the technical and social aspects of a future in the aerosphere. Twenty participants of the laboratory selected through open call will meet twice a month, from the end of October through December, to study a variety of approaches to the human relationship with technics, from the perspectives of sociology, cosmonautics, art, and philosophy. The Laboratory will also prepare and conduct the launch of the aerosolar sculpture Aerocene Backpack created by Tomás Saraceno.

GARAGE SCREEN

On October 10, Garage Screen closed its 2020 summer cinema season that started on August 1. During just over two months, it hosted a rich program and welcomed as many visitors as was safe and possible despite the challenges that public spaces are facing this year. This season included three new programs: Silver Prints showing analog cinema with a new 35mm projector, Happy Hours featuring independent films beyond conventional timeframes, and One Time Only which included a selection of movies that did not make it to the wide distribution in Russia and were shown only in Garage cinema.

Among other highlights, The One Time Only program featured two remarkable Russian premiers: Tsai Ming-liang's Days that intertwines the languages of cinema and contemporary art to create a wordless visual poem on the feeling of isolation—be it in nature or a megapolis; and Kelly Reichardt's First Cow — another director's take on a story about man and nature, a drama about male friendship and non-toxic masculinity lovingly shot with minimal movement of the camera.

The closing event featured Screening — a two-day cycle of audiovisual performances organized by Garage Screen and Fields Experimental Music Festival. The program featured local avant-garde musicians teamed up with video and media artists, aiming to bring their own works to the screen. The collaboration resulted in a vibrant and engaging cross-genre production.

GARAGE ENDOWMENT FUND

Garage has expanded its endowment development strategy and launched Endowment Fund 2: Academic Programs. Income from the fund will be used to provide grants and paid internships for students of the Museum's master's program Curatorial Practices in Contemporary Art at the Joint Department with the Higher School of Economics (Moscow), to fund the development of a specialized library collection, and support The Garage Journal: Studies in Art, Museums & Culture, which will provide an overview of the experience of the Museum's researchers and specialists from across the world.

GARAGE ARCHIVE

The challenges for this year's grant program Archive Summer that invites international researchers who write about Russian art to work in Garage Archive, were predictable. Therefore the program refocused on locally-based specialists, while the already selected foreign researchers were invited to come in summer 2021. Over August and September, four Russian specialists have been using Garage Archive to work on their variously themed research projects. Anna Brazhkina is interested in the art that faces persecution from officials and is working on a book and a website on the subject matter; Pavel Mitenko investigates issues linked to the understanding of art as definition in artivism and actionism in Russian art of the 1990s to 2000s; Svetlana Makeeva looked into the rise of installation as a medium in postwar Russian art; Andrey Shabanov continued his research into exhibition studies and started the final series of articles about Moscow galleries of the 1990s for www.artmarketdictionary.com.

CREDITS: View of Garage. Photo: Daniil Annenkov © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; The performance Actor's Work on… at Garage Screen summer cinema, 2020. Photo: Anton Donikov ©Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Aerocene flight at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, September 16, 2020. Courtesy Aerocene Foundation and Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Photo: Alexandra Evtushenko 2020, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; View of Garage Screen summer cinema by shkh studio, 2020. Photo: Ivan Erofeev © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Garage Screen summer cinema. Photo: Dasha Pochercc © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Garage MA Curatorial Practices in Contemporary Art class of 2021. Photo: Dmitry Shumov © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Researcher Svetlana Makeeva at work in Garage Archive, September 2020. Photo: Daria Khadgieva © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art