News from Garage - New Season | April 2021

NEW SEASON IS OPEN

The new exhibition season is open at Garage. You can find out more below.

 

 

NEW SEASON: BEYOND THE EXHIBITIONS

 

GARAGE LIVE

Assuming Distance: Speculations, Fakes, and Predictions in the Age of the Coronacene includes several projects implemented outside the exhibition space as part of the Garage Live program.

On March 25 and 26, the performance The Lockdown S-song, created by exhibition participant Genda Fluid, took place in the Museum Atrium. The lyrics tell a story of forced solitude and yearning for collective interaction and were written by the artist in self-isolation during the pandemic. Her mood at the time, which she described as “things are not great, but it’s not desperate yet,” inspired the essence of the work and informed the choice of medium, a musical form referencing both spiritual songs and occult mantras.

As part of the exhibition, the collective Theater of Mutual Operations will present the immersive performance The University of Birds. Inspired by birdwatching during quarantine, the project fits into the eco-critical reassessment of humans’ relationship with other species and offers a new type of knowledge, one that is sympathetic and intuitive. The set up for the performance acts as an independent installation accessible throughout the exhibition and is located in unusual Museum spaces (the dead-end Café staircase, the space behind the mezzanine floor wall), like birds nesting in the eaves. The dates of the performances will be announced on the Events page on the Museum web site.

 

Every Monday at 20:00 and on weekends at 14:00, Garage Auditorium turns into a screening room and group therapy space that hosts the video vaudeville No Avoiding the Apocalypse! by Techno-Poetry Cooperative. The project examines important social and professional issues that concern the artists involved—inclusive art and education, artists’ labor, gender diversity, and the visibility of the LGBTQ+ community—and develops as a series of fantastical, conspirological, and interactive “redemption” exercises in which “agents of the future” take part. During the exhibition, the artists will also give a concert on the theme of No Avoiding the Apocalypse!, which will take place in the Garage Screen summer cinema. The date of the concert will be announced on the Events page on the Museum web site.

And finally, NONSNS hybrid self-organized group will be releasing “episodes” of NONSNS SHOW on the Museum’s YouTube channel throughout the exhibition. Each show features the artists and representatives of the Russian contemporary art world acting out four different popular TV programs. With this project NONSNS aims to hack the local art community’s internal mechanisms and bring them to the surface.

 

NEW SEASON AT GARAGE SHOP

Garage Shop has introduced a range of merchandise to mark the new exhibition season. Artists participating in Assuming Distance were invited to collaborate with the Garage design team. Maxim Trulov and Ksyusha Lastochka made a series of unique ceramic objects; Anna Fobia’s work was transformed into a jigsaw puzzle; MishMash Group designed textile masks as a gift for private view guests; and Vladislav Kruchinsky produced the Museum’s first ever set of playing cards. Items in the Present Continuous collection include ironic erasers and postcards. Customized T-shirts are coming soon to both collections.

 

SPECIAL MENU

The Garage Café special menu for the season was created together with Assuming Distance participant Alexander Shchurenkov. His current artistic research focuses on the contemporary obsession with psychic and physical “enhancement” and the use of alternative medicine. The menu is inspired by this theme and the concept of the “food of the future”, and includes Energy Balance salad with edamame beans, Super Soup with goji berries, the Power of the Mind veggie patty, and the dessert Crystal Shards. Assuming Distance artist Anna Fobia designed the Mugwort herbal cocktail as an intervention in the menu and it is served with a surprise element that includes pictorial elements of her artworks.

 

SPECIAL COMMISSION

YOURMUM’SKNIGHT collective from Nizhny Novgorod, which brings together Assuming Distance participants Maxim Trulov, Ksyusha Lastochka, and Ivan Seriy, created a special design for the information banner outside the Museum in Gorky Park. Its features characters from the collective’s imaginative pictorial universe and references the season’s exhibitions.

 

INCLUSION IN WEB AND DIGITAL TECHNOLOGIES

In February and March Garage Inclusive Programs Department ran a theoretical and practical course via Zoom, aimed at product and cultural managers, to discuss assistive technologies and the principles of developing accessible digital products. The course was a lead up to the sixth annual Experiencing the Museum conference and part of its education program. This year’s conference was focused on the role of web and digital technologies in creating an accessible environment.

 

DIGITAL WORKERS’ CONFERENCE

From March 19 to 21, Garage Digital Grant 2020 participants Anna Engelhardt, Sara Culmann, and eeefff group (Dina Zhuk, Nikolay Spesivtsev) held a joint online Digital Workers’ Conference that built on their artistic research. Problems of algorithmic labor were discussed with bloggers, outsourcing platform workers, and CGI production employees. The conference featured commentary by technology researcher Liliya Zemnukhova. Further information and recordings of the event (in English and Russian) are available on Garage Digital.

 

GARAGE DIGITAL GRANT OPEN CALL

The new season of the Garage Digital grant program—Situated Worlds—invites artists and researchers to explore the idea of multiple coexisting worlds and ways of creating them, drawing on Donna Haraway’s theory of “situated knowledges.” The program is open to Russian and international artists and groups applying with projects for a new work in any medium that allows for exhibition and distribution online. You can find out more about the application process and grant conditions on Garage Digital. Applications should be submitted no later than June 12, 2021.

 

A CHRONICLE OF CONTEMPORARY CINEMA. INNOVATORS VS ARCHAISTS

In April Garage launched its first fee-based online course. The program invites those who wish to understand the landmarks of twenty-first-century cinema to focus on the innovators and classic filmmakers who produced the most significant and talked about films over the past twenty years. Participants will analyze directors’ vision, the style and poetics of each movement, study the connections with the earlier tradition, and learn more about the revolution of the late twentieth century and innovations in cinema. The course is in Russian.

 

PREVIOUS EXHIBITIONS

THE ART NEWSPAPER RUSSIA AWARD

The Garage exhibition "We Treasure Our Lucid Dreams." The Other East and Esoteric Knowledge in Russian Art 1905–1969 (January 31–August 9, 2020) was awarded the Exhibition of the Year prize by The Art Newspaper Russia at its annual award ceremony. The jury was particularly impressed by the innovative research into esoteric knowledge in Russian twentieth-century art that formed the basis of the exhibition. Curated by Katya Inozemtseva and Andrey Misiano, “We Treasure Our Lucid Dreams” took a close look at the work of artists who were members of secret societies or who constructed individual practices informed by their esoteric interests.

 

THE 2ND GARAGE TRIENNIAL PODCAST

The 2nd Garage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art A Beautiful Night for All the People closed in February, but you can now revisit it in digital format. The 3D virtual panorama of the exhibition created thanks to the Museum’s partnership with Gazprombank was supplemented by an English-language audio tour based on a Russian podcast by curator Sasha Obukhova and psychologist Egor Egorov.

 

CREDITS: Assuming Distance: Speculations, Fakes, and Predictions in the Age of the Coronacene, installation view, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2021. Photo: Anna Temerina © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Present Continuous, installation view, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2021. Photo: Alexey Narodizkiy © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Assuming Distance: Speculations, Fakes, and Predictions in the Age of the Coronacene, installation view, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2021. Photo: Yuri Palmin © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; David Claerbout, Unseen Sound, installation view, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2021. Photo: Ivan Erofeev © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Genda Fluid, The Lockdown S-song, performance documentation, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2021. Photo: Mark Boyarsky © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Assuming Distance: Speculations, Fakes, and Predictions in the Age of the Coronacene, installation view, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2021. Photo: Yuri Palmin © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Techno-Poetry Cooperative, still from No Avoiding the Apocalypse! 2021. Courtesy of the artists; NONSNS SHOW backstage. Photo: Anton Donikov © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Photo: Ivan Erofeev © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Experiencing the Museum conference, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2021. Photo: Anton Donikov © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Sara Culmann, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, 2021 © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; "We Treasure Our Lucid Dreams." The Other East and Esoteric Knowledge in Russian Art 1905–1969, installation view, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2020. Photo: Alexey Narodizkiy © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; 2ndGarage Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art A Beautiful Night for All the People, installation view, Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2020. Photo: Alexey Narodizkiy © Garage Museum of Contemporary Art