A Thousand Handshakes // 2022

A Thousand Handshakes

Sergey Katran, Natasha Timofeeva, Oleg Makarov
Multimedia site-specific installation
February 9 -16, 2022
Bomba Gallery, CСI Fabrika

The project builds upon Sergey Katran’s years of research exploring the ways in which the biocentric concept impacts ethical ties and building of special society networks. That said, we register a certain correlation between grassroots initiatives of artistic communities’ networks, and mycelia. Both are based on thin, interlaced fibres of daily existence.

Various forms of cooperation and mutual assistance act as a binding principle in all this. Altruism viewed as an inalienable component of the biocenosis and aided by the ethical element in anarchist ideas, are two permanent constituents present in the life of animal communities, plants and fungi, and occur in natural environments, as well as in human society. Self-organization as grassroots, independent initiative, confirms the viability of its alternative ethical practices and behaviours that radically differ from those adopted by capitalist societies, geared for profit, and based on manipulation to achieve the higher standards of living. Mutual communal support is a vital component of artistic practices. By self-organising as groups, artists find optimal ways of existence steeped in equality and mutual responsibility. The first handshake upon a meeting becomes the metaphor for an encounter of kindred artistic souls.

The mushroom anarchy, as a metaphor for grassroots symbiotic artistic communities, establishes the hubs of respect for those living entities that are prone to empathetic behaviours and for the interspecies altruism in their joint search for the way out of the environmental and cognitive impasse. The possibility of a fixed identity for such places can be glimpsed in site-specific projects of the artist Natasha Timofeeva and the artistic practices of providing geolocation points for the events, in order to identify them in real environments and real time singularity. Supplying of geographic data has an utilitarian purpose and embodies an aspect of the phenomenological concept of a “Non-place.” According to it, anonymity and attempts to isolate common typological features are complemented by the engagement with the authenticity of the site and by reclaiming hidden and forbidden zones for the environment.

The sound artist Oleg Makarov focuses on pinpointing an observer in space. His strategies find their expression in sound installations evocative of the rhizomatic structures of fungal hyphae. While perceiving music as the emanation of time, space assumes different characteristics that set the observer in motion or, on the contrary, hold one fixed, thus offering endless opportunities and situations for exercising one’s free choice.

301

photo Tanya Sushenkova