Exhibitions

Sergey Katran. Crack, May 1-15, 2023

Exhibition, installation, happening

The exhibition that I have planned will take place under several conditions, the main of which is cooperation and solidarity.

The Electrozavod Gallery, which stopped for a while in its run from agile developers, this time on the territory of the Fazotron plant at Malaya Gruzinskaya, 54, has a characteristic “special sign” of space – a huge crack that has passed through the floor and walls, and at the same time and for all exhibitions and events that took place in this place.

Once we were discussing what else could be held in the gallery, and the artist Kirill Ivanov suggested, in the order of delirium, to make the festival “Crack”, at which we would comprehensively beat this conspicuous detail of the space.

We laughed and moved on to discuss other pressing issues.

But the Crack theme continued its development and was embodied in the exhibition. More precisely, it will become an exhibition when you, dear friends, come to the Electrozavod Gallery and take part in the happening.

The event gives everyone the opportunity to become one of the participants in the common cause.

At my request, you brought bright unnecessary things with you. They, as personal evidence of solidarity, we will need for an important ritual. After the show, you can pick them up, and if you do not need them, then I will transfer them to a swap, which is carried out by friendly communities.

We know May 1 as the international day of solidarity of workers, which, for example, in the Soviet Union was always accompanied by large-scale demonstrations – a routine that I could not stand.

We also remember May 1 at the initiative of artists. The most striking example of which is the monstrosities of Artyom Loskutov, who has been celebrating the holiday of Peace, Spring and Labor in Novosibirsk since 2004 with nice people armed with witty and absurd slogans on banners, and with a festive mood. Over time, monsters spread to many cities in Russia and abroad.

Historically, May 1 has been celebrated since 1889 by decision of the Paris Congress of the Second International as a day of remembrance for the Haymarket massacre that took place in Chicago in 1886, and also as a holiday for all working people.

During a demonstration of workers who took to the streets, defending the rights to an eight-hour day and better working conditions, provocateurs threw a bomb at the police. Several policemen and workers were killed. The police started shooting. They killed four workers and wounded several dozen. This was the reason for the arrest of eight anarchists, four of whom were hanged.

Let us return, however, to the Treshchinka exhibition. I propose to celebrate this significant event as a joint pastime for your favorite meaningless business in the circle of like-minded people who wished to share this severe holiday mood with me on this day.

Text: Sergey Katran

Photo: Dima Filippov

 


Cyfest 14: Ferment, The International Media Art Festival, Instalation Thousand handshakes / 10.10.2022 – 25.10.2022

Curators: Anna Frants, Elena Gubanova, Victoria Ilyushkina, Sergey Komarov, Natalia Kolodzei

HayArt Cultural Center, Erevan, Armenia

Photo: Ann Prilutckaia


UNTIL THE WORD IS GONE. OXFORD 24.11.2021-23.10.2022

CURATOR’S NOTE

Until the Word is Gone is a poetic exploration of the nature of language and human civilisation. It features twenty-six terracotta sculptures created between 2016 -2021 and embodying sound waves of the word “art,” uttered in dead, endangered and living languages (among them are Wichita USA, Pushtu, Gujarati, Finnish, Japanese, Tibetan, Armenian, French, Kazakh, Baoulé, Arabic, Crimean Tatar, Tangut, Nabati, Turkish, Hebrew, German, English, Old Icelandic and many others). A similar installation is on permanent display in Normandy at Les Jardins d’ Étretat, overlooking Monet’s picturesque cliffs, which are listed as UNESCO World Heritage view.

The installation is an in-depth cross-disciplinary project at the intersection of linguistics, art, ethnography, and anthropology. It traces the role of the word in the history of mankind and culture. It is an exploration of the nature of human language and origins of human civilisation. Firs art forms are believed to have appeared at least 30,000 years ago and the emergence of the word “art” marked transition to an important new stage in human evolution. Referring to this, the artist looks into the correlation between meaning and visual representation as the word “art” assumes shapes of multiple phonetic sound waves, transformed into terracotta sculptures. Whilst encouraging the awareness of humanity’s shared linguistic heritage, the project also reminds of the endangered indigenous languages, which, sadly, continue to disappear. The sculptures embody the fragility of human civilisation and vulnerability of the cultural heritage subject to the destruction caused by wars, natural disasters, and climate change.

In the face of these challenges, the research on endangered languages becomes of paramount importance, thus, helping save linguistic diversity for future generations in the same way as biologists and climate activists strive to preserve biodiversity on this planet. Languages are storehouses of history, culture and literary tradition, each offering a unique perspective on the world and effectively summing up the millenia of human experience. Once a language disappears, a certain world perception gets irretrievably lost with it, and humanity becomes poorer for that. According to J.C. Maher, if one language cannot contain human wisdom in its entirety, then knowledge and peaceful dialogue reside in the language diversity.

Considering the above, the phenomenon of polyglotism becomes of paramount importance. As observed by Vivian Cook, “a person who speaks multiple languages has a stereoscopic vision of the world from two or more perspectives, enabling them to be more flexible in their thinking…Multilinguals, therefore, are not restricted to a single world-view, but also have a better understanding that other outlooks are possible…” In our view, polyglotism is the truest mind-expanding practice one may imagine.

According to Sergey Katran, he drew inspiration for the project from his friendship with the late linguist, poet, hyperpolyglot and ‘linguo-diver’ Willie Melnikov who was believed to have studied over 100 languages. For the installation, he translated “art” into 125 languages. Prior to dedicating his life to poetry and linguistics, Melnikov obtained his Ph. D. in Medicine and worked as a virusologist. Katran’s and Melnikov’s joint project was “an experiment in summoning up the builders of that ill-fated tower <…> who quickly became involuntary polyglots, learning to understand intuitively each other’s foreign speech whilst working towards their shared goal.” The underlying hope of Until the Word is Gone is to encourage build cultural and linguistic bridges, as well as work to protect the rare indigenous languages.


Sergey Katran. Murls. 17-27 may 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.

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photo Tanya Sushenkova


Snow Policy

June 20 – October 21, 2019, Opera House, Tsaritsyno exhibition-installation of artist Sergey Katran

The Tsaritsyno Museum-Reserve presents the exhibition Sergei Sergey Katran’s Snow Policy. The exhibition combines the capabilities of the architecture of the XVIII century and modern art.

Katran conceived the exhibition “Politics of Snow” as a gigantic installation, part of which includes the interior of the neo-Gothic palace, elements of its external decoration, and marble statues of the 19th century. Decorative rosettes on the facade of the building turned into “snowflakes” and took their place on the stele and flags that adorn the exhibition space.

The project is based on a fantasy of climate failure, which caused unprecedented snowfall in the summer months. For visitors to the Opera House, this strange natural phenomenon will not be a catastrophe, but the opportunity to take a fresh look at the palace (architect VI Bazhenov, 1785) and the famous Sheremetev collection of sculptures from the Ostankino Museum-Estate in Moscow. In this case, the viewer is included in the mystification, becoming its object and participant.

Snow Policy – a practical embodiment of the idea of ​​Boris Groys. “Let’s take the snow covering the Russian cities in an even layer. He is the artist, the powdered streets are his exhibition, you can criticize or praise him, but the artist’s plan will remain unknown, because it is impolite to impose your own anthropocentrism on such a consistent phenomenon of nature. So we get a romantic background. , and an absolutely hermetic modernist object, an innocent, abstract, always implacable site-specific. In the future, only snow, rain, sunlight and some others, absolutely non-commercial, by the way, nye phenomena and will be perceived aesthetically, and everything that makes a person will eventually become the domain of pragmatics – lower (bicycle-bomb) and the highest (politics, art) of the order. ” (Boris Groys. Snow as an artist.)

The start of the project was the performance of the PoemaTheatre group. The exhibition demonstrates the consequences of the weather anomaly: snow installations with the participation of Ostankino statues and plasma screens with performance documentation. A part of the installation is a sound composition specially written for the installation of the Politics of Snow by composer Vladimir Rannevym.

The exposition is accompanied by a sound series consisting of phrases from real media publications about heavy snowfalls, sung by the soloist of the Electrotheatre by Alexei Kokhanov.

Exhibition of artist Sergey Katran

Video art: Sergey Katran, Artem Go, Vasily Zharkoy

Video documentation: Evgeny Vtorov

Editor: Marina Ragozina

Video News Politics Snow: Anton Baranov

Composer: Vladimir Rannev

Vocals: Alexey Kokhanov

Choreography: Vlimimir Yermachenkov

Performance: PoemaTheatre

Design by Andrey Alekseev

Coordinator: Oksana Klescherova

Photo: Marina Ragozina

Photo: Dmitry Schelkov


Phantom Museum Exhibition

Perevedenovsky Lane, 18, Moscow, 105082
Dates: November 8 – December 6, 2018
Participants: Sergey Katran, Kuzko Alexey, Roman Minaev, Anna Semenova, Natasha Timofeeva, Anya Tretyakova.
Invited guests: Alexander Minchenko and Alexander Batalov
Until December 6, 2018 space “Olivier” TIC Factory opened the exhibition (from November 8), which presents the joint installation of the Members of the Expert Council of the Tretyakov Prize.
The Phantom Museum is an attempt to create free space on the territory of art, to rethink the many interrelationships between institutional and alternative contexts of modern art and to construct the ideal “museum of the future”, the utopian center of modern art.
The Tretyakov Prize is an art project, a grassroots initiative that draws attention to the situation of the tightness of the Russian art scene. The aim of the project is to create an alternative environment in relation to state and private art awards, putting in focus the principles of popular voting and movement towards interdisciplinarity. The project combines an online gallery, options for critical remarks and sets as its mission the discovery of new names in art.
United by the project “Phantom Museum”, the participants raise the question of the actual need for institutions for the development of the artistic process. The artistic practices of each, in one way or another, are reduced to questions of the autonomy of art. Is the existence of an independent artistic environment possible? Are we able to create an alternative to hierarchical connections in modern art?
On November 16, the ceremony of awarding the Tretyakov Prize was held in accordance with the results of the popular vote in the nominations “Project of the Year”, “Unrealized Project” and “Tucer of the Year”, as well as an exhibition of prizes, each of which represents a work of art by the Members of the Expert Council. choice.
Members of the jury of the Tretyakov Prize

 


With a root torn from reality, the amputated museum of modern art does not disappear without a trace. Its contours flicker, the places of exposure of works of art store the unrealizable memory of levels. Photons are reflected from invisible walls, leaving bright rectangles of the video that did not happen on the flickering planes. It is impossible to fight against the consciousness of the artist, it is not able to accept the ban. The thinking of the artist is arranged in such a way that there is a short way from the project to its implementation. The project of the Museum of Contemporary Art, existing and real, but rejected and rejected as superfluous by imperious ideologues, provokes the consciousness of witnesses to the point of singularity to phantom pain. Performances at the Singular Symposium jointly with Natalya Timofeyeva and Vika Malkova, as well as performances of the Single Picket at the Khodynsky Field and Venice during the Biennale of Contemporary Art, organized by me together with Katya Bochavar, as well as a series of exhibitions The Internal Manifesto, the new initiative Tretyakov Prize of Ani Tretyakova, Natasha Timofeva , Anna Semenova-Gants, Alexey Kuzko and Roman Minaev, designed to raise the pathos of the elitism of Russian art and establish normal participants in the symposium and friendly contacts between participants xy ozhestvennogo process – all these practices provide the foundation and grant excessive energy space of the future building. An unpresented museum in advance receives the right to life in the reality of our consciousness and this registration makes it super-real, indestructible and protected.

Avtor: Sergei Katran


The Creative Machine 2 Exhibition

Exhibition Open to Public: ‍November 8 – 18, 2018

Hatcham Church Gallery, Goldsmiths,
St. James, New Cross Gate,
London, SE14 6AD, UK

The Creative Machine 2 Exhibition PV

Curators: William Latham, Anna Frants, Elena Gubanova, Frederic Leymarie

Vision: An exhibition exploring the twilight world between human and machine creativity. The exhibition shows works by selected artists linked to Goldsmiths and artists from the CYLAND MediaArtLab based in St. Petersburg, Russia. Developed in association with the Youth Education Center at the Hermitage Museum and The Leonardo Journal, the works shown include Virtual Reality Installations, Sculptures, Computer Art Installations, Video Art Installations and Machine Learning Art.

Artists: Marina Alekseeva, Memo Akten, Laura Dekker, Alexandra Dementieva, Jake Elwes, Anna Frants, Alexey Grachev / Sergey Komarov, Elena Gubanova / Ivan Govorkov, Sergey Katran, Parashkev Nachev, Vitaly Pushnitsky, Annie Tadne, Nye Thompson, William Latham / Stephen Todd / Lance Putnam / Guido Salimbeni / Peter Todd, Andy Lomas and Brigitta Zics

The exhibition will be accompanied by talks and panels led by Theodoros Papatheodorou (Head of Goldsmiths Postgrad Computational Arts Course).on the afternoon and evening of Friday November 9th, details to be announced.

http://creativemachine2.org/ 

Photo Report by Ben Quinborough

https://www.facebook.com/cyland.mediaartlab

https://www.facebook.com/events/2216747401895495/

 

Results of the year 2017:

  1. The exhibition «Until the World is Gone” was held in Venice. I’m grateful to Vitaly Patsyukov, Maria Cher, CrisTina Gatti, Marco Agostinelli and many friends of participants, and organizers for their support and help.
  2. A single picket entitled “De Pichetto Solidario”, a part of the art session, we are running with Katia Bochavar, was held in Venice. We acted as anti-curators and the picket attracted many great artists, who left their messages to the world in the form of art performances. Unfortunately, the artist Tatyana Altapova was detained by the carabinieri and got issued a huge fine. But all of us are sending our support to Tanya. Her performance was one of the most vivid and remarkable.
  3. With the help of the curator of the festival Katya Bochavar I took part in the Alanika Symposium, as the co-curator of the exhibition “The Inner Manifest” held in Vladikavkaz.
  4. In November the Singular Symposium was launched. Among the participants were self-organized art groups – the so-called “Natasha Timofeeva and Wika Malkova group” and “Koala Pl’ushevaya group”. Katya Bochavar was also invisibly present. It must be said that during the work of the Singular Symposium the Liquid State of the Nega was founded. This is the most important event of 2017!
  5. In the summer and autumn 2017 I was blessed to open two solo exhibitions – “The Forbidden Place” at the Electrozavod and “The Quiet Exhibition” in Zverevsky Center. They were two very important exhibitions to me, touching upon my deepest states and internal contradictions. I’m grateful to the curators and organizers Kolya Onischenko, Dima Filippov, Alexey Sosna and many friends who took part in these projects. Thanks to Alexey Mokrousov for his splendid article! Thanks to Maria Moskvicheva for her article about “The Silent Exhibition”! Thanks to all my friends!
  6. I would like to say words of gratitude to Elena Gubanova and Anna Franz for the invitation to the anniversary “Cyberfest 10”. Interactive installation titled “Oratorio of Combucha tea mushroom “Fairy rings” laid a disctance between Mikhailovsky and a plaster six-meter shepherdess and brought very unique and indispensable biological liveliness in opposition to the mourning installation of Irina Nakhova, located at the other end of the exhibition hall of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts.

I’m grateful to Dmitry Pilikin and Albina Motor for the invitation to the “Waterfront” exhibition, where I got the opportunity to develop the idea, initiated by the exhibition. The idea is “until there is no word”, and I created a five-meter sculpture titled “The ripples on the water”, which laid the ground work for the future, since the idea is to create 6 more sculptures.

The personal exhibition of “Alfa, Beta Paradise” came to being after receiving the invitation to open it in the legendary space of the KISI Tipographia (Krasnodar Institute of Modern Arts). I would like to express my special gratitude to the art-group ZIP and congratulate them upon the Kandinsky Prize. ZIP-ZIP! HOORAY! Eldar Ganeev, Stepan Subbotin, Vasili Subbotin, Evgeny Rimkevich are their names. Big thanks to Valeria and Julia Kazas for an unforgettable trip to the seaside.

The happening “Children of geniuses camping” took place at at the famous festival “Archstoyanie” – thanks to the curators Anton Kochurkin and Julia Bychkova who invited me there. Thank you for taking this risk! After all, no one knew if gown up and sober people would want to fill barrels with their bodies, representing the ideas of crowdedness and discomfort.

  1. Thanks to Kseny Podoinitsyn for the opportunity to realize my ideas at the Gallery 21. I’m also glad that this year the exhibition titled “Until a word disappears” moved to its new permanent location in the amazing park of Etretat in Normandy.
  2. This year I took part in the First Eurasian Sculptural Biennale in Astana within EXPO 2017. The installation of The Seed was awarded with a prize and I am grateful to the curators, organizers and the jury. Thanks to Eduard Kazaryan, Asya Khasanova and Yana Malinovskaya.
  3. This year I published a poetic zin “August”. It is my most lyrical anthology. I want to express my gratitude to micro-publishing company Zerno +++ and the publisher Lena Zaikina for this amazing job!
  4. “Longing for the sky”. The exhibition made by the curators Katya Sisfontets and Andrei Prigov, was included in the parallel program of the Moscow Biennale. Exclusively for this wonderful exhibition, I came up with an idea that has a potential to develop into something bigger. Thanks to Katya, Andrey, Zina Chaplina and all the participants of the crowdfunding campaign and the Planet.
  5. Another important project, which also was included in the parallel program of the Moscow Biennale, where I was lucky to take part, is the April and September exhibitions “My First Lenin”. They were initiated by Oleg Koshelets and Sergey Chernov. Thank you guys that you did not pass by the 100th anniversary of October and did something important for contemporary art!
  6. In April 2017 Katya Bochavar and I launched the exhibition titled “The Inner Manifest”, in which 12 artists took part. They made a very cool exhibition in the Hodynka Ground. I am proud that I also took part in this most significant and brightest exhibition of this year. Thanks to all artists for accepting the invitation.
  7. In the summer as a member of a group led by Natasha Timofeeva and Vika Malkova, I took part in the intervention “Bastille Day”. The main features of such strange excursions are ambivalence and fragility. It seems to me, however, nowhere but in such events do we seize the polymeric material of the present.
  8. In March 2017 Vitaly Patsyukov and Nastya Kozachenko-Stravinskaya invited me to a elitist exhibition dedicated to Sergei Prokofiev. The exhibition took place in the Prokofiev House Museum in Kamergersky pereulok. For the first time I presented the installation “The Chess of Sergey Prokofiev” that was created by me and the artist and composer Nikita Spiridonov. We showed this work again in August at the amusing exhibition in the Gallery of Ksenia Podoynitsyna at Vinzavod.

In fact, I was not going to list all the exhibitions in which I took part this year in order to sum up the result of this year, but my friends insisted. After all the friend exist to make our lives more complicated. Happy New Year, friends! Let’s keep it this way!

 

Results of 2017 (continued)

There are several more reasons to turn to this genre again.

This year in summer as a part of the international exhibition project “Street as a museum. Museum as a Street ” at all stops of Samara several great artists presented their conceptual posters on the theme “food as a social machine”. There was also my work titled “Ten irascible BADs”. I would like to send many thanks and my best wishes directly to the organizers Neli and Roman Korzhov’s to Samara! Happy New Year!

  1. “That very message” – the project of Elena Demidova, displayed this summer in the VZ space of ​​Bogorodskoye, where my work titled “Applicator” was presented too. Thank you, Lena, for this serious mediapoetic research!
  2. “Structures” – the exhibition of the Russian Museum and the curators Irina Karasik and Vladmir Pertz. I am very grateful for the invitation and gentle attitude to my works. This exhibition paradoxically structured me as well, gave new powers. Happy New Year, the Russian Museum! Best wishes to all employees who helped me realize this complex project.
  3. The exhibition “Narodovlastie” (“Power to the people”) by Lisa Savolainen and Alexandra Orlova, dedicated to the February Revolution – is a unique project that contemplate the February Revolution. Thank you, Lisa and Sasha, for what you are doing.
  4. “Framscryptsia” – the exhibition about the real thing organized by the curator Eva Arakcheeva. As far as I remember, we met during the preparation works for thid project, and later on Koala took part in the Singular Symposium, of which I havealready reported. But I am very pleased to mention this again, as Koala not only supported the project, but became its co-curator. Happy New Year to you!
  5. This project was launched in December 2016 but finished in February 2017. This fact allows we to write about it here. “Cinema of Dreams” – one of the best exhibitions of the year. If I am not mistaken Kate Bochavar was awarded the Kuryokhin Prize for this exhibition (I might be mixing up the details) This exhibition was launched in the Peschanaya Ground, and then lit up in Ekaterinburg or St. Petersburg, where it achieved fame and national recognition. Yes. You can find two of my videos on this exhibition: “The Valley of roaming fires” created with Olya Kroytor and “Penetration” created with the artist with a paddle. Katya, I have not yet met a person who would work so much. I love working myself, but your abilities just fascinate me! Let me congratulate you and award with the honorary title of the Curator (anticurator) of the year 2017 from the Singular Fund of Sergei Katran.

The exhibition titled “Movement” was held on Solyanka. Rhythm. Dynamics. I did not expect anything special from the exhibition, but it turned out to be full of surprises. All of a sudden, my “Seeds” began to attract certain interest. Then Olga Sviblova appeared and claimed the author. She appraised my work generally set me up for some new heights. After that, all sorts of unthinkable proposals and awards fell on the “Seeds”. We praise the organizers – the Agency Artis, Anstasia Potanina and Olga L’vovna!

Two final exhibitions of this year are now running in my beloved Electrozavod Gallery and the in the gallery Belyaevo. The Exhibitions are different. The Christmas Exhibition in Belyaevo became possible with the invitation of Vitaly Patsyukov – a man my love, respect and trust for whom is endless.