»A new system of references – digital Russia together with X«.1 The exhibition bearing this title does not aim to show net art or art associated with digital technologies, but – according to the curator, Eugenia Kikodze from the Gelman Gallery– art (of Russian or Ukrainian origin) AFTER the digital wave. This very ambitious exhibition, which opened at the end of December 2003 in Moscow’s »Central House of the Artist« (CDCh) – an art temple of the Soviet era reduced to a sort of general store for art – presented an assorted selection of more than thirty artists: a lot of painting with cross-references, such as art-historical screenshots by Georgi Puzenkov, Kerim Ragimov’s action-game scenes, uninspired Photoshop montages by Alexandr Saburov and Slava Mizin, digitally processed photographs from the series »Half Action Life« by AES, 3-D wire meshes by Nadezda Zubareva, photos by Dmitri Prigov about the »computer in the Russian family« (as a reading lamp), or documentation on a political demonstration with Microsoft icons in the public sphere by Diana Maculina & Artkamikadze.

However, the fact that Russia cannot yet be completely digitized, that every upper-middle-class household does not yet possess the latest in electronic entertainment equipment, was shown by the »commitment» of an international electronics company, which did not only sponsor its way into the subtitle of the exhibition: its »works« also make up almost a third of the catalogue and were prominently displayed throughout the exhibition in chic glass cases.

Net-art works or representatives from the Russian net-art scene of the nineties, on the other hand, were barely to be found. Only Alexei Shulgin, who in recent years has worked mostly in real space, was given a marginal showing with a data helmet. The prototype of the device, conceived in collaboration with Aristarch Chernyshov, provides systematically distorted views of the world outside the helmet. The central item in the helmet is the »Shine Box«2, developed by Chernyshov, which was meant to ring in a »new era of television«. The small box, which the media artist even wanted to develop so it was ready for production and could become a normal component of television sets, allows a great range of static and dynamic deformations of the television image being shown, thus reducing any selected television programme to a more or less aesthetic background hiss devoid of any informational content. Apart from the helmet, Chernyshov also used the »Shine Box« in the installation »Final Adjustment«, also on display, which motivated visitors, especially the younger ones, to violence against (padded) television sets: conventional attempts to rectify the distorted picture (by hitting the set), however, only changed the type of distortion.

The videos and pictures by the artists’ group »Sinii sup« (Blue Soup) are completely different, although they can also be related to mass-media reality (two members of the group are designers at the private Moscow television station STS). Whereas this group formerly specialized in minimalist, usually abstract, two-dimensional video miniatures, it has now turned to the three-dimensional. Short 3-D animated videos and an outsized »light box«, which shows a computer-generated 3-D landscape with three women, make a superficially brilliant impression, but seem utterly lacking in real content. Or, as one could recently read in a court report3: the main function of »Sinii sup« videos was to »reinforce depressive moods« or to »blur reality«.

 

Translated by Timothy Jones

 

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