Opened last Thursday that the Berliner Festspiele, “V_Museum — Platform Moscow” presents six artists from the Russian capital in a manner untraditional to such survey shows. Pavel Kiselev, Taisia Korotkova, Olya Kroyton, Alexander Lyzov, and MishMash (Misha Leykin and Masha Sumnina) show their works not in a white but a black cube through an interactive, digital interface and projectors.
Traditionalists might say that such an approach takes away the true experience in viewing art. But curator Christina Stinbercher (also known for her role as co-artistic director of the Vienna Fair), says that the approach comes from a democratizing impulse. “How can we not be stopped by boarders or by money?” she asks. “In 2007, I did an exhibition in Kazakhstan and I knew that some artworks and artists would never be able to travel.” By digitizing the works, it allows the entire show to travel worldwide on a flash drive or via a cloud service like Dropbox. “There is so much content produced in the western world (and not only), but it would be nice if they shared it elsewhere.” She goes on to say, “You collect all these exhibition catalogues, but after they are uninstalled, they sleep in people’s libraries. Why not share them?” Such an educational aspect does not escape “V_Museum” either, with the touchscreen module used to change which work is on view also displaying biographical information about the various artists involved.
By placing the works in a digital realm, the artists are also able to further play with how their work is presented. For example, Olya Kroytor enlarges her collages, usually about the size of an A4 piece of paper into poster size or larger and programs them to dance around the walls, zooming in and out, in step to a music track. Taisia Korotkova — who usually works in tempera paint on wood, documenting various industrial sites of the Soviet Union’s past — scanned and animated a selection of her drawings, setting them to a techno track off her recently deceased brother’s first album. Video artist, Alexander Lysov makes a more minimal change to his work, moving from one screen into an immersive installation of flashing color.
Going forward, Steinbrecher hopes to bring the project to other European cities like Amsterdam to further support and try and break down those traditional boundaries that might otherwise prevent artists and institutions from sharing their collections in such an open source form. However, along the way there could be more playful exhibitions in the museum’s future. “I love the idea of being able to go through a whole collection and ask the screen to show everything that is red, a way to catalogue inventory” she gives as an example, hoping this might be a way to bring in the youngest of generations as well as shake up certain overly complex curatorial practices currently en vogue.
