Special installation
  
“
Three sisters ”
double channels video installation
exhibiton in Arsenal,Nizhny Novgorod
/04.40/DVD/Ch1 Ch2/
support:NCCA RF N.Novgorod/
production:Provmyza2006/
Author's
Statement:
One Similarly to three sisters from Chekhov's play, children face
to a choice. They are given right to play degree of their decision
importance, fraught with serious consequences. It is a certain theatrical
performance for children, an aspect of competitive spirit and, at
last, an element of entertainment. But children's imagination is those
that their behaviour actually balances on the verge of "game-life".
It becomes more similar to performance. The presented artistic interpretation
of Chekhov's play is contained in performance behavioural strategy.
Children play performance, which is similar to theatrical game and
on the contrary. We have put the formal part of the project on brink
of "game cinema", theatre, and artistic action playing a real situation.This
mixture of genres has allowed us to delve deeply into and to aggravate
the situation, presented in performance.
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Characters inhabiting the Provmyza's videos are passive, relative, as if time and place of their existence would settled exclusively by the moment of the action directed on them. In the Three Sisters project from Chekhov's play, children face to a choice. They are given right to play degree of their decision importance, fraught with serious consequences. It is a certain theatrical performance for children, an aspect of competitive spirit and, at last, an element of entertainment. But children's imagination is those that their behaviour actually balances on the verge of "game-life". Three sisters are a seductive and immersive contemporary video that based on a literary pre-text (Chekhov) combines two russian traditions – one deriving from the fantastic folk fairy tales and the second one with the ostranienie (V-) effect of the absurd, bizzare dada- based avantgarde.
Branka Bencic and Lorena Tadorni
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“ Idiot wind ”
aero and sound installation
presentation on La Biennale di Venezia
51st International Art Exhibition
Russian pavilion, first floor
/Venice,Italy/
production:Provmyza2005/NCCA RF N.Novgorod
Extracts of the Interview
"Unlike painters who create visual arts/experimental film and video
installation,
we decided to experiment by giving up the image altogether. The sense
of touch is
one of the most permanent kinds of man's perception.
The sense of touch is perceived as unintentional and is taken for
granted.
The body 'feeling' of an unseen object always goes
alongside nervous tension because it breaks the perception hierarchy:
seeing is prior to 'feeling'. Considering this we find wind the most
attractive.
Modern machines are able to imitate air motion. This gave a possibility
to integrate the idea of wind into modern art giving
it a status of a most sociable art: man has to come into contact with
wind.
The moving streams of air in the installation make an area
for individual contact. Individuality arises here as an event which
takes place here-and-now within the inconceivably short instant of
a rush of wind.
The 'empty', windless areas are deliberately 'false' signs - simulacra
which provoke the audience into playing a tactile game of feeling
wind
and feeling no wind. In fact we'd like to make the audience take part
in the performance in which the main part belongs to the tamed element
which still reminds of its power and whose image is created by the
pattern of the audience's behavior. The plot develops from an unbearably
light to strong wind,
from a slight breath of wind to supple and springy resistance,
to confrontation and collision. The force of physical action arouses
complex metaphysical feelings, and its visual minimalism suggests
numerous mythopoetic connotations of wind, air and elements.To achieve
this,
a suite of three halls is required; behind the perforated walls of
the halls
there are machines which produce wind. The installation space for
the wind
is made of a homogeneous material, there are deliberately no visual
emphases.
Besides the audience are disoriented by the dim light and unexpected
streams
of wind of different strength. Yet the most important thing in the
installation
is the marked borderline between play and real danger. By appealing
to the sensor and psychosomatic experience of perception the situation
is arranged so that the audience are exposed not only to the wind's
tricks
such as a ruined hair-do or blown up skirt but the danger of cold.
That is why one's stay inside "Idiot wind" is limited to 5 minutes.
In the project we give the wind a possibility to carry a sound
or a word from one place to another. Children's voices cross
the empty areas carrying certain notions to the audience."
   
   
“ The Slippery Mountain
”
single channel video installation,
the projection on vertical,
concave construction that resembles a mountain
/06.06/Loop/DVD/Ch1Ch2/
support:NCCA RF N. Novgorod/
production:Provmyza 2004/
The project is finalist for the All-Russian competition Arsenale 2004
Extracts of the Interview
Sergey: The word surfing' in the modern language describes
many different conditions which, I believe, carry anthropological
meanings.
First of all it is Net surfing - interaction of Man with the Net,
with the information space. Besides it is a style of perception,
take for example skimming through books.
We intended the name to give the idea that surfing is a metaphor
of certain peculiarities of living in the modern world.
Galina: We'd like to add that the idea of surfing contains an archetypal
message
from the world of recurring dreams familiar to almost everyone.
It is a message of the instincts to the rational parts of our mind.
The size of the projection display of about 5 meters high; the construction
in the shape of a sphere segment hanging above you and the low-frequency
sounds
were intended to create an image of a sacred spot and mythological
time,
a feeling of the sanctified and the dangerous equilibration.
One cannot get rid of these impressions; they keep challenging and
provoking you.
That was why we decided to take several close-ups of our characters'
faces.
Brief Synopsis:
"The sight of the extreme performance will
remind a curious spectator of the horror
of the formerly endured nightmare, in which the spectator had to climb
up and roll
down a steep slope, as well as of the punishment of mythic Sisyphus.
Topical art,
as the artists assert, is the very potentially useful work the outputs
of which are
useless in the framework of the existing society, and the work itself
is endless.
But as Camus believed, a struggle to reach the top is sufficient to
fill one s heart
with hope." /Lyubov Saprykina, Art Critic/
press
   
“ Ball,skate,racket,bicycle
in aggressive attack "
four channels video installation
/50.00/Loop/DVD/Ch1Ch2/
support:NCCA RF N. Novgorod/
production:Provmyza 2002/
Brief Synopsis:
The diagram of militant rhythms, images and
sounds is intended to shock and
frighten the audience. The prestigious and fashionable attributes
of basketball and
tennis defy the surrounding them radiance and turn into an assault
weapon.
Author's Statement:
The installation manipulates with popular sports
objects with the aid of computer animation. The trajectory of the
objects' motion agrees with their real movements
in a sport game. Assault tactics are selected. The object keeps moving
towards the camera. The multiplication of the sport objects within
one projection by 4 similar ones represents a mass psychological attack.
A special montage allows showing abstract visual effects, which are
invisible for the naked eye, and which appear in the object's motion.
A mathematically, accurately timed sequence of the sport objects'
attacks (within one projection, as well as between different ones)
adds the esthetics of rigid logical structuralism to the installation.
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“ Interaction installation
for cable,hand and flash ”
2 cables/2 speakers/2 flashes/
production:Provmyza2000/
Brief Synopsis:
Installation makes use of light (flash) and sound (an electronic click)
at their maximum peak expression, which originates in the direct contact
of a low-frequency cable against a hand. Unlike a real-world situation,
where it is not always possible to control a process, an installation
is an artificially created situation and therefore easily controllable.
When touching the cable, people feel a weak electric charge,a kind
of alternative to light and sound, as it is not fully sensed by us.
This working model reveals the essence of the "hidden threat" mechanism.
People get involved in a "dangerous" interactive game. They create
by their own electronic music, with luminous effects, and get an electric
charge. Only time will show the consequences of this game.
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“ Wet Chicken ”
single channel video installation
projection on aluminium board
/04.20/Loop/DVD/Ch1Ch2/
support:NCCA RF N. Novgorod/
production:Provmyza2003/
Installation version of videoperformance.
Author's Statement:
The image is projected onto a large aluminum sheet. This kind of screen
material
creates a light-reflection effect which visually resembles water flow.
The vertical transformation drives the image into narrow, restricted
limits.
The monotonous sound of the working ventilator creates additional
suspension.
Brief Synopsis:
We are concerned with the theme of violence not the explicit bodily
or disciplinary kind of violence, but the kind of violence
which imperceptibly penetrates into the life of each of us
and destroys our freedom. The media environment around us harbors
quite
a few sources of danger and compulsion, e. g. advertisements.
The advertisements intrude into our audiovisual space, subjecting
us imperiously
to their rhythm, vocabulary, to say nothing of imposing things to
choose.
Our "soaked hen" is a (ironic) metaphor of a weak-willed
object of violence.
Soaking and drying the girl in front of the video camera
we deliberately achieved commercial attractiveness and high image
quality.
There would be no difference between this work and
any to which the model girl was exposed when the commercial was being
shot.
The aesthetics of advertisements can swallow up everything,
even the statement about the advertisements' abuse.
It turns one into a weak-willed consumption object.
press
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