“ Despair ”

/29.45/HDV/Ch1Ch2/Russia/
script:G.Myznikova,S.Provorov/
directors:Galina Myznikova & Sergey Provorov/
camera:V. Skuchaev/
cast:A.Kurizyn,A.Nosov,I.Yeroshovetsand others
edit:S.Provorov/
support:National Center for contemporary art, Volga branch/
production:Provmyza2008/

-Winner Tiger Award for Short -
38th International Film Festival Rotterdam

There is an incredible artistic wit of mimicry, that can not be explained
by the fight for life, and is too refined to cheat casual enemies….,
and that seems to be created just for sensible human
eyes by an amusing artist.
/Vladimir Nabokov, writer, philosopher/

The most radical manifistation of the mentioned three elements: minimalism, subject turned into object by the context and image outside of symbolic dimension – is project of Provmyza devoted to problems Of Mimicry. Being  unable to endure the intensity of light and aggressive visual aspects of the environment, the organism assimilates to its surroundings, becomes a spot in the picture, mimicries. In the work “Despair” the environment takes a group of people into possession, they become “objectified” i.e. turn into a part of the total scare, but not less powerful because of that visuality. The visible is not significant or colossal, but its impact is total and omnipresent.
Rodi On, art criric /Japan/

PROVMYZA art group is two artists – Galina Myznikova and Sergei Provorov who have been working together for nearly 15 years. In spite of their constant and intensive artistic search in the area of video art, they manage to preserve their own distinctive style
based on metaphoric presentation of the permanence of objective reality in visual forms.

Their new Despair video project is ambivalent. Primarily, this applies to the content: we are told a story, although devoid of either concrete daily-life, historical or other links, yet quite comprehensible: a bird, saved by people, survives in human hands, stays free and flies away. The story is quite ordinary and very humane – the plot of a timeless parable. On the other hand, it is not a story, but a kind of dance – figures on the snow that either mimic the poor monochrome landscape or, on the contrary, display the plastique of unusual postures and indefinable movements. The potential discord between man and nature gives rise to their internal suspense. The stream of man and the stream of nature are separated rather than united, but the drive to unification takes place in performance. The term performance, as one of the main genres of modern art, quite precisely defines the meaning of this strange show: this is performance proper, the extras’ movements along the designated trajectories, submission of the group of people, filmed by the camera, to a certain external will, shown through a perceptible degree of suspense. The beginning and end of the performance resemble ‘a still life’ suggesting Accord – it is ‘stasis’, a form which may absorb a deep and contradictory feeling and transform it into the expression of something united (accordant) and reinforcing the life concept.
The bird’s transformation from a still life to a living being resembles a dance. That is, in terms of the plot, it is a discourse on the most important subject of art, on the eternal and insoluble issue of life and death, on their, at times, elusive borderline, on the transition of the material to the non-material and contrariwise sometimes. The Despair is the artists’ desperate attempt to speak to the utmost generally, simply and clearly. But as it may be expected, in modern art (because it is also typical of the modern world), nothing turns out so simple, but ambiguous: dark and concealed, hidden and beautiful, mysterious, unseen.
The ultimately simple but monumental landscapes and interiors are a kind of signs, almost formulae due to their characterlessness and emptiness. The black-and-white colour scale totally devoids the image of all ‘support’ that might suggest links to certain recognizable objects, but, at the same time, the two spaces – the inner and the outer – are easy to recognize and identify as they simultaneously resemble both all ruins in the world and all snow-covered fields with lonely trees. Every frame is a preparation for the exit or the exit itself into the extra-frame field of timelessness: nowhere means everywhere.
PROVMYZA belong to those authors who rely on the classical tradition and do it deliberately and fearlessly. The Despair reveals a distinct influence of Dreyer and Bruegel, 17th century still lifes and Tarkovsky’s rhythmic. This is the choice declared by the artists who rely in the 21st century on culture per se without stylization and direct quotation.
Anna Gor, art criric /Russia/