I met Stepanida (Stefani) Vakhotina september 2021. She came to the opening of the provocative exhibition and wrote a very nice and funny post about it. Gradually it became clear that Stepanida has been describing the events of her life since 2005. Stepanida’s life turned out a little differently from the normal life of an ordinary Russian girl. At the age of 33, she managed to experience about as much as not everyone at 45. Some lyrics are very sad and dramatic, others funny and others cynical. For 16 years these fragments have been used to form an incredibly lively and colorful picture of reality from provincial Russia to Berlin. The texts are arranged in two rows along the perimeter of the gallery. They are collected in a shuffle and the reader gradually delves into the narrative, traveling through time and space. Images are not direct illustrations of texts. The connection between image and text content is more associative, atmospheric. Here the text is a chain on which the glass beads are worn. This was the first exhibition of its kind in the BAS gallery. Well, as the saying goes, it’s better to see once than to hear 100 times.
Construction of a bench and a table in front of the gallery was sponsored by QM Soldiner and Aktions Fond. Residents of the area and friends of the gallery participated in the work. The bench and table should and have become a place of communication between the inhabitants of the quarter and visitors to the gallery. It became a crossroads between different strata and age groups.
Polina Zaslavskaya, b. 1984, is a queer feminist artist, curator, art tutor, animation production designer. Teacher of DA Animation Studio since 2018, co-founding member of the Unwanted Organization Queer Feminist Art Group since 2014. She was a member of the activist art group Verhotura and Friends (Saint Petersburg and Kaliningrad) in 2008-2012. Polina has participated in numerous exhibitions and festivals in Russia, Germany, and the Czech Republic. Her first personal exhibition Utensils.365 in 2016 was dedicated to women’s home labor at post-Soviet kitchens and nominated for the Kuryokhin International Award in Contemporary Arts in 2017. Her personal exhibition Material Evidence, based on A. Kondakov’s research in hate crimes against LGBT people in Russia, was shown in Moscow in 2017, Saint Petersburg in 2018, and in Berlin in 2021. Most of her work since 2008 has been in collective projects lying at the confluence of activism and art, engaged in critical reflection of Russia’s social and political realities, but also in finding ways to resist.
Description
The watercolour series „Veshchdok“ (Forensic evidence), 2017 by Polina Zaslavskaya (RU) is based on Alexander Kondakov’s research „Hate Crimes against LGBT People in Russia“. The works in the series are included in the print edition as illustrations. „Forensic evidence“ are traces of things that turned out to be participants, accomplices, witnesses of crimes. The shadows of the objects, manifested on paper, are what is left of the things after the atrocity: a memory that leaves only the outlines of the event. It doesn’t matter what function the thing served before the event – it’s what’s left that makes sense:
Meat grinder, shovel, ashtray, iron. A nail gun, a board, a belt. Bottle, bat, cord – what was in the hands of the perpetrators at the time of the crime.
Alexander Kondakov’s research is based on court cases in which, in one way or another, information about the victim’s sexual orientation came to light. The texts of the documents refer to everyday objects with which the crime was committed. A random list of items informs about the unintentionalness of the atrocity, but indicates that fear, desire, hatred, taboo, propaganda, dissatisfaction find channels to surface. Thus, once ordinary everyday objects are transformed into instruments of murder, mockery, torture, and sexual violence.
The watercolour series „Veshchdok“ (Forensic evidence) is an art project that explores both the forms of violence themselves and the preconditions for its manifestation in relation to persecuted social groups. During the exhibition, a round table was organized to exchange views and an online conversation with the artist. The exhibition is organized by Quarteera e.V., funded by the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
The starting point of the Noesis Project (Greek noēsis, from noein – to perceive) became the most popular phrase from the Delphic maxims in Latin – Nosce te ipsum meaning Know thyself. This phrase once impressed the Author with its simplicity and capacity. What is more, it has caught his eye at the time of his personal internal experiences and – as a result – the transition to a new stage of development, based on rethinking (cognition) and the gradual transformation of his SELF. The general format of the Noesis Project is the transition of abstract painting into verbal street calligraphy: through perception of aesthetic colorful forms, identification of the letters and – finally – immersion in the deep meaning of the phrase Nosce te ipsum, the Author once discovered by painting it countless times. By combining several images and bizarre, sometimes abstract letters, the Author manages to achieve rich forms, which are – like memories – nothing but a layering of many separate images.
Thus, each work is not only a multi-layer of graphic elements, but also the Author’s impressions and memories, experienced by him during the transformation of his personality.
Artist
Zukentiy Gorobyov
Zukentiy Gorobyov is a well-known and awarded Ukrainian designer, typographer, illustrator and artist based in Kyiv. He specializes in handwritten calligraphy and informal painting. Born in 1984 in Lugansk. In 2006 he graduated from Lugansk National Taras Shevchenko Pedagogical University. Designer, typographer, illustrator, artist. Lives and works in Kiev.
Selected exhibitions and projects: “Ukraine Exists” (2016, United Nations Headquarter, New York; Ukrainian National Museum, Chicago; St.Vladimir Institute, Toronto) “From the Common Root” (2016, Klementowice, Poland) “Border of Trust” (2015, CCA YermilovCentre, Kharkiv) “To look, to read” (2015, Experimental CCA “Tea Factory”, Odessa, Ukraine “Letters or Death” (2015, Black Lizard Gallery, Dnipro) ARTKYIV (2014, Art Arsenal, Kiev) “Biruchiy Contemporary Art Project 014” (2014, Biruchiy Island, Azov Sea, Ukraine) “OURS” (2014, Kharkiv, CCA “YermilovCentre”) “Biruchiy Contemporary Art Project 013” (2013, Biruchiy Island, Azov Sea, Ukraine) “+/- 17” (2013, Lugansk, Ukraine) “Logo 581” (2011, Sumy, Ukraine) “Good” (2009-2010, Lugansk, Odessa, Kharkov, Ukraine) “My” (2010, in the framework of “SUM” festival, Lugansk, Ukraine) “Signs of Sounds” (2006, Lugansk, Ukraine).
The first meeting of the Philosophers Anonymous Club took place on 09/18/21. The topic of the report was “Will in the philosophical aspect”. Speaker: Phelim Ó Laoghaire / @phelim2 -a recent graduate of Trinity College Dublin whose research work focuses on the work of Gilles Deleuze, media theory, and issues of political will.
As self-taught photographer, Phelim Ó Laoghaire has worked with a passionate obsession since he was 14 years old. In July 2015, having just won The Irish Times Amateur Photographer of the Year Gold Medal for Street Photography, Phelim Ó Laoghaire left Ireland for Crimea, to teach at a summer camp in the coastal town, Morskoe (meaning ‚of the sea‘ or marine), where he later discovered his grandfather had once studied. There he produced his first major series, Postcards from the Black Sea.
„The lecture and open discussion will focus on the issue of will. The topic of free will was my first philosophical problem in my life. Over time, these two terms – „freedom“ and „will“ – have acquired almost contradictory concepts. So these questions about the will have moved from philosophy to cartography. What I would like to talk about is the territory. In doing so, I interpret the writings of Franz Kafka to illustrate this point by closely examining how people behave in the context of obstacles“ – Phelim Ó Laoghaire.
music for the lecture
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