Portal
Installation / Moscow, 2018
The project was created in collaboration with Lika Gomiashvili and Leo Kem
The study of the suburbs cultural landscape and the urban outskirts, the associated issues of their development, the utopian life of their communities become a main framework for APXIV (Archive) art-collective new project, created in association with Austrian Cultural Forum and its director Simon Mraz. The focus point of our attention was one of the several old Soviet cinemas, Baikonur cinema theatre, which is currently under reconstruction. During the research work conducted by a group of APXIV residents aka employees of the specially created «Unidentified Space Agency» and Simon Mraz, it was revealed that this particular cinema theatre was not just an obvious cultural heritage, but a complete individual phenomenon, which requires some commentaries and more elaborated glance.
The special ontological status of the cinema via its presence in contemporary being interrupts the linearity of history. Like a phenomenological rabbit’s hole, the cinema theatre connects the time periods, several power lines come together.
The work "Portal" allowed the viewer to join the teleportation process into a cosmic utopia.
To do this, you need to choose a combination of on and off bulbs on light panels.
A special speculative combination moves the experiment participant to past - Soviet dreams of space exploration and flights to intergalactic ships. Teleportation takes place in the same window in which he watches during the experiment. Outside the window - pictures of space from fantastic Soviet films 60-90s.
Film shots substructured from the soviet movies:
“Orion's Loop”, “Through Thorns to the Stars”, “Guest from the Future”, “Teens in the Universe”, “Great Space Travel”, “Andromeda Nebula”, “Moscow - KASSIOPEA”, “Planet of Storms”, “Road to the Stars"