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Organized by:

MediaArtLab
Center for Art and Culture

MediaFest

The sites:

GMG Gallery
2A/1, Leont'evskiy lane
+7 (495) 626-88-80

Moscow Museum of Modern Art
9, Tverskoy boulevard
+7 (495) 694-28-90

Solyanka Club
11/6, Solyanka street
+7 (495) 221-75-57

Garage Center for Contemporary Culture
19A, Obraztsova street
+7 (495) 645-05-20

Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design
14 bldg.5A, Bersenevskaya emb.

MF Programme

TRANSITLAND: Video art from Central and Eastern Europe after the fall of the Berlin Wall 1989-2009


Central and Eastern Europe — a common information space, recovering from common historical turmoil in the 80s and 90s, at the same time this part of Europe is represented by very different countries with their own destinies and traditions. Each lived with an eye to the global context and used artistic techniques to investigate and re-form their own national identity. What we all have in common? What makes us different?

 

30 May — 30 June

Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Tverskoy blvd., 9) 

Vernissage — 19 June at 8 p.m.

Organizers: MediaArtLab Centre for Art and Culture, Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Mediafest. 

Supported by Goethe Institute Russia

‘We don’t know enough about ourselves and our neighbors’ — the organizers of the Tranzitland project must be thinking. As extensive work being done in Europe and America on the preservation, classification and analysis of their own heritage — the classics of video art, as we see it, we, in turn, have not so many opportunities to analyze and compare the informational and artistic context of Central and Eastern European Modern Art.

Thus the project was initiated by the leading centers of modern art in several countries, former comrades in the Iron curtain: InterSpace Modern Art Center (Sofia, Bulgaria), the famous Transmediale festival for art and digital culture (Berlin, Germany) and Ludwig Museum of Modern Art (Budapest, Hungary). From numerous entries an international jury selected a hundred of the most brilliant – video quintessence of ideas, opinions, cultural and social events, which showed the era from 1989 to 2009. In any case this was the main decisive factor of selection. First screenings of works from the compiled archive were held in Bulgaria, Hungary, Germany and other partner countries of the project. They were accompanied by lectures, workshops, round tables and other activities, which are able to raise public interest to the basic problem.

Central and Eastern Europe — a common information space, recovering from common historical turmoil in the 80s and 90s, at the same time this part of Europe is represented by very different countries with their own destinies and traditions. Each lived with an eye to the global context and used artistic techniques to investigate and re-form their own national identity. What we all have in common? What makes us different?

Mixing of the European ways and destinies, post Soviet period and time after the fall of the Berlin Wall are examined by Adrian Paci, Yael Bartana, Anri Sala, Harun Farocki and Andrei Ujica, Artur Zmijewski, Egon Bunne, Hristina Ivanoska, Milica Tomic, Azzoro, Kai Kaljo, Sergey Shutov, Elena Kovylina, Radek and Dmitry Gutov, Mariana Vassileva, Martin Zet, Mare Tralla, Eleonore de Montesquiou.

 These artists tell their national story. Sometimes it becomes very personal, sometimes its elements become symbols that later break political and geographical borders. Countries where most of the project's participants come from do not exist anymore. Instead there is one unified Europe and globalization. As Kathy Rae Huffman, one of the judges on the project jury board stated: They are symbolic, impressionistic, journalistic, subjective, narrative, humorous, and most of all, political works of Transitland. They express the idea of transformation and change. <...>. Now we take these works as the window to the reality of New Europe, as well as the outlook on people's life, history, and places that are often forgotten". 

Transitland Project jury:

  • Edit Andras — Hungarian art historian, author of the monograph «Cultural cross-dressing. Art on the ruins of Socialism», Budapest, 2009; 
  • Dunia Blazevic — art historian, Director of the Sarajevo Center for Contemporary Art;
  • Olga Shishko — Director of the MediaArtLab Centre for Art and Culture Festival, Moscow; 
  • Stephen Kovats — Director of the annual festival for art and digital culture Transmediale, Berlin; 
  • Kathy Rae Huffman — Curator, Berlin. 

Screenings programme:

Transitland — Documentation

Ana Husman -Lunch 2008
Aleksandar Spasoski — Voyeur 2008
Yury Vassiliev - Russian Red 2001
Sejla Kameric - What do I Know 2007
Adrian Paci Per Spectrum, 2006
Andras Fogarasi - A machine for 2006
Csaba Nemes -Remake I – X, 2007
Josef Robakobsky From My Window 1978-1999, 2000

Transitland — Performance

Lala Rašcic - The Invisibles 2005
Khinkali Juice - Georgian National Anthem 2006
Mare Tralla — Feltboots, 2006
Boryana Dragoeva Rossa - The Moon and the Sunshine 2000
Krišs Salmanis - Historia 2001
Szabolcs KissPal - Anthem 2001
Azorro Everything has been done I, 2003
Radek Group + Dmitry Gutov Demonstration, 2000

Transitland - Out of bounds

Damir Niksic - If I wasn't Muslim 2004
János Sugár - Typewriter of the Illiterate, 2001
Chto Delat - Perestroika Songspiel. The Victory over the Coup, 2008
Vadim Koshkin - Fucking Electricity/ Currents of Death  1993
Marina Gržinić, Aina Šmid — Bilocation, 1990
Pavel Braila - Eurolines Catering or Homesick Cuisine, 2006
Sergey Shutov (Russia, Germany) Amazing, How Silently It Is-II,  1994

 

The Media Forum 2010 Transitland project  also includes: 

20 June, Sunday 

At the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture (Moscow, 19A Obraztsova str.): 

15:00 — workshop by Anri Sala (Albania, France)

21 June, Monday

At the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture: 

15:00 –– “Video art after the fall of the Berlin Wall” panel discussion with the participation of major Russian and foreign critics, artists and art historians.

18:00 — workshop by Egon Bunne (Germany)

22 June, Tuesday 

At the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture: 

19:00Transitland collection screening: Part I «Out of bounds» 

23 June, Wednesday 

At the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture: 

15:00 — Transitland collection screening: Part II «Documentation»

17:00 — Transitland collection screening: Pert III «Performance»