MOSCOW + Russia/Ukraine
SELECTED SECONDARY* PERFORMANCES
* read more about different types of performances in East by Northeast HERE ; to see the full list of all performances go HERE
From Dzyga To Detenpula
22/2/2018 Lviv, UA
The core of this work was based on my communication error and my way of turning this into an art performance. As I had only a few days in Lviv, the performance From Dzyga to Detenpula had to be organized from a distance – similarly to many other performances, talks, and presentations I made on the way, not to mention even more crucial and seemingly never-ending searches for new ‘homes’ in each next destination.
While arranging the presentation in Lviv I got confused because I was simultaneously communicating also with performers in Kyiv and managed to agree on presenting my performance in Lviv at the same time in two different galleries – Dzyga and Detenpula. Were I working in any other art medium such a situation would be quite hard to solve. But due to the flexibility of performance art, I simply altered my previous plans and decided to make a performance walk which would be connecting both Dzyga and Detenpula galleries.
During the walk, I was reading my online conversations with Lviv curators in which we were discussing the preparation of the performance. Thus, the end result was a “performance about making a performance”.
Master and Margarita
20/3/2018 Moscow, RU
In this work, I was ice skating in circles in Patriarch Ponds, Moscow, where Woland, one of the main protagonists of Mikhail Bulgakov’s “The Master and Margarita” makes his appearance for the first time. At the same time I was listening to 3hrs long audio version of the book from the headphones. The performance ended together with the end of the recording.
Master and Margarita was selected for publishing in the Transart Communication 30 catalogue.
Lenin
29/5/2018 Ulan-Ude, RU
The performance happened in the public space of Ulan-Ude, the capital of the Republic of Buryatia, one of Russia’s federal subjects. Mongolic Buryat people have their own language, many of them are Buddhism adherents. Thus, as in many other administrative bodies of the Russian Federation, a clash between the Russian tradition/language/Russian Orthodox Church and the local culture can be felt in Buryatia. Also, the world’s largest Vladimir Lenin head sculpture is standing in Ulan-Ude’s Sovetov Square. From its erection in 1971 as a symbol celebrating USSR’s “communist” regime, the sculpture remains nowadays a key tourist attraction of the city.
For my performance, I got inspired by this mixture of traditions and histories, ironically clapping to the head of Lenin, spinning hair in front of the governmental building (to be eventually thrown away by one of its guards), circling a fountain in the manner of Buddhist temples’ visitors (circumambulating) or dancing to the sounds of pop songs and the Buryat anthem.
Lenin was selected for publishing in the Transart Communication 30 catalogue.
Kak na voyne (Like In a War)
7/7/2018 Kyiv, UA
Kak na voyne (“Like in a war” in Russian) is a song by popular Russian rock group Agata Kristi. The first time I heard it was a week before the performance, around midnight, when coming back in a taxi from the center of Minsk (BY) to my temporary home in the city’s periphery. This was in the middle of a performance festival that I co-organized there – an extremely exhausting but also fulfilling and joyful event. My artistic presentation in Kyiv was the concluding performance of my similarly exhausting but exciting research trip via the Trans-Siberian.
Kak na voyne was a very personal artistic report from a long journey. The key visual element was myself wearing my heavy traveling backpack together with various artifacts I collected on the way. I was playing music I listened to during the trip and selected records from my audio-diary. The piece culminated with the collective dancing to Agata Kristi’s song and the final calming down and me leaving a symbolic mark on my body with a small cut by a scalpel.
The performance was part of my open series of “tourist performances”, together with, especially, Tourist (Bucharest, RO, 2017), Standing Tourist (Irkutsk, RU, 2018) and Crawling Tourist (Ulaanbaatar, MN, 2018).
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