PLACES OF MAGIC POWER, 2024
18.03 - 25.06, GROUND Solyanka, Moscow
Curators: Irina Korina, Ekaterina Troyepolskaya, Andrey Rodionov
Light Design: Elena Perelman
Photo documentation: Vika Ros
Material: metal table with the coat of arms of Moscow covered with gold, Peter the Fighter Pilot suitcase, red velvet, photo printing tools, photography, video
In classic manual black-and-white photo printing, light from the enlarger lamp passes through the film negative, then through the lens of the objective lens onto the photosensitive emulsion of the paper, then the image is focused, exposed, developed, washed and dried.
Once in the school photo lab Lyudmila Zinchenko showed us how to print pictures from a phone on a photo enlarger. In the experiment, instead of a frame with photographic film, we put a phone on the screen of which we displayed a video of a live broadcast from Times Square in New York. The light from the phone screen replaced the light from the lamp and passed through the lens of the photographic enlarger. Instead of light-sensitive photographic paper on the table below the exposed image, a frame with a white background. On white you could see details better, which helps to focus and adjust the frame more easily. To adjust the sharpness, we used a special device called a focus scope, a device similar to a jeweler's loupe that can be used to see the grain of the photo. I remember the delight of watching the miniature life on the other side of the world, people in America going to work or taking a walk and not even realizing that they were being watched by a group of students in a dark red room in Russia through all those refractions and little screens. I remember this peeking effect, something spy-like, laboratory-like, as if we were studying new life under a microscope in secret from everyone. I remember the fun and joy of science.
When the theme of the Moscow 24 exhibition was announced, I thought about broadcasts and remembered the case described above. But how to transform a memory into a work for a particular exhibition?
Instead of a live broadcast shot by cameras in America, I put video recordings of places dear to me in Moscow that I am nostalgic for and always remember. They are somewhere around the corner, I pass by them. If they were gone, I would be gone too.
“The Moscow - 3” railway station, where I often pray on the bridge about traveling far away; “Ostankino cemetery”, where my grandmother Tanya and grandfather Tolya are buried; the intersection of Hospital Lane and Gilyarovsky Street, where my first "French kiss" happened; Iverskaya chapel, whose golden figures were cast by my grandfather; “the Rostokinsky aqueduct”, where I used to walk with my relatives as children; “the Cosmos Cinema”, where I watch movies all my life; Vodopribor factory, where my grandfather worked and a playground with a mosaic channel where I used to play; “the Secret Yard” in Mamonovsky Lane, where we used to bury our secrets with girlfriends; “the Perspektiva lab” and “the Rodchenko Art School”, where I can meet my lover; my native Yard on Mira Prospect; “the Pump Station” in the forest of Sokolniki Park; the studio on Povarskaya Street. These are my places of power in Moscow at the moment.
A portable photo lab is presented at the exhibition. It is possible to enter inside the space and see videos from the magical places as if you were in darkroom and looking through a focus scope. A portal to the native Moscow places of power through the representation of the artist's printing procedure hidden from everyone.
Video
Geo-Locations