Office of Sensitive Activities / Applications Group

2017
Gradually transforming installation, sound, performance
Commissioned by V-A-C Foundation

This work investigates the shifting paradigms of perception and behavior in the digital media age. The transforming relationships between knowledge and data, body and media, fear and empathy produce epistemological hybrids and proxy-impacts. These shifts could be described as mutation. In this view, mediation becomes the key point in social, political, and cultural interactions in times of semiocapitalism

The mutation is a principle that lays in the foundation of work: the exposition changes during the exhibition. Gradually disappearing, the exhibition is changing from a display of objects into the empty halls filled with sound, traces of objects, and performing mediators who talk about the exhibition in a way in which fiction and truth are blurred. Like a Mobius strip or a TV series that starts from the middle of the season.

The first floor is dedicated to the migration of military knowledge into civilian spheres: cases when the logic of military decision-making is used in business models and start-ups. This part of the exhibition recreates the training polygons, constructed with OSB and plexiglass panels, with the visuals and texts embossed on them.

The second floor consists of a library, containing sci-fi and action literature, popular in post-soviet countries. The library also accommodates the public program, containing performative colloquiums as a part of the project. Books and their bookmarks are organized into the learning environment of the theory-fictional archive.

The next room is a dojo that held the performative training. There is the schematic narrative of the Chernobyl catastrophe, seen as a series of wrong decisions and collisions between technology, nature, and authoritarian political system, depicted on a large floor mat. There are also flower compositions, representing the frontline of the radioactive areas around Chernobyl.

The next space is titled The Hall of Linnaeus, it consists of the history of Yeti studies conducted by the scientist Boris Porshnev in the Soviet Union. Porshnev saw the Yeti as an alternative model of social architecture. “The One who hides well lives well” is a quote from Ovid written on the vitrine, presenting objects from the Darwin Museum in Moscow, the place that hosted Porshnev's seminars dedicated to Yeti studies.

The last room is flooded by purple light and a song is played through an ultra-focused speaker. This piece is based on Simon and Garfunkel’s song Homeward Bound performed by Justin Theroux in the TV series Leftovers. It appeals to the loss of hope during a worldwide catastrophe. The main hero needs to sing this song to leave the afterlife to return home.