It&nbsp;can be&nbsp;cold in&nbsp;<a href="https://garagemca.org/en/programs/library" target="_blank">the Library</a>. We&nbsp;recommend you bring warm clothing.

Please note

It&nbsp;can be&nbsp;cold in <a href="https://garagemca.org/en/programs/library" target="_blank">the Library</a>. We&nbsp;recommend you bring warm clothing.

Main Collection

This video work by the young video artist and director Dasha Likhaya has been put together from recordings from her personal archive, shoots made for this film, and found recordings. It is constructed as a new artistic world which is close to the genre of autofiction. The main character in the film talks on the phone to her ex, reading out the text of her film application and sharing everyday news. She experiences discomfort and poeticness during this intimate dialogue, even to the extent of a physical feeling of her own powerlessness. 

The artist creates a situation in which the viewer is an accidental witness to private conversations. Documentary and found materials are transformed into artifacts of the artistic world of the film, as if they were part of its reality. The extreme zoom, which makes the images abstract, the superimposition of screens, and the materiality of the screen space support this delicate construction.

Everyday life becomes a field in which deep sensual experiences unfold: the registers of the everyday and the highly emotional alternate and encourage each other. 

At Garage the work is presented as an installation: the slight vibrations of the parachute fabric on which it is projected match the film's plot and create a special tactility of perception, changing the geometry and color of the video, but simultaneously saturating them with the randomness of movement.

This video work by the young video artist and director Dasha Likhaya has been put together from recordings from her personal archive, shoots made for this film, and found recordings. It is constructed as a new artistic world which is close to the genre of autofiction. The main character in the film talks on the phone to her ex, reading out the text of her film application and sharing everyday news. She experiences discomfort and poeticness during this intimate dialogue, even to the extent of a physical feeling of her own powerlessness. 

The artist creates a situation in which the viewer is an accidental witness to private conversations. Documentary and found materials are transformed into artifacts of the artistic world of the film, as if they were part of its reality. The extreme zoom, which makes the images abstract, the superimposition of screens, and the materiality of the screen space support this delicate construction.

Everyday life becomes a field in which deep sensual experiences unfold: the registers of the everyday and the highly emotional alternate and encourage each other. 

At Garage the work is presented as an installation: the slight vibrations of the parachute fabric on which it is projected match the film's plot and create a special tactility of perception, changing the geometry and color of the video, but simultaneously saturating them with the randomness of movement.

A Text for a Film Application

Artist and CGI specialist Sara Culmann often works with digital drawing, creating scenes in a game engine and matching her lines of research with machinima poetics. Agency of Nowhen is an online platform with short videos imitating the logic of paid content services. The project describes diverse aspects of the phenomenon of bias‑cognitive distortion of the perception of information that creates an imbalance in collective knowledge.

These episodes combine into a series of video essays exploring individual incidences of the deformation of data and the problems of measuring systems. A number of the subjects are based on a careful study of digital environments, for example the one about the production of a consensus of knowledge in Wikipedia, which is narrated by an anonymous Wiki editor who handles arguments about universality and systems for selecting and checking information. Others offer a poetic and experimental exploration of the experience of the subject’s existence in the extremely heterogeneous and randomly technogenic present day. The artist pays particular attention to failed historical lines, experiences not taken into account by society, and elements that have avoided scientific analysis.

By using a type of streaming interface and splitting the work into short episodes, the artist plays with how knowledge is distributed and how the image is circulated today: in ways that are illusory, accessible, universal, and ephemeral.

Artist and CGI specialist Sara Culmann often works with digital drawing, creating scenes in a game engine and matching her lines of research with machinima poetics. Agency of Nowhen is an online platform with short videos imitating the logic of paid content services. The project describes diverse aspects of the phenomenon of bias‑cognitive distortion of the perception of information that creates an imbalance in collective knowledge.

These episodes combine into a series of video essays exploring individual incidences of the deformation of data and the problems of measuring systems. A number of the subjects are based on a careful study of digital environments, for example the one about the production of a consensus of knowledge in Wikipedia, which is narrated by an anonymous Wiki editor who handles arguments about universality and systems for selecting and checking information. Others offer a poetic and experimental exploration of the experience of the subject’s existence in the extremely heterogeneous and randomly technogenic present day. The artist pays particular attention to failed historical lines, experiences not taken into account by society, and elements that have avoided scientific analysis.

By using a type of streaming interface and splitting the work into short episodes, the artist plays with how knowledge is distributed and how the image is circulated today: in ways that are illusory, accessible, universal, and ephemeral.

Agency of Nowhen

В произведениях Сары Кульманн всегда есть повествовательный каркас, подобный энциклопедической структуре, вокруг которой группируются разные смыслы и ассоциации. Работа C.A.R.R.I.E. (Curious Asking Recursive Rapid Inquisitorial Everlasting system) также имеет гибридную композицию, включающую в себя разные линии. В основе нарратива — вымышленный научно‑фантастический роман. Его героиня — Кэрри Брэдшоу из популярного сериала «Секс в большом городе», которая вела авторскую колонку в газете New York Star. Тема романа обозначает еще одну линию — мысль о том, что мир, к которому человек привык относиться с позиций потребителя, может существовать вне утилитарной функции — независимо, сам для себя. Художница предполагает, что различные материалы и вещества могут взаимодействовать друг с другом подобно тому, как это делают люди. Фантастическая Кэрри Сары Кульманн изучает отношения материалов так же, как Кэрри «Секса в большом городе» изучает отношения людей: посредством рассуждений и наводящих вопросов. Видеоработа С.A.R.R.I.E. снята в игровом движке — программном обеспечении, с которым часто работает Сара Кульманн.

В произведениях Сары Кульманн всегда есть повествовательный каркас, подобный энциклопедической структуре, вокруг которой группируются разные смыслы и ассоциации. Работа C.A.R.R.I.E. (Curious Asking Recursive Rapid Inquisitorial Everlasting system) также имеет гибридную композицию, включающую в себя разные линии. В основе нарратива — вымышленный научно‑фантастический роман. Его героиня — Кэрри Брэдшоу из популярного сериала «Секс в большом городе», которая вела авторскую колонку в газете New York Star. Тема романа обозначает еще одну линию — мысль о том, что мир, к которому человек привык относиться с позиций потребителя, может существовать вне утилитарной функции — независимо, сам для себя. Художница предполагает, что различные материалы и вещества могут взаимодействовать друг с другом подобно тому, как это делают люди. Фантастическая Кэрри Сары Кульманн изучает отношения материалов так же, как Кэрри «Секса в большом городе» изучает отношения людей: посредством рассуждений и наводящих вопросов. Видеоработа С.A.R.R.I.E. снята в игровом движке — программном обеспечении, с которым часто работает Сара Кульманн.

С.A.R.R.I.E

Artist Olga Grotova’s film explores the tragic events of her own family history, which defined her interest in women’s personal practices of working the land. The artist looks at gardening and the cultivation of smallholdings as a means of female self‑expression and opposition to the repressions and totalitarian pressure. 

In the 1930s thousands of foreigners who had come to the USSR to work became victims of the Great Terror. Like the female relatives of “traitors to the motherland” and “enemies of the people,” the wives, sisters, mothers, and children of foreigners were sent to ALZHIR (Akmolinsk Camp for the Wives of Traitors to the Motherland), a camp within the GULAG system in the Kazakh SSR (now the Republic of Kazakhstan), as relatives of “traitors to the Motherland” and “enemies of the people.” Among the prisoners of that camp were Klavdia and Marina, Grotova’s great‑grandmother and grandmother. 

The corporeality of the video material and the embodiment by the camera, accented by the materiality of the 8 mm film used, is one of the main techniques employed by the artist to create a subtle language for the comprehension of history. Surviving a tragedy of historical proportions proves to be possible thanks to the practice of gardening (both personal and collective, based on mutual assistance), which supported the community of imprisoned women and remained with them for the rest of their lives. This corporeal embodiment of camera and narrator is an important motif for video essay practices, underpinning the complex structure of film and artistic research. 

This work was created as part of the project The Friendship Garden for Garage Field Research.

Artist Olga Grotova’s film explores the tragic events of her own family history, which defined her interest in women’s personal practices of working the land. The artist looks at gardening and the cultivation of smallholdings as a means of female self‑expression and opposition to the repressions and totalitarian pressure. 

In the 1930s thousands of foreigners who had come to the USSR to work became victims of the Great Terror. Like the female relatives of “traitors to the motherland” and “enemies of the people,” the wives, sisters, mothers, and children of foreigners were sent to ALZHIR (Akmolinsk Camp for the Wives of Traitors to the Motherland), a camp within the GULAG system in the Kazakh SSR (now the Republic of Kazakhstan), as relatives of “traitors to the Motherland” and “enemies of the people.” Among the prisoners of that camp were Klavdia and Marina, Grotova’s great‑grandmother and grandmother. 

The corporeality of the video material and the embodiment by the camera, accented by the materiality of the 8 mm film used, is one of the main techniques employed by the artist to create a subtle language for the comprehension of history. Surviving a tragedy of historical proportions proves to be possible thanks to the practice of gardening (both personal and collective, based on mutual assistance), which supported the community of imprisoned women and remained with them for the rest of their lives. This corporeal embodiment of camera and narrator is an important motif for video essay practices, underpinning the complex structure of film and artistic research. 

This work was created as part of the project The Friendship Garden for Garage Field Research.

To My Daughter I WIll Say

The group Factory of Found Clothes (FFC) founded by Natalia Pershina‑Yakimanskaya (Gluklya) and Olga Egorova (Tsaplya) in 1995, has since its earliest works focused on the subject of things as projections of human existence. In their manifesto dialogue for the project Girlfriends (1995) Gluklya and Tsaplya stated: “We are friends, and as well as being soulmates what unites us is our shared interest in Things, and specifically, in their most human variety—Clothes.”

In FFC projects dresses literally spoke to the viewer and told them about the lives of their former owners. They reflected social traumas and fears, relieved themselves of their functionality, and became universal metaphors of human destiny. The duo diversified their work with clothes: they painted fabric and made it into dresses, gave a second life to found costumes, immortalising them by telling their tragic stories, sent them on journeys to dissolve their past in a new existence. 

Interpreted by FFC, an item of clothing would ultimately become a symbol of a character’s inner essence, whether that person was a worker, a retired senior, a diligent schoolgirl or a heartbroken teenager. The main demiurge of their performances and installations, however, was the high‑school student, their alter ego: a figure of romantic recklessness, purity and preparedness for Great Deeds. 

Gradually, their works became more socially oriented, yet their interest in textiles as symbols of life, and in the topic of the feminine, which represents supragender kindness, striving for justice, fragility coexisting with strength in friendship, remained.

Their video installation Scarlet Sails was inspired by Alexander Grin’s novel, whose protagonist Assol is able to cope with all the hardships of an unfair world due to her firm belief in the possibility of a fairy tale ending. The scarlet sails on the white ship of Arthur Gray confirm the reality of her utopian dream, bringing her happiness and peace.

In Gluklya and Tsaplya’s work, young girls do not rely on an impossible (or postponed) happiness, waiting for their prince by the sea. They are ready to create it themselves, sewing scarlet sails in the absence of a manly hero. Suddenly, senior ladies enter their workshop—they have spent years hoping to meet their savior, who will one day arrive from the imaginary. Their discordant choir tries to convince the girls to “believe in miracles,” singing a Soviet song from the Khrushchev Thaw era. Thus, the sober and decisive present meets the dreamy past, which can only wait for solutions to come from the outside. Their confrontation ends in a fight over the Scarlet Fabric, and the past, represented by the sad but persistent old ladies, wins. Grabbing the scarlet sails sewn by the hands of others, the ladies head for the sea, to sail away into the miraculous unknown. 

The ambiguity of the image created by Gluklya and Tsaplya made this one of their best‑known works. Some interpret it politically—red being the symbol of the revolution—although the nature of the revolution here is unclear, since the appropriation of the products of someone else’s labor multiplies the injustice and essentially represents capitalist theft. At the same time, scarlet is the color of Life itself and of the mother’s womb. In this case, the appropriation of the scarlet sail can be interpreted as an attempt to return to a child’s consciousness that is paralyzed in anticipation of a miracle.

The group Factory of Found Clothes (FFC) founded by Natalia Pershina‑Yakimanskaya (Gluklya) and Olga Egorova (Tsaplya) in 1995, has since its earliest works focused on the subject of things as projections of human existence. In their manifesto dialogue for the project Girlfriends (1995) Gluklya and Tsaplya stated: “We are friends, and as well as being soulmates what unites us is our shared interest in Things, and specifically, in their most human variety—Clothes.”

In FFC projects dresses literally spoke to the viewer and told them about the lives of their former owners. They reflected social traumas and fears, relieved themselves of their functionality, and became universal metaphors of human destiny. The duo diversified their work with clothes: they painted fabric and made it into dresses, gave a second life to found costumes, immortalising them by telling their tragic stories, sent them on journeys to dissolve their past in a new existence. 

Interpreted by FFC, an item of clothing would ultimately become a symbol of a character’s inner essence, whether that person was a worker, a retired senior, a diligent schoolgirl or a heartbroken teenager. The main demiurge of their performances and installations, however, was the high‑school student, their alter ego: a figure of romantic recklessness, purity and preparedness for Great Deeds. 

Gradually, their works became more socially oriented, yet their interest in textiles as symbols of life, and in the topic of the feminine, which represents supragender kindness, striving for justice, fragility coexisting with strength in friendship, remained.

Their video installation Scarlet Sails was inspired by Alexander Grin’s novel, whose protagonist Assol is able to cope with all the hardships of an unfair world due to her firm belief in the possibility of a fairy tale ending. The scarlet sails on the white ship of Arthur Gray confirm the reality of her utopian dream, bringing her happiness and peace.

In Gluklya and Tsaplya’s work, young girls do not rely on an impossible (or postponed) happiness, waiting for their prince by the sea. They are ready to create it themselves, sewing scarlet sails in the absence of a manly hero. Suddenly, senior ladies enter their workshop—they have spent years hoping to meet their savior, who will one day arrive from the imaginary. Their discordant choir tries to convince the girls to “believe in miracles,” singing a Soviet song from the Khrushchev Thaw era. Thus, the sober and decisive present meets the dreamy past, which can only wait for solutions to come from the outside. Their confrontation ends in a fight over the Scarlet Fabric, and the past, represented by the sad but persistent old ladies, wins. Grabbing the scarlet sails sewn by the hands of others, the ladies head for the sea, to sail away into the miraculous unknown. 

The ambiguity of the image created by Gluklya and Tsaplya made this one of their best‑known works. Some interpret it politically—red being the symbol of the revolution—although the nature of the revolution here is unclear, since the appropriation of the products of someone else’s labor multiplies the injustice and essentially represents capitalist theft. At the same time, scarlet is the color of Life itself and of the mother’s womb. In this case, the appropriation of the scarlet sail can be interpreted as an attempt to return to a child’s consciousness that is paralyzed in anticipation of a miracle. 

Scarlet Sails

В «Реквизите для ежедневного недопонимания» Сара Кульманн показывает нестандартные (или неосознаваемые) взаимодействия человека и материального мира. Здесь представлены вещи, замкнутые в ограниченном пространстве ванной комнаты, с которыми ежедневно взаимодействует их хозяин и которые опосредуют его восприятие мира: вызывают воспоминания или запускают цепочки ассоциаций. Так внимание к формам материальности превращает описание обычного процесса бритья в анализ истории технологий и стандартов техники. Нарратив художница создает через логику действий в видеоигре: работа записана в игровом движке с использованием 3D‑моделирования. Кадр выстроен от первого лица: зритель видит все глазами персонажа, но в так называемом режиме наблюдателя — он может только следить за игровым процессом.

В «Реквизите для ежедневного недопонимания» Сара Кульманн показывает нестандартные (или неосознаваемые) взаимодействия человека и материального мира. Здесь представлены вещи, замкнутые в ограниченном пространстве ванной комнаты, с которыми ежедневно взаимодействует их хозяин и которые опосредуют его восприятие мира: вызывают воспоминания или запускают цепочки ассоциаций. Так внимание к формам материальности превращает описание обычного процесса бритья в анализ истории технологий и стандартов техники. Нарратив художница создает через логику действий в видеоигре: работа записана в игровом движке с использованием 3D‑моделирования. Кадр выстроен от первого лица: зритель видит все глазами персонажа, но в так называемом режиме наблюдателя — он может только следить за игровым процессом.

Props for Daily Misunderstanding

Acquired from the artist

Acquired from the artists

1. Открытый доступ

Мастер

Группа «Фабрика Найденных Одежд» (ФНО) основана в Санкт‑Петербурге в 1995 году Ольгой Егоровой (Цаплей) и Натальей Першиной‑Якиманской (Глюклей). ФНО принимала участие в программе Первого киберфеминистского Интернационала на выставке documenta X (Кассель, 1997), Интернациональном фестивале Балтийских стран (Хельсинки, 2000), Baltic Babel (Мальмё, 2003), Международном фестивале короткометражного фильма в Оберхаузене (2003, 2007, 2008, 2009). В 2009 году художницы стали лауреатами национальной премии «Черный квадрат» за фильм «Три матери и хор». ФНО прекратила свою деятельность в 2014 году.

Factory of Found Clothes

Родилась в Приозерске (Ленинградская область). Окончила лабораторию неигрового кино в Московской школе нового кино (2022). Ее фильмы были показаны и завоевали призы на международных фестивалях в Москве, Санкт‑Петербурге, Ньоне (Швейцария) и др. Резидентка программы Мастерских и арт‑резиденций Музея «Гараж» (Москва, 2024).

Likhaia Dasha

Born in Chelyabinsk. Olga Grotova is an artist. She has a master’s degree in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London (2016). She is currently an associate of the Wysing Art Center’s Syllabus VI, an artist development programme conceived in collaboration with the UK art institutions Studio Voltaire, Iniva, Eastside Projects, and Spike Island. She is a recipient of the Space Artist Award (2021) and the Arts Council England DYCP Award (2021). Recent exhibitions include: Fifth Wave (curated by Ivan Novikov), Garage Museum of Contemporary Art and Moscow Museum of Architecture (2021) and Debris on a Luminous Plain , Centrala Birmingham, Oslo Kunstforening, Mimosa House, London), Osnova Gallery, Moscow (2017). She lives and works in London.

Grotova Olga

Born in Kirovsk. Sara Culmann is a media artist. She studied at Stroganov Moscow State University of Arts and Industry and Rodchenko Art School, and in 2012 completed a video art course taught by Provmyza Group from Nizhny Novgorod. She works with time‑based media—found footage, 3D animation and computer games—as well as graphics and objects. Her work has been featured at the Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2014) and in exhibitions at ISSMAG Gallery, Skolkovo Gallery and Studio, MMOMA, and Electromuseum.

Culmann Sara

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Russia

2000s

2020s

Video

Installation

Video art

Video installation

Да

Author

Open storage

In storage

7-9 years 

10-14 years 

15-17 years 

0-6 years 

Architecture

Photo

Journalism

Psychology

Music

Family

Stream

Series

Seminars, Workshops and Training

Lectures & Talks

Concerts & Performances

Film Screenings

Exhibitions

Courses

Tours

Concerts & performances

Conferences

Exhibitions & projects

News

Interview

Talks

Lecture cycles

Conferences and seminars

Book presentations

Art Guide

Garage publishing program

Sponsors, patrons, and partners

Information partners

Garage publishing program in collaboration with Artguide Editions

Garage International Publishing Program

Library events

Books in english

Garage Screen

Russian

English

Bilingual (russian/english)

Film programs

GARAGE Club

Programs for exhibitions

Events

Garage Live

Garage Dance

Academic program

Grants

Field research

Patronship

Garage Studios

Mosaic Music

GARAGE Student

Garage.txt

Film festival

Film distribution

Sign language

Mental disabilities

Migration

Audio description

Tactile models

Accessibility guide

Physical accessibility

GARAGE Individual

Digital accessibility

Diversity

Events at Garage

Garage publishing program and Strelka Press 

Text

Audio

Feature

Guide

GARAGE Individual +1

Research laboratories

Artistic research

Translation to russian sign language

Subtitles

Adapted tours

Quiet room

Translation to uzbek, tajik, and kyrgyz

GARAGE Premium

“We Treasure Our Lucid Dreams”

Space 1520

Contemporary Critical Thought

Directors’ series

The Garage Journal

GARAGE Circle

Temporality

Disability

Affect

Overcoming

Body

Timelessness

Non-normative body

GARAGE Collectors Circle  

Experience of the other

Otherness

Developmental disabilities

Mental health

Trauma

Personal experience

Neural networks

Language

7-11 years

Plain language

Garage Café

The computer class schedule

Mediation

Oleg Baranov Going Down

Podcasts

Shelf of the Month. Theatrе

Publishing program page

Series of meetings with residents

Open call

Shelf of the Month. Cinema

Shelf of the Month. Modern Dance

Projects Oral History and Oral History 2.0

Visitors in a wheelchair

garage-txt

Research Laboratory: I Am a Parcel, You Are a Stamp

VOKS kinema Research Laboratory

Public programs

Free

Registration required

Free for exhibition ticket holders

Paid

Booking required

Booking via phone or email is required

Booking on reception is required

Off-site projects

Architecture and design

Supervision

Museology

Philosophy

Economy

Cinematography

Critical biography

Memoirs and diaries

For Garage card holders

Exhibition catalogues

Research

For children

GARAGE + Ad Marginem

GARAGE PRO

Minima

Paperback

Hardcover

Hardcover with dust jacket

Book review

Professional programs

Video review

Garage publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press

Garage publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press. GARAGE PRO Series

Garage publishing program in collaboration with Ad Marginem Press. Minima Series

City tours

Exhibition tours

Catalogue of the Collection

Sort by