Art Experiment. You’re on Air Mediators

Text

Hello diary!
I was very lucky to begin the new calendar year with the job of my dreams. So all of the following can well be called &ldquo;Notes of A Happy Person&rdquo;.
Here I&rsquo;m gonna boast a little bit about my impressions and reveal several observations at the same time. Stay tuned!
A couple of words about the preparation: we trained for almost two months for a project that ran only eleven days. We had sessions with a speech techniques coach, an English language tutor, made our own research and presentations on the contributing artists, met with curators, met with artists, met with each other a lot, ate tons of pizza, and expanded our olfactory horizons. Complete and merciless immersion and a sea of pleasant sensations. But let&rsquo;s move on to the work on the project itself.
Being a guide into the world of scents is a very pleasant responsibility, because your interpretation not only informs the perception of smells but also reveals the very discovery of their spectrum. There was an exercise on stirring up olfactory imagination in our entrance area: we described two paintings and a sculpture and then fantasized on the theme of scents which these artworks might articulate. Afterwards, we listened to the scents prepared specially for the project by the perfumer Anna Agurina. Interestingly, the more detailed was our description of works, the more smells visitors were able to guess. The most striking suggestion was made by a visitor who heard a note of dung in the bouquet of smells prepared for the painting Female Merchant whereas most of the guests did not distinguish anything but fruits and flowers in it (and indeed, there was zibet added to the bouquet to create bodily and fecal notes). Some kids felt cucumber in the bouquet accompanying Yuri Kuper&rsquo;s painting, while there was wet rhubarb instead, which none of our guests managed to detect. Among other revelations, I suddenly realized that none of the visitors suggested that the paintings smelled like watercolors or acrylic. We instantly use imagery while thinking about smells, we impose smells onto visual objects&mdash;this experience demonstrates how brilliantly our imagination operates.
Differences in the perception of smells and images prove our diversity and how great it is to be so different. Visitors &ldquo;heard&rdquo; a lot of things in Tony Craig&rsquo;s sculpture, from natural forms, like canyons and mushrooms, to amber cookies and chocolate.
What really astonished me, children provided totally unpredictable olfactory associations. I worried a few times before the start of the show that school pupils would be bored and unable to distinguish between such complex olfactory compositions, that it would be difficult for them to discuss them. But eventually, I was impressed in the most positive way by their curiosity and nontrivial associations: where adults searched for something logical, kids coolly reported that &ldquo;they felt the smell of frogs, fried meat, and swamp&rdquo;. Such level of confidence is to be envied! Inspired by these confessions, adult visitors produced their own non-banal associations, and we led incredible dialogues.
I would like to share a linguistic observation. As early as in the entrance area I suggested that my guests should get rid of such common categories of smells, as pleasant and not pleasant, and prepare themselves for a pure experience without cultural stereotypes. Not all of them coped with it. Even I myself constantly stumbled over the wish to characterize smells in terms of their pleasing/non-pleasing qualities or, at best, as attractive and repulsive (which is in fact the same thing). So cultural codes ultimately won, but at least, we tried!
I am very hopeful that our project helped many people to allow smells in their realm as a way of apprehending the world and a means of expressing emotions and feelings more intensely. All of us try to listen to our sense of smell when we choose a perfume or taste a new dish, but our olfactory abilities are much wider: using them, we can coordinate our memories, surround ourselves with scents that improve our physical and emotional well-being, and compile archives of smells of existent or even lost objects. Allow ourselves to experiment more with the world around. Art Experiment has been inspiring and motivating people for ten years already. Thank you for this experience. And thank you for the opportunity to help Garage visitors acquire this experience.

Evgeniya Bereza’s Diary

Hello diary!
Impressions from the preparation process
I definitely liked the attitude: active and intense preparation period with a lot of exercises, text rehearsals, support from colleagues from other departments and external institutions, plus free pizza! I mean, the training process is well organized, with money invested in the project and authors anticipating a certain level of outcome from mediators. This focus on results has impressed me.
December 20
Morning rehearsal after montage: emotional and inspiring. My thoughts: &ldquo;Let everything work out&rdquo;.
December&rsquo;s group featuring patrons was a pleasure, as it formed as a chamber collective of young and curious people. On the other hand, it gave me a chance to immediately notice my mediation&rsquo;s weak points quickly, so I had just enough time to fix time before the main flow of visitors in January.
January 2&ndash;5
Once in January I had four workdays in a row, which is objectively hard because of intense emotional engagement in each group and the necessity to coordinate participants and colleagues on site. The good thing was that I had friends and relatives visiting me during the last couple of days, which motivated me to keep on going till the end. During the final shift, I had the good fortune to have a friend of mine and her mom as my guests. They aren&rsquo;t much into contemporary art, I mean, not at all. But they enjoyed it a lot because of the New Year spirit of the show which combined a dose of classic art with scents, customized perfumes, the hilarious Where Dogs Run, peaceful meditation, and a flower bouquet. As if you had the chance to taste a bit of everything that is trendy today.
On January 5, I was on air with a live broadcast for Garage&rsquo;s Instagram profile. This is when I realized completely that I am not afraid or embarrassed of performing in front of an audience, be it an online or offline performance. I can be nervous in the beginning but then gain momentum and start enjoying the process itself. By the way, it is also a great exercise for one&rsquo;s &ldquo;presentation skills&rdquo;. It is
My thoughts overall
It is difficult to foresee everything, it&rsquo;s a fact. But the organizers are experienced enough, so generally, everything went smoothly. Well done guys, thank you for such an experiment. It is cool to get a glimpse of the life of a famous contemporary museum and not be disappointed! From my experience, such impressions with the &ldquo;+&rdquo; can only be found at Pushkin Museum or the Museum of Russian Impressionism.
It was a pleasure to do mediation for Garage, because I like the format of a guided tour where the mediator works as an agent between the art and the viewer. I believe, in general, we&rsquo;ve managed to demonstrate that education or visitor&rsquo;s experience are inferior in comparison with the simple ability to observe the artwork&rsquo;s form and details by merely asking oneself a number of questions.
LOVE EVERYONE ;)
Thank you!

Darya Ilyina’s Diary

Alisa Savina I am an Art History student at the History Faculty of Lomonosov Moscow State University. I studied at an art school and a music school and have always been interested in the arts, be it theater, music, dance, architecture, or fine art. Since my first year at the university, I have been working as an invigilator at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art. Last autumn, I tried the position of an installer, and I am also an intern and mediator at Garage.
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Mediator&rsquo;s diary
I wanted to work on the project Art Experiment: You&rsquo;re On Air for two reasons: it was my longtime desire to be an art mediator, and the theme of olfaction in art corresponded with my old dream to become a smells expert. The project even allowed me to take two roles: that of a perfumery workshop host and that of a mediator in the space dedicated to The Faces of Smell&mdash;an installation by the Ekaterinburg-based art group Where Dogs Run&mdash;and the piece MeMoMe_2020 by Sissel Tolaas. My invigilator&rsquo;s experience anticipated some functions that mediators ought to perform, because, apart from &ldquo;supervising&rdquo; the safety of exhibited items, invigilators also have to inform visitors about exhibition themes and meanings behind particular artworks. It is not an obligatory duty and the work of invigilators generally focuses on other things, as they often have to interrupt a visitor to correct another guest. So, from the very beginning of Art Experiment&rsquo;s training program I anticipated a novel and unusual experience.
The first shift was the most difficult. I wasn&rsquo;t sure whether people would listen to me, whether I would be able to keep them interested&mdash;or whether all they would be thinking of was how to take home a bottle of perfume or compose a personal olfactory portrait. I was pleasantly surprised by the very first group&rsquo;s vivid interest in my story about the olfactory pyramid. They asked me to tell more about the legends around amber and laughed at my jokes, still pretty clumsy at the time.
Watching how people react to the same perfume composition in different ways was a captivating process. Each time there would be participants at the table with opposite tastes: some of them mixed air with water and nothing else, while others didn&rsquo;t sense them at all and preferred something fiery, or heavy and earthy, like black soil. Tutors warned us on the preparation stage that it is a possible situation when the visitor doesn&rsquo;t like the final scent not because of the ingredients that do not fit together&mdash;but because they added an element that they supposed would fit with the other two, even though they didn&rsquo;t really like its smell independently from the rest. The most pleasant part of the workshop is the very idea of mixing ingredients intuitively, without the need to think and choose too much. This is why, having done several shifts, I started including the following phrase in my introductory word: &ldquo;Leave your mind behind this workshop&rsquo;s door, because only your heart must choose the smell of desire!&rdquo;. It made me feel myself like Professor Trelawney, and the name of this masterclass, &ldquo;The Alchemy of Scents&rdquo;, sounded even more magical to me. I really liked a comment made by one participant upon composing the scent: &ldquo;Thank you, Alisa, for guiding us into the land of smells!&rdquo; Associations with Lewis Carroll&rsquo;s Alice have been haunting me throughout my life, but this time around it was really nice!
I fell in love with all the ten perfume compositions on the project, so none of the smells which our visitors didn&rsquo;t like did not seem unpleasant to me. It was even more challenging to describe these smells: for instance, these are some of my and visitors&rsquo; brightest associations: &ldquo;Alyonushka a-la Vasnetsov&rdquo;, &ldquo;The Copper Horseman, not the monument but the poem itself&rdquo;, &ldquo;a cold cave with crystals&rdquo;, &ldquo;San Remo&rdquo;, &ldquo;Nineteenth-century aristocracy&rdquo; (a comment on &ldquo;Fiery Water&rdquo;).&nbsp; It was great that once we invented associations for the perfume, we instantly fell in love with it.
Here is a comment from a visitor who tried to persuade us that he couldn&rsquo;t sense anything: &ldquo;Amazingly, as soon as you name a particular ingredient, I immediately feel it! It&rsquo;s some kind of magic!&rdquo; Such remarks made me love Art Experiment more and more with every shift. At a certain point I began using new teasers, such as &ldquo;today we are going to work some magic&rdquo;, and noticed that it had a positive effect on everyone, including chemists and perfumers who didn&rsquo;t disdain the idea of joining our workshop. I saw smiles on their faces and communication was much easier after such little tricks.
It was extremely interesting to talk to children next to Sissel Tolaas&rsquo;s installation. The smells in her flasks were quite specific, many of them perceived by visitors as harsh and nasty, which put the conversation in the direction of tolerance to the culture of smells promoted by Sissel, who aims to educate us in this field. But there was a girl of around six years old with a twinkle in her eye, who cried out loud as she reached one of the vessels: &ldquo;But this is the smell of spring!&rdquo; Interestingly, the same smell was often characterized by adults as the smell of an old swimming pool or hospital. But I noticed that people who came to see MeMoMe&shy;&shy;&shy;_2020 after Jess Hirsch's meditation session had a friendlier attitude to the sprayed liquids. For example, a girl with a bouquet which included a hyacinth bended over to the same &ldquo;spring&rdquo; flask and in a very dreamy voice compared its scent with a flower meadow.
I have learnt a lot about myself on this project and got acquainted with a great number of people through olfactory art. The most enjoyable thing was to meet people with Jess Hirsch&rsquo;s bouquets in the streets: it looked as if they were heading to friends&rsquo; homes where they would tell them about this wonderful Olfactory Land located at 9/32 Krymsky Val, Moscow.

Alisa Savina’s Diary

Elizaveta Voronova I am a third-year student of the Social Sciences Faculty at the Sociology Department at National Research Center&mdash;Higher School of Economics. I also attend classes of the minor program Contemporary Art: An Introduction to Art Theory and Museum and Exhibition Practices developed by HSE together with Garage. I teach an elective course on contemporary art at the HSE Lyceum. My interests include institutionalization of museum spaces and, at the same time, the problem of intercommunication between modern-day visitor and items on display. In the end of 2019 and beginning of 2020, I was chief mediator at the 10th Art Experiment at Garage.
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Logistics
During the first shift, I managed to fully immerse myself in the space of Art Experiment. I&rsquo;d like to underline how coherent the route was in terms of both the logic and convenience of movement and semantic completeness. The entrance, or &ldquo;fine-tuning&rdquo;, zone properly inscribed in the exposition allowing a sort of &ldquo;shake-up&rdquo; of the visitors and encourage them to talk. For me this area became a place for open discussions where &ldquo;wrong&rdquo; thoughts and answers do not exist, where anyone can share their observations without fear of looking ridiculous or stupid.
The architecture of Art Experiment is also noteworthy, with its erected construction not only referencing the show&rsquo;s main theme, but also transforming the perception of space: after a cold concrete environment the visitor entered an ethereal and cozy space.
Museum visitors oftentimes get lost in front of an artwork, feel scared to start a dialogue. In my opinion, Art Experiment has helped people to experience the process of an open discussion which they probably never ever had before. All this made me think about how to create comfort zones that would instigate visitors to reflect and discuss in the space of a museum as an institution with its norms, rules, and sanctions.
Content
Olfaction as the key theme of this year&rsquo;s edition of Art Experiment seemed unusual and beguiling to me. I believe our exhibition successfully conveyed the ambiguous role of smell in human life&mdash;by skillfully combining educational, aesthetic, and game elements. Rather than being just &ldquo;entertainment for the sake of entertainment&rdquo;, the game section implied interactivity inextricably tied with reflection upon what was happening. Moreover, the implementation of meditative practices in the show was a bold and extraordinary decision, in my opinion, allowing to push the boundaries of exhibiting and arranging items of art within the museum space. We can say that Art Experiment&rsquo;s final section had some therapeutic effect on visitors.
As I had no mediator&rsquo;s experience whatsoever prior to this year&rsquo;s Art Experiment, everything seemed novel and unknown to me. My first shift fell at the end of December, when, along with two other female colleagues, I had to accompany an inclusive group of visitors. Since it demanded a certain level of qualification, I failed to provide fully-fledged mediation for them. Nevertheless, it was a valuable experience of communication with people who understand the specificity of interacting with visitors with learning disability.
My first, let&rsquo;s say, fully competent mediation took place in early January. I tried to not impose my point of view on the visitor in the first instance, allowing them to do their own analysis of what they saw. From time to time, I threw in some facts, when I felt that the group was not ready to discuss their thoughts yet. In most cases, right after getting into the &ldquo;fine-tuning&rdquo; zone, people started answering questions without any signs of embarrassment, developed their reasoning and found co-thinkers among the public.
A rather complicated nuance of mediation is, in my opinion, finding and maintaining a balance between communication with the group (of 14 people) in general&mdash;and that with its most active members. Certain people would sometimes prefer to watch others engage in a dialogue rather than join it themselves. When it happened, I tried to maintain eye contact with visitors, thus maintaining somewhat of a nonverbal dialogue. These cases led me to the idea that, perhaps, smaller groups of around 7&ndash;8 persons would be better for comprehensive mediation wherein all visitors are engaged.
I have noticed that, speaking about some personal issues, such as favorite perfumes, visitors eagerly shared their thoughts. No embarrassment, no tension in the dialogue. Children also contacted more feely, they approached me and asked questions without any confusion.
I was surprised to hear one of my groups&rsquo; opinion regarding an artwork in the entrance zone (a painting by Yuri Kuper) which some of the participants associated with happiness, while the majority of others named yearning, despondency, and sadness among the possible associations. It made me look at the whole picture from an entirely new perspective and reflect on the visitors&rsquo; subjective perception of artworks.

Elizaveta Voronova’s Diary

<h2 style="text-align: center;">My mediator&rsquo;s diary</h2>
In November, I decided to participate in Garage&rsquo;s project&nbsp;Art Experiment&nbsp;and earn some extra money during the New Year holidays. For one month, together with other mediators, I attended training sessions, seminars, and lectures. I liked that the theme of smell as the main protagonist surfaced in front of me itself, due to external, almost random circumstances, and I plunged into it with interest.
Toward the end of the training process, when an understanding of the project&mdash;its architecture, subject and specificity&mdash;had already formed, I had to define my own role in it. Wishing to acquire the most special and novel experience for myself, I decided to become the host of a perfumery masterclass. This role seemed the most compelling to me among the variety of mediators&rsquo; positions available at Art Experiment. The fact that all future workshop hosts had to undergo an additional training session at the studio of Anna Agurina, the creator of perfumery compositions for the workshop, was also intriguing.
During the opening shifts launched before the New Year we worked with special groups: migrants&rsquo; children, hard of hearing visitors, people with learning disability. Those shifts were very intense and emotional for me.
At the beginning of each workshop I recommended its participants to listen to their inner self and make a wish or give themselves a promise/goal. The perfume they created afterwards could become an anchor connecting the smell with the person&rsquo;s intention to realize their idea. We collectively listened to perfume chords and shared our personal imagery invoked by them. It was nice to see how someone relaxed and decided to share their feelings and sensations inspired by a particular smell. We were co-tuning ourselves together. The whole process was full of empathy and subtle tenderness. When the guests immersed into creativity, mixed components, and then introduced each other with the resulting perfume, which expressed themselves, I felt happiness together with them. Oftentimes at the end of the workshop I realized that I didn&rsquo;t want to part with these people.
Each shift felt like a homogenous flow where group went after group and resembled a continuous dance with elements of improvisation. Such pace opened up somewhat of a sensual channel in me, forging a situation where the state of being here-and-now was experienced very intensely. Despite physical exhaustion, I often found myself in a slightly exalted state of delight and tenderness after shifts. I remember, once I was on the underground, going home and trying to come up with a witty verbal frame for the affective maxim that &ldquo;Garage teaches [us] to love people&rdquo;.
To conclude, I would like to underscore that my work at Art Experiment 2020 was marked by careful attitude, emotional inclusion, and tenderness toward others.

Evgeniya Panina’s Diary

Varvara Kudlay I graduated from the Faculty of Journalism of Moscow State University last year, work in a publishing house and do independent theater projects. Art Experiment. You&rsquo;re on Air isn&rsquo;t my first collaboration with Garage: I also took part in last year&rsquo;s Art Experiment. The Miracle of Light and worked at the Garage Under-18 family festival. I am particularly interested in participatory practices in contemporary art.
<hr />
During my very first mediator&rsquo;s masterclass The Alchemy of Smells, a ten-year-old girl Liza responded to the smell named &ldquo;Clean Skin&rdquo; with the sound &ldquo;mayook&rdquo; (&laquo;мэук&raquo;). I am sure, artist Sissel Tolaas, who is working on the development a special language to describe odors, would have been delighted.
I feel worried as I await my first mediation: to avoid generating expert knowledge, maintain a dialogue with all group members, take into account each visitor&rsquo;s mood and optics. My anxieties dissolve as I enter into dialogue with the first group, and everything goes well. Being immersed in the realm of smells and carried away by their inaugural perfumery experience, visitors are trying to define scents with associations: &ldquo;&rsquo;Electric Banana&rsquo; is called that because bananas and electricity share the same shape; &lsquo;Ozone&rsquo; is cold, and &lsquo;Moonstone&rsquo; is purple&rdquo;.
Afterwards, I had a lot of different groups&mdash;and different definitions, different associations, different olfactory insights each time. A smile on the face of an eight-year-old boy occurring as a result of grapefruit notes which he heard in the scent; a conversation with a snobbish biologist about the immunity types of humans; the surprise of visitors at the encounter with the Proustian effect&mdash;my memory has fixed all this forever with the smells from this workshop.
I reflected a lot on the mediation format while working on the project. How horizontal communication and the lack of instructive academic intonations open up the visitor, provide them with space and freedom for their own ideas and reflections, set up for a dialogue and, as a result, instigate the emergence of something new and interesting, that wouldn&rsquo;t be possible in the situation of an academic uniflow coming from the guide.
While granting me with an amazing mediator&rsquo;s experience, Art Experiment. You&rsquo;re on Air also changed my attitude to smells, their perception, and the lexicon we use when discussing them. Once, in between two shifts, I received a message from a friend: &ldquo;My favorite band has released a new album. You should listen to it!&rdquo; And I realized that &ldquo;professional deformation&rdquo; had reached such proportions that I no longer could perceive the word &ldquo;listen&rdquo; outside of the olfactory context.
It seems to me that I still live on the energy this project gave me.

Varvara Kudlay’s Diary

26.12.2019
The first day on the project is always a bit emotional but also very compelling. Compelling, in the first instance, because of communication with visitors, with people who are going to see the show and artworks for the first time. We interacted with each other a lot of times before: all mediators rehearsed their scripts and staged various potential situations. But people who listened to each other in the preparation stage had already been introduced with the project&rsquo;s theme and items on display, so we staged all dialogues between the viewer and the mediator in the form of a theatrical performance, where everything seemed a bit mechanical. Meanwhile from real visitors, you expect totally novel questions and unpredictable opinions which, like precious findings, one wants to preserve and use in the future.
On that day, I had eight-year-old girls in my second group. One of them remembered that she knew the word &ldquo;mediator&rdquo;, by which she meant the musical device for playing guitar. Surprisingly, during the training program prior to the project we kind of forgot about this thing which turned out to be an excellent metaphor that many people understand. I often used this analogy in my mediation afterwards.
Children really fell for the piece by the art group Where Dogs Run. There were twin sisters in our group who were especially enthusiastic about comparing the portraits of their smells which, in fact, turned out to be completely different from each other.
When everyone understood the mechanism of the device, some wanted to experiment with the machine. They took out the newly-created bottles of perfume. Having heard the perfumes, the machine produced curious results, drawing eyeglasses and beards on faces. This is how we learnt that alcohol fumes lead to an interesting response from the machine.
2.01.2020
The day of the project&rsquo;s official launch. I came for the evening shift from another city, not in my best mood. I had to have lunch in a caf&eacute; at the railway station, where on January 2 the staff were a bit sleepy and distracted. Moreover, in the morning I realized that I had damaged my voice a little during the holidays. It wasn&rsquo;t so obvious at first, but half an hour before the shift my voice began to fade away.
That day wasn&rsquo;t an easy one for the first mediator&rsquo;s shift: everyone was just beginning to learn how to control time and space on the project. The opening shift mediators looked a bit crazy when they met us and warned that we should be prepared for some chaos on the site. Everything went well however, groups did not intersect, mediators managed to agree with each other, movement around the space was very natural, even despite minor delays. Visitors were extremely active and interested in a dialogue, some eagerly shared their own impressions and associations, others listened with curiosity.
4.01.2020
Evening shifts create a more comfortable atmosphere. Sure, you need to check the timing, but there are breaks in between the groups, so if you wish, you can stay in the exhibition space a bit longer, no need to rush and grab the next group. This is why the discussion is more intense and the eye doesn&rsquo;t skew to check the clock.
The groups were full. For the majority of visitors, it was their first Art Experiment. It is compelling to have a mix of adults and children in the group. It implies switching to some universal language that can be understood by both parties. The most interesting conversations took place in front of the painting Merchant&rsquo;s Wife by Kustodiev. The theme of the market generally invokes many associations and memories related to smells in the audience. And all of them are different: some people recall the smell of fresh greenery; others grimace as they remember the odd smell of the fish house. Although there are a hundred years between us and Kustodiev&rsquo;s painting, the food market remains something that both adults and kids still feel familiar with. As the visitors tried to immerse themselves in the atmosphere of an early twentieth-century market, they mentioned pleasant smells first, such as the smell of fruits, spices or a bakery, before recalling products that spoil without a fridge, or the smell of horses bringing products on carts.
On that day, communication between the mediators was perfect, everyone helped each other and informed each other about every movement across the space. What&rsquo;s especially pleasing, the evening shift&rsquo;s mediators finish almost simultaneously, so there remains time to reflect on the day, share impressions, discuss the issues that arose during the shift.
5.01.2020
That day&rsquo;s major impression was very deep. This was the day when, amazingly enough, I managed to stick to the schedule in the morning&mdash;and take the next group on time.
I noticed that children often see moving figures or a dance in Tony Cragg&rsquo;s sculpture, while adults more often refer to more concrete associations with rocks in a desert.
9.01.2020
The last day on the project. I really wanted to somehow extend this period, but it turned out vice versa. During the opening shift, groups go one after another, and the time gaps are very narrow. My first group on that day was so late, that the next one had to be postponed a bit as well.
Despite the slight delay in the beginning, the first group&rsquo;s acquaintance with the entrance zone went really well. The participants were a bit slow at first, but as they approached the last work, Yuri Kuper&rsquo;s painting, everyone seemed relaxed and shared associations more openly. For the first time on the project, the whole group agreed that the smell selected by Anna Agurina produced more intensive associations than Kuper&rsquo;s piece. Many participants noted that the painting itself is quite ephemeral, it seems that this dusty window is going to disperse like a fleeting memory. While smell makes the window and the memory more real, more tactile.
The candle was burning quite brightly, but it was not easy to catch the scent again.
During Anna Agurina&rsquo;s workshop, there was an opportunity to talk to other mediators, discuss the plan. The greatest aspect of this year&rsquo;s edition of Art Experiment is that we had enough time to make agreements about communication within our own group. To me, it is one of the crucial points in this type of work.
Unfortunately, we had little time, so I had to say goodbye to my first group even before they managed to create flower bouquets. But here again, I was saved due to the support of performers who said the last words and helped to decode the cyphered word.
In the meantime, I rushed to grab my next group. It was obvious that there were perfume lovers among them, who listened to the smells of the entrance area in a very extraordinary&mdash;or the proper word would be sensitive&mdash;manner. To hear their comments was especially interesting for me, as the smells in the vessels remained very abstract and obscure back then to me.
In relation to the candle, one girl, after learning that this piece by Katy Patterson was inspired by her work in Iceland, mentioned that Icelandic perfumery is very specific, it features a lot natural scents, such as various kinds of moss, wet stones, etc.
There was a girl of around seven years old in that group who did not want to approach the piece Faces of Smell (Лица запаха), perhaps because of the threatening appearance of the machine&rsquo;s tubes. But when she found out that she could experiment with it by bringing a bottle of perfume she created, she agreed to do so. The resulting portrait resembled a rock musician of the 1970s wearing hilarious moustache and glasses with leopard frames.
Despite the mess with the Russian and English letters, part of the group coped with the exercise and deciphered the word OLFACTION.
Toward the end of the session, the group relaxes, the silent become talkative, people want to share impressions, so it is really a shame to stop the conversation&mdash;everyone wants to continue.

Yulya Karpenkova’s Diary

Kristina Klepikova Studied Art &amp; Design: Performance Design and Practice at the Central St. Martin&rsquo;s University of London and Theater Studies in Paris (Cours Florent). She currently studies Psychology at the University of Essex.
<hr />
My first mediator&rsquo;s experience at Garage was dedicated to the theme of olfaction. This is, probably, what interested and intrigued me so much in this project&mdash;a mix of science and art, a very attractive symbiosis. Plus, the opportunity to become part of one of the country&rsquo;s top contemporary art institutions, of course.
It was already obvious at the preparation stage, that it is an unusual and serious project, whereby, through research and presentations, we received a colossal amount of new and meaningful information: from the history of olfaction and acquaintance with the wonderful creators in this field&mdash;to quite informative interaction with the staff of the Museum&rsquo;s Inclusive Programs department.
The wonderful feeling of anticipation of that very action developed at the same time. The project itself, even though it went unbelievably quickly, was very intense in terms of communication, faces, ideas, colors, and the ether...
I made a number of observations and conclusions while working on the project.
The first thing is that everything, including writing a mediator&rsquo;s diary, has to be done in its time, so that later one doesn&rsquo;t need to desperately recall details or phrases said by the visitors.
Secondly, I&rsquo;m in love with a wonderful and eccentric Norwegian woman.&nbsp; Her name is Sissel Tolaas, and she is sixty-something. She is an active, versatile person who constantly expands her own views and those of others, travels and seeks to convey the important role of olfactory resources and smells in our culture, which society often forgets about.
Here, I&rsquo;m going to return to my mediator&rsquo;s (or laboratory assistant&rsquo;s) alias for a short while. Human sense of smell is quite an interesting and unusual sense. The olfactory bulb is located rather close to hypothalamus and tonsil, olfactory fibers are interconnected with these parts of the brain that are responsible for memory and emotions, respectively. This is why smells have such an influence on our memories and feelings and define psychological portraits of all of us. Each &ldquo;sniffing&rdquo; person has their triggers, i.e. smells which are tightly connected with the subconscious and are being collected and encoded in memory throughout one&rsquo;s lifetime, with each and every breath. I like this system a lot, as it predetermines the individual nature of each one of us, of every visitor.
I think it was one of my favorite moments&mdash;watching different people delve into reflections on the role of smells in their lives, the change of emotions on their faces: nostalgia, sadness, laughter, sometimes embarrassment and blushing cheeks. Some shared their memories and experiences, others preferred to refrain from it.
Just as in contemporary art in general, there are no correct answers&mdash;each of Sissel&rsquo;s vessels had a unique smell for each guest, invoking personal associations.
Below are notes about the vessels made during my working shifts and from what other mediators said.
<table width="97%">
<tbody>
<tr>
<td width="11%">
Vessel 1
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
Frankincense
Church
Dust with something damp
Buckwheat but wet
&nbsp;
</td>
<td width="11%">
Vessel 2
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
Pepper mint
Bitter chewing gum
Poison (danger)
Something medical
Medicine
Desinfection
</td>
<td width="11%">
Vessel 3
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
Passion fruit
Celery
Cowberry
Black current
Lime
Pomegranate
Grapefruit
Nettle soup
Greenhouse with tomatoes
Tea
Boiled meat
Fish
Gelato
Sauvignon blanc
Marshmallow
</td>
<td width="11%">
Vessel 4
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
Burnt iron
Melted wax
Something burnt
Cables/electric current
</td>
<td width="11%">
Vessel 5
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
Naphthalene
Plastics
Industrial plant
Plastic kid&rsquo;s
Paddle
Black soil
Rubber
Public toilet
Sal-ammoniac
Ammonia
</td>
<td width="11%">
Vessel 6
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
Sauerkraut
&nbsp;
Crunching sound
Tea
Earth
Wild strawberries after the rain
</td>
<td width="11%">
Vessel 7
&nbsp;
Amazing smell (4-year-old boy)
Water
Sweet water
</td>
<td width="11%">
Vessel 8
&nbsp;
&nbsp;
Spicy,
Bitter,
Sugary
Gum
Bacon
Fried chicken
Cosmetics
Gouache
</td>
<td width="11%">
Vessel 9
&nbsp;
Summer forest
Autumn forest
Mint
Bleach
Medical ointment &ldquo;Star&rdquo;
</td>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
 Of course, different guests often had similar associations with smells. Very quickly the most &ldquo;pleasant&rdquo; and &ldquo;non-pleasant&rdquo; smells were determined, and overall, the mix of smells and immersion into the cloud of ether oftentimes led to disturbing sensations. It was unexpected and curious to meet visitors who particularly liked a single scent or liked all of them at once (I had two such guests). It was all the more interesting to see how, depending on age, cultural background, origin or experience, people had different opinions and formed new ideas and theories about the work.
A twelve-year-old girl drew an interesting parallel with the title of Sissel&rsquo;s artwork which is MeMoMe. The letter &ldquo;M&rdquo; is repeated in each syllable here, while the sound of the following vowel is always different (in the English version of pronunciation): smells may seem equally similar even when they come from the same vessel.
Another visitor told me that during the time of an increased number of suicides among teenagers in Japan, the following method was invented: in the early age, a child was given a certain smell in the moments of joy, and if later the same person suffered from depression as a teenager, they returned to this smell, which helped to improve their mood on subconscious level.
And of course, I would remember for a long time that four-year-old kid who always tried to steal vessel #7&mdash;this is how much he enjoyed the smell of it.
Since certain items in my wardrobe are still saturated with Art Experiment&rsquo;s perfumes, I will still be able to come back to it in my mind for some time and plunge into memories. This is in fact a tiny olfactory life hack I have used to write this diary.
The museum is the best platform for such experimentations where science and technology turn into art, where one can communicate, emancipate oneself, learn, meditate, and&mdash;sometimes&mdash;receive gifts.

Kristina Klepikova’s Diary

This year, the project has seen a genuine immersion into its thematic framework, which, among other reasons, became possible due to Art Experiment&rsquo;s compelling architectural solution: white curtains instead of walls created an illusion of a weightless journey into the realm of olfaction, while the white Lab space allowed one to feel oneself a real expert working professionally with smells. It couldn&rsquo;t help altering the visitor experience which our guests shared enthusiastically (it was extremely valuable). Many of them are regular Art Experiment attendees returning to the Museum every year specially for this project and still fascinated by it, just as they were by its first edition. Some of them arrived for the New Year holidays and turned up at Garage almost incidentally&mdash;but after going through mediation they admitted that it was arguably the best thing to begin the year with. Another captivating experience was communication with visitors who, concluding their journey, confessed that, in fact, they were experts in perfumery and olfaction, but totally admired the atmosphere on the project.
While preparing for Art Experiment, all mediators aimed to work out a range of strategies that would allow them to spend time with visitors in the exhibition space with more comfort. Through communication they realized that one can develop a great variety of such strategies, each of them correct and appropriate on its own for a particular audience.
At the beginning of the first workday it was difficult to decide in which direction to build a conversation with the group in order to draw the attention of all members. But just a few minutes into the process I realized that the contact works well, we are on the same communication wave with the group and try to collectively figure out the possible connections between the objects in the Museum&rsquo;s Atrium space (in Art Experiment&rsquo;s soft immersion area). It was nice to feel that interaction with the spectators developed in a natural, harmonious way, and was totally imperceptible for me.
Being informed about art mediation as the main format available at this year&rsquo;s Art Experiment as well as that they would have to fully engage in communication, visitors started immediately sharing ideas and emotions from what they saw, heard, and felt. There were three works on display in the entrance area, with a scent composed by the perfumer Anna Agurina attached to each of them. It aroused huge interest in all visitors: to hear an opinion from an expert in the field of scents, try to figure out whether it corresponds with their own reaction, and if not&mdash;to argue and offer one&rsquo;s own vision of how these artworks should smell.
My next impression from communication with visitors that I would like to reveal is related to Katie Paterson&rsquo;s Candle (From Earth Into A Black Hole). Arguably, this year&rsquo;s Art Experiment&rsquo;s most provocative location. Some participants mentioned the unusual perception of Paterson&rsquo;s outer space, others honestly admitted that the project appeared as purely commercial for them and there is no connection between an ordinary candle and space. Through interaction with the candle and communication with other participants however, even the most skeptical spectators were doing their best to accept Paterson&rsquo;s conception and find something new in her work, something that none of the mediators had ever thought about before.
Communication with the group in the final zone is what I am obviously going to remember for a long time. Relaxed after the meditation with performers in the incredibly colorful area created by the artist Jess Hirsch, participants confided that they received an enormous spiritual boost from what they experienced in the previous one and a half hours. At such moments you suddenly abstract yourself from everything that bothered you&mdash;from the fear that you won&rsquo;t cope within the allotted time or have the time to cover all topics&mdash;and sort of get &ldquo;infected&rdquo; with a flood of inspiration that stays with you throughout the whole day.

Alexandra Lobyntseva’s Diary

Natalia Lyapunova Graduated in Sociocultural Project Design from the Faculty for Humanities of Ivanovo State University of Chemistry and Technology and works at Sinergiya University, Moscow.
<hr />
I initially became a mediator by accident when I asked a friend &ldquo;What do you see here?&rdquo; as we were wandering across an exhibit of Russian avant-garde.
As you know, humans have five senses of perception, including the sense of smell which is the most intimate of human feelings and the most memorable. Did you know that a person is able to distinguish between more tones of smell than sounds? Smells play a huge role in our life. It is the sense of smell that invokes intense, emotion-filled memories. And at the scents on site were, let&rsquo;s say, not the most pleasant ones.
MeMoMe by Sissel Tolaas is an example of an artwork focusing on memory. Random, abstract scents were supposed to resurrect recollections of our experiment. But what kind of smells were actually present in it? For me, purely unpleasant: wet earth, dry earth, rotten earth, etc. But just imagine my surprise when a guest wished to soak up her scarf with the smell of one of the flasks, which was the most pleasant scent she ever experienced in her life. Unbelievable, isn&rsquo;t it?
And what about the candle? It generally had an equally unpleasant smell at all stages, so much that my stomach twisted. Meanwhile, our guests enjoyed those smells, not everyone of course, but many liked them. So, what I realized was that there is no absolute truth, each of us has their own one.
There is no need to label things and believe that your personal opinion is the only right one.
Some interesting points
I am well into mediation at this stage.
&ndash; Do you think we can get to know what outer space smells like? (I expected a logical answer, which is no).
&ndash; Yes, pretty much we can.
I was confused.
&ndash; Yes, you are right though. The artist actively collaborates with astronauts who share their space discoveries with her. Katie Paterson collects smells from them to attach a scent to this work.
&ndash; But no! Using advanced technology, we can calculate the molecular structure of any space element and then, taking these data as a starting point, compose a precise description of both its taste and smell.
Yet another incident near the candle.
A guest.
&ndash; An interesting thing, you know, is that your artist suggests that outer space smells like raspberries and rum. But I watched a film, don&rsquo;t remember its title, where the female protagonist is a scientist, and she reports at a conference that the earth&rsquo;s core smells like rum and raspberries. two artistic approaches, seemingly the same, but at the same time different. Which is the right one, I wonder?
A guest.
&ndash; Well, I don&rsquo;t know, but obviously not your girl from the movie. Because the Earth&rsquo;s core cannot smell like rum and raspberries. It can only smell like something burned or like hot iron. Can you imagine what temperatures there are! How raspberries can be there! If only some burned ones.
The multiplicity of meaning behind the word &ldquo;air&rdquo; (&ldquo;ether&rdquo;).
According to the curator&rsquo;s words, the title implies two readings: that of being on air on radio or TV&mdash;and that of air as a substance which surrounds us, in other words, smell.
A female historian also clarified that the top of Mount Olympus where gods lived was called Ether. While a doctor said that his colleagues call sleeping and anesthetic pills &ldquo;ether&rdquo;. These medicines are not employed any more today, of course, but dentists used them widely previously.
A few words about the &ldquo;warm&rdquo; episodes.
My parents decided to launch a good tradition&mdash;to visit Art Experiment at Garage annually during the New Year holidays. And no matter that they have attended just one Art Experiment so far&mdash;once you make a decision, you have to fulfil it.
I listen to the perfumes created by parents after the mediation and realize that my mom came up with a very strong scent. I ask her: &ldquo;Mom, isn&rsquo;t it too harsh, what did you add in it?&rdquo; &ldquo;Of course it is harsh! I mixed fire water with chili pepper!&rdquo; she says.
We sat in the kitchen discussing Art Experiment for hours that night, it was real mediation.
I had already finished my shift when I noticed two guys wandering in the space, not knowing what else to do, as they had done everything by the time, and their mothers were still busy. I looked at one of them and realized that his face seemed very familiar to me. And he thought the same, I guess.
&ndash; Did you visit the camera obscura last year?
&ndash; Yes, I did.
&ndash; I recognized you at once, so nice to see familiar faces. But tell me what, how does it work? (he points at Where Dogs Run).
So, we began talking with those guys about what they did themselves on the project, what it all means, why the flasks smell so disgustingly, and whether I would be working here next year.
He attended almost all Art Experiments (except the very first), and I was doing mediation for his group a year ago.
Do you think we are going to meet again next year?

Natalia Lyapunova’s Diary

During this year&rsquo;s Art Experiment, I was mediating on two positions along the visitor&rsquo;s route&mdash;the piece The Faces of Smell &nbsp;by the art collective Where Dogs Run, and the installation MeMoMe_2020 which reminded me of a mini-laboratory, created by the artist (or rather scientist) Sissel Tolaas.
I would like to begin with the expectations I had prior to my first shift. As mediators, we were very lucky to go through a training program before the launch of the project, the so-called &ldquo;school&rdquo;, so to say. We had regular meetings and shared our knowledge about the artists on show with each other, along with discussing them with the exhibition&rsquo;s curator Iaroslav Volovod. We had previously gained some mediator&rsquo;s experience at Khodynka Gallery, talked to the mediators employed by the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, and rehearsed a lot&hellip; In other words, we constantly discussed the importance of mediation and attempted to develop our own unique &ldquo;mediator&rsquo;s identity&rdquo;. All that helped to establish the following idea in my subconscious: &ldquo;Everyone knows what kind of mediator you are, everyone will eagerly try to interact with you, and that very special dialogue that everyone is always talking about will inevitably happen&rdquo;. Even though we also discussed the fact that it may be difficult to instigate a conversation, that people are different and demand a personal approach, inside myself I was pretty certain that there would be no real complications.
Let&rsquo;s move on from expectations to reality now, and my debut as a mediator. It was a morning shift with me attached to the WDR piece, the installation The Faces of Smell. I tested the work myself a few times, allowing the machine to &ldquo;sniff me around&rdquo; to determine the face of my unique smell. Soon after that, I saw a group of visitors approach me, seven people with colored flasks in their hands&mdash;their own scents created during a workshop designed by Anna Agurina. Despite the fact that mediation implies dialogue rather than narration of some pre-written texts learnt by heart, I had such a text on my mind (or even a draft, outlining several possible conversation scenarios). I welcomed the group, began the mediation session and realized&hellip; That the group was not really into discussing and sharing any ideas with me. I was getting simple answers to my questions, making me feel like I forced the visitors to provide feedback. The group left. As I told them everything I knew, I tried to reflect on the reasons of my mediator&rsquo;s failure. Why did it happen? Was it my fault? Or the visitors were simply not ready for a dialogue? Perhaps, they had been exhausted before they reached my venue... There were few answers to many questions.
As I continued to contemplate, the second group came. To my surprise, it was an almost complete opposite to the first one: they answered questions using long sentences and the entire group shared opinions with me. Moreover, they asked their own questions regarding not just the work on display, but also my personal vision. &ldquo;And what do you think?&rdquo;, asked a girl after sharing her interpretation of the artists&rsquo; conceptions articulated by this piece.
Afterwards, I had to work with many totally different groups: large and tiny ones, where there could be ten visitors in some, and just two in others; communicative and unsociable; sharing common and radically opposite viewpoints on the world. We can always draw certain parallels, of course. &ldquo;Genuine mediation&rdquo; occurs more often in small groups, for instance, I mean dialogue of that very type that enriches all parties involved in it. Or, to give another example, the presence of children in a group demands more of the mediator&rsquo;s attention and concentration, as it is still largely prohibited to touch museum items, and someone has to keep an eye on it. But the experience I have acquired cannot be limited to the mediator&rsquo;s practice alone&mdash;it also implied constant communication with colleagues and a lot of experience exchange, which helped me to understand how different all people are. There are more exclusions than regulations in mediation, I believe. And this is why mediators don&rsquo;t use memorized scripts offering straightforward routes from point A to point B. Somehow, I managed to maintain a conversation with a large group of visitors about utopias and the future of our society in case state control would continue to grow. And vice versa, I failed to build a profound dialogue with a small group, a pair of elderly people who exchanged ideas more vividly with each other than with me. In some groups, children were very active, which made me really nervous, but in other situations, kids listened with much concentration and astonished me with their thoughts and associations, for example, with their descriptions of abstract scents prepared by Sissel Tolaas for this jubilee edition of Art Experiment. The number of possible situations is infinite, and the majority of them will never repeat&mdash;making them valuable and unique.
Unfortunately, or luckily, we cannot force a person to engage in a dialogue without their will to do so. Everything we can is to set up a discussion, try to fine-tune the person for it and persuade that each and every opinion matters on its own, there are no fixed frameworks for discussing either a particular artwork or an entire movement. I wish, all museum visitors, not just mediators themselves, grabbed this idea and interpreted our questions as indicators of a genuine desire to learn the viewpoint of a museum visitor, rather test their &ldquo;knowledge&rdquo;. Because the core concept of mediation is dialogue, a dialogue that opens the eyes of both the visitor and, to no lesser degree, of the mediator.

Nikita Roschin’s Diary

25.12
I had a group of museum workers today. I was standing in the Sissel Tolaas area, while Vanya B. took Where Dogs Run. I thought I would have to speak a lot and ask many questions, but my exaltation looked inappropriate, the staff knew the project very well and only few of them demonstrated interest. I had prepared the text and narrated it automatically, reducing the number of questions to minimum toward the end of the day: the format of a single-question guided tour suited more here. Vanya was also disappointed, because in the Where Dogs Run project you cannot keep the viewer concentrated for a long time&mdash;they soon get fascinated with the idea of making an identikit portrait. At the first, it was pretty hard to stand at the smelly installation by Sissel, my nose ceased to distinguish smells and was irritated. I went outside to smell flowers etc. from time to time. There were pleasant episodes too, of course: I got closer acquainted with the team, and even though I did not remember all of them, I made sure that everyone was cool.
5.01
I was bored of staying home, so work could not have come at a better time, especially in the evening shift when there is no need to wake up and everything&rsquo;s great. I worked on Sissel&rsquo;s project again, but this time around did not notice the smell at all. To my huge happiness, visitors were very enthusiastic and, in most cases, actively engaged in a dialogue. There were three foreigners in one group, including two girls from China. They spoke fluent Russian, so, had they not mentioned China, I would not have understood it. The other one was an English-speaking man with a female friend who translated for him, which was great (I forgot the entire English language at once and only remembered the word &ldquo;flask&rdquo;))).
It was a pleasure to work with that group in general. One of the girls even hugged me and afterwards told other mediators how much she enjoyed the installation by Sissel. My mom also came on that day and liked it a lot. She slightly promoted the show among beauty bloggers and bloggers covering perfumes. Two things that came as a surprise to me were the perfume and the bouquet which she composed (the perfume smelled disastrously&mdash;but she seemed to like it very much). Alisa was responsible for Where Dogs Run, so I had time to get to know her better. I was pleasantly shocked to learn how many friends we have in common: it turned out that Alisa is from the town of Lysva, just as our mutual friend from the Open Workshops is, and that I also know a close friend of hers from the school era, as well as several group mates, because she is also a third-year Art History student, but at MSU. It was a good day, which completely fulfilled my expectations from the project. I came back home late at night&mdash;but happy as a clam.
8.01
Today was my first shift at Where Dogs Run. Yan T. took control of Sissel&rsquo;s installation. It was easy to remember the new script, but, as Vanya pointed out on the opening day, it is not easy to speak in front of people who are busy composing an identikit portrait. Rarely does anyone listen at this moment, I feel misplaced, there is little time, everyone wants to share impressions, and not everyone was even able to reflect on the conceptual implications of the work. It was me who touched upon it more often, when it was possible to maneuver out of the dialogue and develop someone else&rsquo;s ideas or questions. Sissel smelled more intensely, than usual. Time went faster than before.
10.01
I am back to WDR today. Kristina K. is at Sissel. Was listening to the smells of flowers throughout the morning, before the groups came. Through a conversation with Kristina I realized that thanks to Sissel&rsquo;s installation, I learned to separate smell from taste and the object by comparing the smells of two seemingly not very similar scents (a greenhouse of tomatoes and nettles). It slightly pushed forward the timing&mdash;but allowed me to take the role of the leading mediator for a few minutes. Most visitors are happy, which pleases me. Time passed very quickly today, faster than in the beginning of the project.

Dilya Tashmuhamedova’s Diary

It has been my first take on Art Experiment, even though I always liked its conception of a new year&rsquo;s holiday extension with immersion, &ldquo;gifts&rdquo; from the Museum and novel (we can even say experimental) sensations. I think interdisciplinarity&mdash;the interconnection of humanitarian and technical sciences&mdash;is typical for Art Experiment as a series of projects. At the same time, as it is aimed at children, it articulates scientific knowledge via horizontal networks with artworks, rather than as absolute truth. It is obligatory to have an experimental space in a museum institution, and Garage does a great job in making it happen.
I cannot say that olfaction in art was a totally unknown subject for me&mdash;but it was not an extremely familiar theme either. After the launch of the project I began noticing that there are olfactory performances on show in Moscow, articles about smells in the media, and even saw an announcement of an opera where smells are used. Who won&rsquo;t believe in the noosphere after that!
One visitor, a young boy, explained the role of mediators on this project very precisely. He said that mediators are part of the nervous system. They transfer information between the cells, leading to emotional response: serotonin, dopamine, adrenaline, and there also neuro mediators. So, in the eyes of the boy, our function is to create mood through information transmission. His comments seemed very valuable to me, since there were situations when I felt like I was not able to fulfil my immediate task&mdash;to be an agent between a person and an artwork, produce communication, discussion, conversation. There was neither enough time for all that (the &ldquo;journey&rdquo; was strictly timed), nor human resources (the groups were too large for individual mediation). At some stage, the project turned into a challenge. But the boy&rsquo;s words allowed me to look at Art Experiment from a different perspective.
What was especially invaluable on this project is meeting people with trained in the field of perfumery. People who have worked closely with smells and identification of smells pick out special metaphors. They revealed a lot of new nuances in the smells that I thought I knew well.
I also remember a little girl who, too my great pleasure, quickly understood what the project is about, and, when I gave her the map, she said that it smelled like hay. Such instant engagement in the idea and the game! Adults sometimes lack this.
The project proved to be a successful extension of our ideas about the smell (even in the mundane meaning of the word) of an artwork. For example, a scented candle is an everyday object with which it turns out to be possible to work and interact in a completely new way. Smell creates space and becomes part of our everyday, aesthetic, and emotional experience.

Anna Nepsha’s Diary

December 27
Morning. The first work shift. What we have: a well worked out mediation scheme, a precise route. Coordinator: &ldquo;Your first group is a group of partially sighted visitors. We should correct movement around the space and mediation&rdquo;. Considering an alternative strategy. Off to work.
&ldquo;Hello, my name is Masha, and I am going to be your personal mediator today&rdquo;. The opening space. Graphics, sculpture, painting. Each piece is completed with a scent. The accompanying person describes all works in detail: who, what, where, when. I drop in comments. &ldquo;What kind of odors do you think will surround us if we suddenly find ourselves at this market, next to Kustodiev&rsquo;s Merchant&rsquo;s Wife?&rdquo;
And then the dam broke.
Partially sighted kids managed to remember all the tiny nuances of artworks and provided a range of meticulously defined scents as well as a comprehensive list of malodors to accompany each of them. With their help, we determined everything: the protagonist, the objects around them, the scene of action, weather conditions, time of the year, even the historical period. We built an entire storyline and did the same with every subsequent artwork. As our enthusiasm was gaining momentum, we flew into outer space next to Katie Patterson&rsquo;s Candle without any &ldquo;anchors&rdquo;. And then everything was just like in the ether.
The group left in a happy and pleasant mood set by the &ldquo;olfactory journey&rdquo; we had completed together. And I was already starting to think how to repeat this experiment with people who use primarily visual experience as their starting point.
My second group that day included migrant children. Due to the language barrier, we chose the communication strategy of evaluating the smells&rsquo; attractive qualities. As soon as I realized it, I stressed out. Such a scenario was completely opposite to my preconception of ideal mediation in the context of smells. Some time later, however, I sensed with my own eyes that smells form an independent, at once mysterious and universal language that each of us is able to hear and comprehend. But this understanding is based not so much on cultural or national experiences, but on the person&rsquo;s individual story. This assumption was proved many times afterwards as I talked to my fellow countrymen.
Both these groups turned up at a very good time, breaking to pieces all my pre-prepared mediation strategies. These people literally inspired me to return to the more usual tactics implying an open approach to situation and improvisation.
January 2 
On that day I decided to experiment with the visitors&rsquo; direction of thoughts. We released our imagination into the open spaces of reflection and interpreted works through any random prisms that came to our mind. It allowed us to maximize the list of smells that could potentially &ldquo;illustrate&rdquo; our plots. I deliberately threw in stories radically opposed to the &ldquo;key ideas&rdquo; which we, the mediators, were introduced with during the preparation program. So, when we listened to a smell developed by Anna Agurina, only one plot from the list of dissimilar stories would break forth. And surprisingly, once again, every participant had their own unique plot. The one that matches the smell the most. For instance, one visitor heard the smell of wet grass after morning fog next to Yuri Kuper&rsquo;s 1978 piece Balcony, while others smelled the smoke of a recently burnt down house.
January 4 
In anticipation of Art Experiment, the historian and anthropologist Maria Pirogovskaya gave a talk on &ldquo;The Proustian Effect and Olfactory Neutrality: An Introduction to Historical Aromatics&rdquo; as part of the public program accompanying the project. Apart from Marcel Proust&rsquo;s novel Swann&rsquo;s Way, where this effect is introduced. As mediators, we referenced this effect on numerous occasions at different sites of the show. But Pirogovskaya also mentioned the novel Against Nature by Joris-Karl Huysmans in her talk, where the protagonist was extremely sensitive to smells and their interpretation. By December 4, I had read the novel and began referring to it in my monologues about the fantasy trip of Katie Patterson&rsquo;s Candle. There is a scene in the novel where the main hero des Esseintes sprays essences one after another which paint a story in front of him. It seems to me that the artist Katie Patterson and the character des Esseintes are similar in their desire to construct experiences through smells.
January 10 
I happened to have a double shift and spent the day in a mediation stream. It was then that the emotional content of our work came to the fore instead of information for me. It is my understanding of mediation that participants involved in the process must be charged with keen interest in the artworks, and a wish to figure out what&rsquo;s going here should be settled in their mind. Such a task requires empathy, open-mindedness, flexibility and lots of energy from the mediator. Unfortunately, or fortunately, mediators are also humans, whose resources may run out and they may need to &ldquo;breathe in silence&rdquo; for a while. The ambiguous rule&mdash;that &ldquo;you cannot give love and peacefulness unless you don&rsquo;t have them in yourself&rdquo;&mdash;is unshakable in this case. At such moments I was happy to work within the team of people that happened to get together at our Art Experiment. We managed to create an atmosphere where everyone is ready to adjust and back up a colleague. Only one thing remained problematic&mdash;not being able to help because someone else had already done it.

Maria Mozgovaya’s Diary

<h2 style="text-align: center;">A female mediator&rsquo;s diary</h2>
Let my diary be a piece of fabric composed of fragmentary notes, observations, and thoughts. It is not an attempt to remember every workday as a special one (even though they were special, although I only had seven workdays overall). Written retrospectively, this product is rather a mix of observations.
While preparing for Art Experiment, I accidentally met Yulya and Zhenya at Khodynka Gallery. They are also mediators and my mates from the Ural Industrial Biennial. Yulya quoted someone who said that mediation means &ldquo;setting up a situation&rdquo;. A situation that encourages to one discuss, dispute, reify, reject, mellow out, etc. I remembered these words very well. I can count several situations based around detailed dialogues that I had with visitors, but I&rsquo;m afraid I cannot call any of them a situation of that very type. Perhaps, this is both due to the lack of shifts I took and because we were very restricted in terms of time, meaning long conversations had to be limited.&nbsp; I guess it is reasonable to recognize that I haven&rsquo;t been able to provide &ldquo;proper mediation&rdquo; yet. I felt unity and mutual agreement with those who underlined the unique and special nature of genuine mediation at our final mediators&rsquo; meeting.
Our duty was to meet visitors before they entered the display, and once I had paranoid dreams about gathering visitors in the metro vestibule&mdash;so deeply the working process penetrated my mind!
I also believe that the best mediation, the purest mediation is, in my view, speaking metaphorically, a person wearing a T-shirt with the print &ldquo;ask me&rdquo; on it. So that the visitor could approach a male or female mediator having already developed some emotional background/ question/ request. Otherwise it is difficult to abstract oneself from the fact that, as a mediator, I am not supposed to talk as much as, using the market slang, to accompany, warm up, and take care of visitors during the tour.
On the other hand, I am writing this right now and think: I simply need to learn how to &ldquo;attack&rdquo; people in order to slightly destabilize them wherever possible and necessary (don&rsquo;t get me wrong though, I&rsquo;m not an aggressive person, I am talking about something else&hellip;). Otherwise, is it possible at all to discuss contemporary art using ceremonial language and smiling?
One of my goals was to learn to speak about art in simple words. As someone who studies art history and regularly communicates with people from the art world, I still feel huge professional deformation (and haven&rsquo;t been able to rid of this feeling yet). But it is necessary to interpret art in a simple way for those who encounter it for the first time, or who are actually indifferent toward it before the conversation begins. Maybe I managed to do so in certain cases, but it is hard to get away from oneself: when I had a group of artists, art historians, museum workers, I immediately knew it and enjoyed such shifts most of all, I can tell you in confidence. What can I say, it&rsquo;s all about common interests.
Information from the fields of knowledge that you never dealt with before also invokes extreme fervor. Once, I managed to talk to a female biology student about the mechanisms that people use to perceive smells; another visitor explained the system of outer space to the rest of the group in front of Katie Paterson&rsquo;s Candle piece. Once, I was walking to the underground together with two women from one of my groups. We discussed the project, art, museums, and life in general. After noticing them in the exhibition space, I instantly realized how much they reminded me of my mother. Apparently, it was the &ldquo;Freud in action&rdquo; effect, and it seems to me that personal motives play a significant role in human communication.
No one likes the smell of the flask accompanying Kustodiev&rsquo;s A Merchant&rsquo;s Wife. Nor does anyone agree that it resembles the way a market/painting would actually smell. This is almost an axiom.
Moving away from the project and people, toward what is left of it now, I can say that the thing that makes me especially happy is the acquaintance with the staff of Garage who often remain depersonalized: security staff, invigilators, information desk workers. How much attention do we usually pay to those who ensure the Museum operates on a daily basis? We usually remember some big names. I enjoy hearing the security guy saying &ldquo;Hello, comrade mediator&rdquo; to me as I enter the Museum, being in good relations with the guys on information points, coming to the show, seeing familiar faces and exchanging smiles with each other.

Alina Khayrutdinova’s Diary

7-9 years 

10-14 years 

15-17 years 

0-6 years 

Architecture

Photo

Journalism

Psychology

Music

Books in English

Family

Garage Dance

Garage.txt

Garage Screen

Stream

Contemporary Critical Thought

Directors’ series

The Garage Journal

Exhibition catalogues

Research

Children's books

Garage + Ad Marginem

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

Russian

English

Bilingual (russian/english)

Film programs

GARAGE Club

Programs for exhibitions

Events

Garage Live

Academic program

Grants

Field research

Patronship

Garage Studios

Mosaic Music

GARAGE Student

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 

Audio

Video

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

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

Visitors in a wheelchair

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

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

Varvara Kudlay’s Diary

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