Bureau des transmissions mediators

Text

Alevtina Anisimova (b. 1995, Petrozavodsk) I graduated in Pedagogical Education: English and German Languages from Petrozavodsk State University. I have been a Garage intern since September 2018. I worked as a moderator on the project Art Experiment. The Miracle of Light. Currently my main interest is the potential possibilities of using pedagogical education in a museum environment.
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Since I joined the project later than the rest of the mediators, I was a little bit (in fact, a lot) scared. The fear of getting someone into trouble, or failing to cope with my work, etc. is always there in my head, especially when I&rsquo;m overthinking too much (in this particular case, I mean thinking about what a mediator should be like, and how well I fit this role at all). With every shift however, it got slightly better and easier, as I gradually realized that not all of the visitors eagerly engage in dialogue, not everyone is ready to share their thoughts with a stranger, and some simply don&rsquo;t have enough time to spend in the Museum, and therefore I shouldn&rsquo;t blame myself for all these things. Obviously, it is really nice to meet with people who initially wish to communicate&mdash;in my case, for instance, a dialogue over a cup of coffee is usually initiated by the visitors. This is why these conversations happen not so often, but it doesn&rsquo;t make them less valuable. Frankly speaking, I feel more comfortable when talking to people &ldquo;outside of the stairs&rdquo;, and such dialogues are usually more intense, since people don&rsquo;t feel tied to a certain issue&mdash;but rather see that their opinion is interesting as such, not within a selected project.
It is quite amazing that people make Linda&rsquo;s puppets so enthusiastically! And it is equally amazing how their opinions about her workshop vary. For example, one woman, when sharing her thoughts with me, said that participatory projects should not be temporary. Roughly speaking, a person should be able to come to a museum and see what they left there ten decades ago. She also noticed that our space helps people concentrate too much, and when it happens, people tend to do what they already can do, instead of discovering their creative potential. She made me think about it.
One man suggested an interesting way of engaging the audience, somewhat of the Chinese whispers game: the mediator talks to a person, tells them about the project, etc., and then leaves. The person cannot leave until they pass this knowledge to someone else, and so on. But then there is the question why we need mediators at all, if visitors can interact with themselves. And whether we should control such interaction.
The project is slowly but surely coming to an end, and the accompanying reflection is inevitable. If in the very beginning I felt the lack of art historical/ cultural background to be an art mediator, now I understand that it is even better for me in some ways (although the project obviously boosted me to acquire such a background, since it is absolutely necessary). Why? It may sound strange, but some visitors were surprised yet pleased to learn that I didn&rsquo;t have professional art historical training. Speaking with younger audiences (students and high school graduates), my story inspired them a lot. Some people still think of museums as elite institutions, so when they hear that I am a frustrated teacher from another city that began to realize that education is not a lifetime stigma and that they can end up working in a museum too, if they wish.
Towards the end of the project I started loving conversations over tea-drinking. The thing I liked the most was how people gradually open up more and more and eventually trust you. Whereas in the beginning of the discussion they seemed frightened to be judged for their opinions (which was especially evident with the cups about feminism and social diversity), further through the dialogue they were not embarrassed anymore to speak openly and sometimes even sharply. But no matter how much I really enjoyed talking to people at Ladder Caf&eacute;, I see my main failure: the dialogues were very seldom built around the questions on the mugs, jumping from one topic to another, therefore everything valuable that I received therefrom is valuable personally for me, rather than for the Museum or artists. But anyway, I&rsquo;m grateful to Garage for acquainting me with a large number of totally different but equally interesting people. At times I felt like we were really sharing some energy with each other, not merely drinking tea and talking. I will remember many of those people for a long time, I guess.
Generally, it seems that I have found an answer to my question about what an art mediator should be like. The mediator should not impose their opinion, should not try to &ldquo;feed&rdquo; the visitor with tons of information, especially if the latter is not ready to communicate too much with a stranger. A mediator is someone who has to be able to behave differently, depending on the person they interact with, be it a regular museum goer or a someone who accidently came in while sheltering from the rain in the park. A mediator should bear in mind whether the person better perceives information via listening or touching, etc. A mediator is a person who encourages and inspires. And being such a person is a decent task and goal.

Alevtina Anisimova’s Diary

Evgeniya Bereza&nbsp;(b. 1990, Moscow) After graduating from the faculty of journalism I worked as an editor on TV for ten years&mdash;before realizing at one point that work didn&rsquo;t inspire me anymore, that I wanted to interact with people via some more universal language. Art appeared to be that kind of language. Giving birth to my daughter helped me to overcome the fear of everything new, and I decided to try the museum sphere for myself. A year ago I came to do an internship at Garage, where I felt fully confident in making that decision. This fall I am going to the USA to do a Master&rsquo;s in Museum Management.
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Hello, diary! Forgive me for not writing for such a long time, but you should understand me: it&rsquo;s spring and youth time&hellip;
Now to business. Below is my resume of four shifts, two morning and two evening ones.
The first, on March 6, was not a typical one, like an after-party rather than a shift proper. At some point, when the guided tours upstairs ended, we saw a lot of visitors coming to us, wishing to chat. It was that lucky moment when you learn from the audience (many visitors were museum workers or other representatives of the art milieu) more than you&rsquo;re able to give. It was a cool experience. I would like to underline two conversations &ldquo;on the stairs&rdquo;. The first was with a spectator who mentioned Pravo na Otdyh (The Right for Rest)&mdash;a theater act staged by the Brusnikin Studio and based on the verbatim report of Alexander Galich&rsquo;s expulsion from the Soviet Writers&rsquo; Union. In this interactive performance the spectators themselves can become members of the board and receive the script prior to the start if they wish. I was genuinely surprised to learn that participation in this play changes the mind so much that you begin to believe in the fairness of what&rsquo;s going on in the process. The system cannot be mistaken, even within the genre of a theater spectacle its weight is critical. I am not sure if it is appropriate to share my thoughts instead of what actually happens between the visitors and me during the conversations, but I would like to touch upon the topic of the power of art. The power that is able to bring about good as much as evil (which is also quite relative). The power of the museum as a history book representing events in one light or another. How much does the visitor trust the museum? Do they consider it an agent of genuine knowledge? Have there been episodes where museums abused the trust of their audiences by instilling false truths?
The second dialogue was with a pretty smart sixteen-year-old guy. Wrapping up his views, adults should not impose &ldquo;big art&rdquo; on children from early age. He told me that parents always took him to the Tretyakov Gallery when he was still a preschool kid. So today, all the masterpieces that are kept there invoke nothing but irritation. He&rsquo;s bored with them. He wishes he could have acquainted with them much later, like, nowadays, in order to have the chance to enjoy them. I should put it like this: is it necessary to introduce children to &ldquo;high&rdquo; art from very early age? What pros and cons does it entail? Adding from my own experience, my parents were really radical and would take me to the Hermitage and leave me there for hours. Perhaps, this is why my road to museum work was bendy, and I avoided a closer contact with museums for a long time. But it may also be that the early baptism of fire has borne fruit twenty year later, who knows. Another thing is that I introduce my four-year-old daughter to museums very carefully now. Using short but regular visits, after an agreement with her and a special preparation (we discuss in advance what is awaiting inside and why it might be interesting). Obviously, even the most &ldquo;austere&rdquo; museums today incline toward inclusion and realize that space has to be attractive and friendly for everyone. So, I wish in the future, museums will no longer be somewhat of a punishment for children.

Evgeniya Bereza’s Diary 

Diana Ezugbaia (b. 1990, Ochamchire, Georgia) I am an art mediator and guide. I received my MFA degree from Lomonosov Moscow State University in 2017. My Master&rsquo;s thesis is dedicated to the genre of installation in the context of Russian art of the recent decades. My academic tutor was art historian and critic Andrey Kovalev. The projects I&rsquo;ve taken part in include: the exhibition Here and Now, Moscow Manege (2018), III Biennale of Street Wave Art Artmossphere, Winzavod Moscow Contemporary Art Center (2018), Viva la Vida. Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. Paintings and drawings from museums and private collections, Moscow Manege, Moscow (2019), IV Moscow Cultural Forum,&nbsp; Moscow Manege, Moscow (2019). I enjoy working with ideas and people. I decided on my look at the age of five by cutting a fringe with my own hands, and have been making decisions and taking responsibilities for them since then.
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<h2>Memoirs of a Geisha, or the Art of Communication</h2>
&ndash; What&rsquo;s your occupation? &ndash; I am a mediator. &ndash; Sorry, can you say that again, please?
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Few people, even among those who are closely connected with art, would know what an art mediator is. This is a relatively new phenomenon, especially in modern-day Russia. This is why, in order to introduce the visitor with the topic, I describe my occupation the following way: &ldquo;For sixty to ninety minutes I become your close friend, as we discuss the exhibition, the artworks, and, unlike a guide, I&rsquo;m interested in hearing your opinion.&rdquo; According to my experience, the visitor instantly understands my role and tasks. The reader would perhaps be embarrassed with the idea of &ldquo;a friend for an hour&rdquo;, but this strategy allows the mediator to forward the conversation in the right direction before switching to free floating without the need to spend time on constructing the roles. When the interlocutor is emotionally ready it is possible to start discussing the subject the dialogue is based around. The mediator should be a good psychologist, should feel their visitors, infiltrate their essence&mdash;in order to find an individual approach to their heart and mind. Therefore, to set out on a journey into the world of Ideas, it is important to attract the listener intellectually from the very beginning.
It was during the project Bureau des transmissions that I began associating myself with a geisha. It may sound odd, but it is really so. Feminists, please, forgive me for this comparison, it is purely subjective. Young people can also be art mediators, and there are a lot of them among my colleagues. The work on this project has its specificity because of the tea-ceremony element suggested by the group microsillons in their piece Ladder Caf&eacute;. Here I feel myself a hostess of a tea house where several habitants co-exist: the string cloud by the Danish artist Karoline H. Larsen, the spellbound wardrobes by Linda Vigdorčika, and the touching albums of Olga Zhitlina and Anna Tereshkina.
The very etymology of the word "geisha" is helpful, allowing for comparisons with the functions of an art mediator within this project, since the word is composed of two hieroglyphs which mean &ldquo;art&rdquo; and &ldquo;person&rdquo; respectively. A geisha has to be educated and have good skills and manners. In this relation, I should mention that people wishing to become mediators make a long journey before becoming interesting interlocutors.
I am used to working at large venues where one can move from room to room and wander across the space. But it feels different in Garage&rsquo;s LAB area which is cozier and more accessible for good control of the space. So, being surrounded by art works, I meet travelers from other worlds and introduce them to my own one via the practices of tea drinking, looking at albums, playing games, and tying up ribbons.
<h2>On Bureau des transmissions artworks</h2>
Artworks displayed as permanent items (throughout the exhibition) can be approached from the viewpoint of temporal categories: the past, the present, and the future. The past is represented by Ekaterina Muromtseva&rsquo;s video piece about the experience of engaging people of &ldquo;the third age&rdquo; in art. The video medium itself implies the documentation of an event that has passed, and the screen shows us people who have lived most of their lives already. Zhitlina and Tereshkina&rsquo;s newspaper Nasreddin in Russia and albums refer to the present and past at once. Ladder Caf&eacute; by microsillons exists only in the present moment, during the tea ceremony, and once this process is over, the action also falls into oblivion. Linda Vigdorčika's Translation Wardrobe and Karoline H. Larsen&rsquo;s Collective Strings relate simultaneously to all temporal modes. The participatory aspects of these works express the present, collective memory, and contemplation&mdash;the past, while the projection of the future is evident in the inscriptions on the strings and dolls with wishes inscribed by people.
The arrangement of the works across the LAB space at Garage suggests a spiral a metaphor for the mechanism used in the production of any artwork. Ideas are not being born from scratch, since there exist such things as experience, heritage, and insights (the video work by Muromtseva). They penetrate the present, including the moment of the emergence of an idea, and that of its discussion (Ladder Caf&eacute; by microsillons). Next, the idea is transferred to paper for further development (Nasreddin in Russia by Zhitlina and Tereshkina) which then entails realization (Linda Vigdorčika's Translation Wardrobe). The resulting piece is a complete artwork highlighting the categories of heritage, implementation and aspiration (Karoline H. Larsen&rsquo;s Collective Strings).
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INFOGRAPHICS Heritage Idea Development Realization Artwork
<h2>My communication experience</h2>
During the opening shift, my guests were two interesting young people who observed the installation Collective Strings with pure admiration. We had a conversation together over a cup of green tea, whereby I learnt that one of them was a chemist. On that same day, I had learnt about Garage&rsquo;s policy of waste and paper sorting and decided to ask his opinion about it. The young man pointed out that since many materials are toxic, each needs individual approach, and therefore his attitude to waste sorting and the reuse of plastic is positive. In this context he also shared an interesting episode from his life experience.
He studied at school which promoted the idea of waste sorting and had special containers installed everywhere. But once, from mere curiosity, he opened the lid of the biggest among them and was shocked to find garbage of all types mixed with each other in the same box. The chemist concluded that waste sorting policy in our country remains in its infancy. I suggest wrapping up this story with the question: where are the limits of an institution&rsquo;s control, at what stage do institutions lose the power to control, and to what extent are they responsible for it?
Amazingly, sometimes people were not able to interest me at all. This is what I was horrified to discover during my second shift, when talking to a girl who turned out to be mouthy and empty. It seemed that she didn&rsquo;t really need me, erupting words into the air. She was like an engine emitting steam non-stop and sending it somewhere in the nowhere.
At times, totally amazing conversations can be heard.
&ndash; There are two main motivation factors which can be used in the education process: fear and love. In this country, education is mainly based on fear. Nothing is being built around love, even families. Why does it happen? Because fear is easy to achieve. 
&ndash; How could it be changed? 
&ndash; I think each of us should devote more of ourselves to love. 
&ndash; Where can this idea develop from?
&ndash; From manifesting love. If I manifest love for someone it fills that someone with love too. They start manifesting it in their own turn. 
&ndash; And how is it possible to spread this idea?
&ndash; It doesn&rsquo;t need to be spread. Just manifest love, and that&rsquo;s it. It will spread around on its own. One has to be its source. Because everyone has it inside: sometimes concreted, but sometimes fighting its way through the concrete, like a flower. Our task is simply to grow slowly, in order to break the concrete&mdash;and it will break through. But it is important to grow slowly, not breaking it with hands.
Or hear something like that:
&ldquo;The level of your friendship depends on how well you understand your mutual goals, and how similar your common values are.&rdquo;
The mediator can get answers to questions which bother them. Which is wonderful because, conducting your own sociological research allows to you draw a great number of diverse viewpoints. For me, this question was &ldquo;How difficult is it to be an organizer?&rdquo; And one of the most nontrivial answers to it was &ldquo;It is quite hard. This is my answer. It is difficult to be, and easy &ldquo;not to be.&rdquo;
<img src="https://cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D1%80%D1%82%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%BA%D0%B0-2-%D0%95%D0%B7%D1%83%D0%B3%D0%B1%D0%B0%D1%8F547.jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1141" />
I often reflect on how the quality of mediation could be enhanced. Along with erudition and the skill of listening to and hearing the other, I think it is necessary to work on the quality of speech, to make oneself clear and understandable. Disciplines such as rhetoric, speech culture, and logic are decent helpers on the way to achieving this goal. Yet the most crucial factor for mediation to happen successfully is the inner readiness to open in front of the visitor, because sincerity is worth a lot.
<h2>Conclusions about the project</h2>
The project allowed each of the mediators to reveal their individuality in different ways, from tea brewing techniques to diary format, all this made possible due to the initially set task to feel as free as possible at the site and not be shy because of one&rsquo;s psychological state. This instruction proved to be very helpful, because when I started experiencing emotional exhaustion at work and unwillingness to communicate with people, I instantly remembered the advice about acceptance and forgiveness. Paradoxically, such insights boosted my morale, a new visitor would enter the space and the communication resumed while enthusiasm replaced the fatigue.
The project, in my opinion, has a taste of paganism. Many of the actions we were making resembled shamanistic rituals. At some stage Linda&rsquo;s dolls were hanging on Karoline&rsquo;s installation Collective Strings, while the ribbons became covered with quotes, signatures and contacts. Together with installation, grew the feeling of some ancient cave with hanging stalactites, whose inhabitants&mdash;the mediators&mdash;lure guests in their refuge.
Among the downsides, I would name the furniture designed for the project. The combination of the MDF texture with the &ldquo;broccoli&rdquo; color invoked an association with a children&rsquo;s room in a shopping mall in many. The logistics of the mugs wasn&rsquo;t thought through either: in the conception by microsillons, they were meant to be placed spontaneously, but oftentimes the mugs were put in a thematically free order during one shift, while organized in compliance with a particular idea during the other. Because of these endless permutations, which depended on personal tastes and visions of mediators, the paired mug could be lost and unavailable when it was needed. Also, I often asked myself whether we needed so many different questions. According to my experience, there were a around a dozen most popular ones, including: &ldquo;Can anyone be an artist?&rdquo;; &ldquo;Can emoji drawings help communication?&rdquo;; &ldquo;Can there be a feminist museum?&rdquo;. Some questions were impossible to work with. When a question seemed too complicated for the visitor, they preferred to listen to the mediator&rsquo;s explanation.
Mediation is a unique opportunity to get in touch with people with whom otherwise, due to circumstances, your character or viewpoints, you would have hardly ever talked to. The inspiring thing is that both the visitor and the mediator are a priori put into a situation deprived of social tensions. Because of that, communication can be very intimate, like a conversation of two strangers on a train, who have no personal commitments and whose paths will soon diverge. I like the fact that people feel the significance of mediation and their contribution to it in the process. Mediation is a diary written and read together, which exists non-materially, within an art process alone.
I watched as the guests of the exhibitions were leaving it happily, inspired by the feeling of belonging to what was going on there that allowed them to rediscover themselves anew. And this wonderful project was a success exactly because of mediation, which opened its embraces to the travelers and let them inside its home, gave them spiritual food, and released them for further journeys.

Diana Ezugbaia’s Diary

Alina Izmailova&nbsp;(b. 1992, Ufa) I received my Master&rsquo;s degree from the Faculty of Geology of Bashkir State University and worked at the Academy of Sciences. I am into travel photography which stimulated my move from Ufa to Moscow. Currently I collaborate with various contemporary art exhibition venues as a manager, lecturer, and artist.
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March 15, 2019
Today I&rsquo;m going to do my third shift, which starts at 16:30. It is a public talk with Zhilyaev, and I would like to extract my thoughts over the first couple of days before they are absorbed by the power of and impression from the meeting and work with such a monstrous figure on the same project.
First day, morning shift, March 8.
It was great to return to Garage to work again. A bit gray-ish outside, but it doesn&rsquo;t affect my mood at all. I remember two very nice girls who worked together with me. We did well with them supporting each other. Not a bad compatibility, although none of us went beyond working matters and some general interest. The first visitors began entering the space very cautiously, but I saw that those sleepy people were not ready to discuss anything enthusiastically, even over a cup of tea. All of them sort of paved their way into the Museum. One of the mediators came up to a female visitor, smiling, but had to retire quite quickly, since this is the first thing a mediator should sense very well&mdash;the mood of the visitor who enters our space. It was wrong to superimpose the wish to demonstrate her communication skills so openly. But it turned out to be okay, because right afterwards came a couple who were looking for some quick and easy fun. It&rsquo;s not so bad then that they didn&rsquo;t proceed to the mug projects.
I was watching how that same girl, after carefully examining the part with the drawings and folders, went up to the table and started looking at the cups, modestly, not daring to examine them on her own. So, I decided to come up to her, and for a start, I simply encouraged her to look at the mugs together and explain her some details about the installation. Her first phrase and reaction was to close in herself, but then she agreed. The same happened to my invitation to have some tea. We talked for a long time, she is an artist and feminist activist. Even though our cups were about the concept of the &ldquo;ladder&rdquo;, of course we discussed a lot of stuff, including, and this is what I really liked, her viewpoint on the importance of the subject of migration that we touched upon. She has an active civil position and even does things that help to materialize these legal needs. We talked about the possibility of affecting the Museum&rsquo;s work, and she mentioned the ticket prices&hellip; We remembered the early stages of the Soviet Union marked by serious intentions and real steps towards equality, the notable performance of female artists, and how it all soon dispersed.
Generally, we were lucky due to the coincidence of the date, her interests and the topic suggested by the mug, which instigated, in this or another way, a talk around the possibility of being independent and responsible for one&rsquo;s own life and the wish to do so which come people have, while others don&rsquo;t. She was heading to one of the events taking place that night, so we said goodbye after adding each other on Facebook. There were more activities on that day, more tea-drinking, but it wasn&rsquo;t as important.
March 10, evening.
Immediately after I came, I was asked to wash the mugs. Ok. But of course, I had a program full of impressions on that day. The very first happened at the Ladder Caf&eacute; installation. A man came up to me, slightly embarrassed and lost, as if not only the museum space was new to him, a place he never visited before, but also, perhaps, the life itself&hellip; He said he wasn&rsquo;t against having some tea, although he usually drinks expensive tea which he orders. He was interested in communication however, so we decided to choose the mugs and sit with them, with a good reason for a conversation. He had seen our museum before from afar, but this was the first time he decided to go in. He rarely goes to museums, the last time he went to an ethnographic museum (a reconstruction of a village) in Bulgaria, primarily because he was on an excursion tour there, and usually, he prefers walking around the city on his own instead. It came out to be that his passion for natural walks derives from the vegan philosophy, lifestyle and&hellip; his passion for walking barefoot whenever he is. So, as we burst into a dialogue, I directed him from time to time back to the topic of museology and tolerance, and then he asked, slightly awkwardly and with a timid smile, whether he could take off his shoes, because his feet were wet. I was a bit embarrassed too but full of museum liberalism. In fact, it&rsquo;s not a crime. And he continued to smile all the time. Said he had already taken them off and would like to observe the exposition and come upstairs to the second floor. I let him walk around the space on his own, inviting him to come back afterwards and share his impressions of the shows.
After a while, when I am already busy with another visitor, I see him. He says he wasn&rsquo;t allowed to go upstairs without a ticket.
On the same evening I had the chance to get acquainted with the young Erm&eacute; (Эрме). He is half Turkish. Very curly and kind. He was accompanied by equally small, although not curly girls. We lay covered by the ribbons and talked about their colorfulness, and that it was as if a from the colorful skies poured down upon us from the colored skies. Then we ran toward the tower and the entire carousel of fun. The girls soon fell behind and disappeared. I went up to Linda&rsquo;s wardrobe, to play masks with Erm&eacute; and write a message in Turkish on the ribbon. And make an amulet in the form of a giraffe. So little time we had to spend together! His mom came. He asked when I&rsquo;m going to work next time, and whether we could see each other again later that day&hellip;
I looked around. I was alone: everything was living and moving in the green of this place.
March 15
Erme came with his mother and sister right to the opening time. The most important thing, he said, is that there exists zone 25 in human brain which is responsible for controlling bad mood, and if this function is broken, the person will always feel depressed. But the conversation originally began with the question if anyone could become an artist. He said yes, but only provided that the person has inspiration. And inspiration is born from a special human feeling, it is something &ldquo;special&rdquo;, but &ldquo;still light-colored&rdquo;. He judges by himself. Btw, the info about zone 25 is taken from the Smeshariki cartoon.
Later, even his dad came to the Museum. The adults didn&rsquo;t like the show though.
Towards the end of the day, I met a girl of Asian descent who was very touched by the subject of migration we raise. Especially by what the young generation of migrants who have grown in labor environment has become. She slightly critiqued them. She would like to see a continuation of the project and looked forward to the meeting of Jitlina and Tereshkina with real CIS representatives at Garage. A few young guys joined our conversation. And by what they said I recognized in one of them a visitor who I had a two-hour long discussion with at Elena Nikonole&rsquo;s artist talk last summer at Garage, when he explained with ease all of the key principles of her work with neural networks. Back then he was still a high school graduate. He said it was his second time at Pavel Pepperstein&rsquo;s show now, and that he would come and check the Ladder as well. And he did!
We discussed that, in accordance with physical laws, when doing anything, including the making of art, substance makes a transition from one condition to a different one, leading to the release of heat, the expansion of the universe and, ultimately, to its death.
Part 4
I&rsquo;ve had my fourth shift today.
1. A man came who said that it&rsquo;s his third time in a contemporary art museum. Following the second, unsuccessful, attempt he thought there still might be some good examples. He accidentally saw a program featuring Gutov and Belov which inspired him to go to Garage. Dmitry Gutov caught his attention so much that he watched a lot of other stuff with him, including the lecture Contemporary Art in 90 Minutes. And it forever changed his attitude to contemporary art. He was puzzled with what he saw at our project. BUT! He accepted it as an opportunity for reflection instead of refusing to comprehend.
2. It turns out that so far, I&rsquo;ve only met visitors with a positive reaction toward the project of Jitlina and Tereshkina. BUT there is a different reaction too. Other mediators told me that.
3. I&rsquo;ve got the contact of a teacher based in Leipzig who was really interested in the work by Jitlina and Tereshkina, as she is currently writing an academic paper dedicated to comics. She was really delighted about getting in touch with them.

Alina Izmaylova’s Diary

Maria Mozgovaya&nbsp;(b. 1998, Moscow) I am completing my BA (Hons) in Fine Art at the British Higher School of Design this year. I have been involved in the work of Garage&rsquo;s Education Department for two years now. Combining fine art classes with teaching, I read lectures and deliver workshops. In my own artworks I investigate cultural and physical aspects of clothing, engaging visitors in this process.
<hr />
Even though the entire project is aimed at building horizontal relationships within the museum space, moderators still play a significant, if not crucial role in shaping the visitors&rsquo; perception of works. I experimented a lot of times with the way I deliver information about what&rsquo;s going on within the territory of Bureau des transmissions, and each time it was evident in which direction it takes the visitor&rsquo;s thought. Depending on the order in which I introduced the projects, the whole picture also changed. Moderators are agents between the artist and the viewer. This setup endows us with certain power and responsibility. We plant grains in people&rsquo;s minds and try to grow them together in the process of conversation. And it is important to choose proper &ldquo;water&rdquo; and &ldquo;fertilization&rdquo;, so that the experience of presence on the territory of Bureau turns out useful for everyone.
Every time I personally sympathized with some projects, it passed on to visitors. My tiniest emotional reaction, e.g. I smiled while talking, or gave a bit more information, instantly focused the person&rsquo;s attention on certain nuances of the works.
It is very interesting to watch people who wander across the Bureau space independently first, when moderators have no opportunity to come up and start a dialogue about the whole project. When I&rsquo;m busy at any of the spots, I always watch out of the corner of my eye what such independent viewers do. Sometimes from afar one can notice that some people restrain themselves from the slightest physical contact with any objects on the territory. Several times visitors who showed interest in the Nasreddin project came up to me, to Ladder Caf&eacute;, and asked whether we could discuss racism too. And the same people suggested that the strings are a part of some Mexican or Indian festivity. After grasping the idea of one work, they started building links with the rest of the pieces, and those &ldquo;filters&rdquo; often times were very unexpected. Some viewers would immediately rush to throw the ribbons and construct something, as they saw people sitting by the tables and simply wanted to join them. This process of silent understanding of what and why is happening here is the most magical and essential thing about the project as a whole for me.
I always feel surprised how much people enjoy communicating with strangers!

Maria Mozgovaya’s Diary

Alina Ponomarenko&nbsp;(b. 1995, Zvenigorod)
I studied at the British Higher School of Design where my fascination with art, especially painting, began. But soon after falling for oils and canvases I realized that they are not enough for interpreting all my ideas and emotions, and found a way out of it via writing my own texts, both poetry and prose. People are an important source of inspiration for me.
<hr />
Day one: exhibition opening for patrons, partners, and GARAGE cardholders.
The project Bureau des transmissions was a place where people came to have some fun, throw ribbons, or discuss an interesting topic suggested by the mugs (the participatory project Ladder Caf&eacute; by the microsillons collective). I can say the day was hard, either because of the new experience, or due to the intense mode of conversations.
A man was talking about feminism and the spirit of America, which was very interesting. Another one, with the Asian type of appearance and who spoke English, discussed art and politics with me.
That evening I realized how much energy people can take from you via an ordinary conversation. But they give so much information and emotions in return leading to oversaturation anyway that it takes several days to recover.
Following two days of discoveries, I realized that I was tired. Although one would wonder why, after just a few days and not so many visitors.
I can say that I fully immersed into work only on March 18, i.e. during my fifth shift. I began understanding more or less what&rsquo;s going on there. It was then that I realized that such an intense exhibition project is useful primarily intellectually, and the profession of a moderator is not that easy at all. I also started reading Nina Simon&rsquo;s book The Participatory Museum, which helped to form an internal understanding of what I am doing in this museum and at this particular show, and what I can contribute while working in this space to make the Museum &ldquo;better&rdquo;. I was looking at people trying to understand what they wanted, why they came here. I realized that most of the visitors are very shy because they don&rsquo;t understand what&rsquo; going on and what they&rsquo;re supposed or allowed to do here in this space.
As soon as I was getting more and more involved in the process, it became easier for me to talk to people.
I remember two girls around 15&ndash;16-years-old who took photographs of themselves like grownups&mdash;using a big camera with a large lens, posing and pretending that nothing interested them except each other and the process of posing. But then I caught the eye of one of them and quickly pointed toward the tower upstairs saying that it&rsquo;s cool there. Her eyes grew wider with a child&rsquo;s delight, and she smiled. The girl seized her friend by the hand, and they went on to spend half an hour in the tower. Taking photos. Then they descended and me and my colleague &ldquo;seduced&rdquo; them to make dolls using yarn. It took us around an hour, and it was a great experience of working with teenagers who look so independent while being very young at the same time, so willing to tie bows on the dolls made of thread and choose the color of their arms or hair with serious faces.
I enjoy being in the Museum because it allows me to get to know very different people which I consider a way to realize myself.
And I can say that talking to someone for even a minute helps to understand really a lot. Depending on the way the person looks at things to what they say, it is even possible to guess what their occupation might be! Another advantage of this work is that it improves my observation skills and intuition. Yes, I&rsquo;m talking about myself again and would like to share the impression that working as a moderator in a museum is a magical thing, because the better you understand who comes to you the better you can interact with them and pull information about the museum, the show, and generally about art more effectively out of them.
Once I had a visitor who was quite critical about the project. I was unable to persuade him in the opposite, so he left. It made me think that people actually come to a museum to get very diverse emotions and with very different goals. While some wish to hang out and just sit and relax, others look for self-representation, and there may even be those who want to experience negative emotions. I am sure everything I realized during those days will be helpful for the work of the Museum, for its future projects. I mean, I not only improve myself doing this job&mdash;but make the life of the Museum better too. And it inspires me for further development!

Alina Ponomarenko’s Diary

Oksana Rodina&nbsp;(b. 1997, Moscow)
I am a Cultural Studies student at RSUH and did an internship in China. I am attracted to the Chinese language and culture, contemporary art, and curatorial practices.
<hr />
My first day at work was the first day that the project was open to general public. The real challenge was the necessity to balance between keeping the venue under control and communicating with the visitors. The bright and eye-catching piece by Karoline H. Larsen made them stop and stay at that location for a while, with some visitors leaving afterwards, without proceeding to observe the rest of the projects. This is why sometimes I had to switch from moderator to guide mode, in order to have the opportunity to tell people how many other interesting things we have on offer.
Many visitors asked what would happen to Collective Strings after the end of the show.&nbsp;
During a conversation about the possibility to run a museum in one&rsquo;s apartment, young female artists shared with me their idea of a collective art project to be displayed inside the elevator of their dormitory.
Visitors mainly choose unpaired cups which allowed discussion of more subjects that seem compelling.
&ldquo;The only place in the museum where everything could be touched&rdquo;, one spectator said about the project.

Oksana Rodina’s Diary

Diana Salaheddin&nbsp;(b. 1999, Moscow) Member of Garage&rsquo;s first edition of Teens Team in 2015, I also was an intern and worked as a moderator and guide on the project Art Experiment in 2018 and 2019. At present, I am studying Art History at NRC HSE and at Moscow Museum of Modern Art&rsquo;s Open Workshops. I curate small independent shows. My interests include contemporary architecture, art, and postcolonial African culture.
<hr />
During the shifts I have done, there were a few quite captivating conversations. If I had to systematize the received information, I would distinguish several issues touched by the visitors: the Museum&rsquo;s accessibility for children, its openness for the public, the influence of cell phones on the perception of art, and the role of the Internet. Many visitors, especially older ones, go to see Bureau des transmissions aiming to &ldquo;check&rdquo; how comfortable the project is for their children, with some of them promising to come back. Speaking about my observations of children in the space, I can sense that they feel comfortable enough in this environment: they interact with the installations (make Linda&rsquo;s dolls and tie Karoline&rsquo;s ribbons together), move tables and pedestals, climb the tower. Children&rsquo;s parents point out that after visiting exhibitions where the kids&rsquo; mobility is limited, a space like this becomes especially valuable. On the other hand, some adult visitors identify the space as &ldquo;infantile&rdquo; immediately upon entering it, which is why in the beginning they feel skeptical.
By the Museum&rsquo;s openness to the public I mean a number of situations. First of all, at the Ladder Caf&eacute; installation I discussed with visitors how vitally necessary it is to have freedom of choice in getting information. One of them recalled the exhibition of Marcel Broodthaers where there were no panel texts, and the accompanying booklet served as an additional material rather than explained anything. In the visitor&rsquo;s opinion, had the booklet contained some facts about the works or elements of the artist&rsquo;s philosophy, the show would have become much clearer (and if someone wished to get their own view of it, they would&rsquo;ve simply avoided reading the booklet). The absence of any explanatory texts in the Bureau des transmissions project is also embarrassing for some people, but when they learn about the role of mediators, they realize why there are no texts. Some visitors, especially from the regions, are surprised to get involved in interaction. Over the course of my shifts I have talked to quite many visitors from various Russian regions, and everyone wished to have a space like Garage in their home city (they have named the quality of exhibitions and projects like Bureau des transmissions where interaction with the museum&rsquo;s staff is allowed, among unique features about Garage). Also, one day I had a series of conversations with foreigners. During a talk that happened in Ladder Caf&eacute;, a female visitor from France, when asked how art mediation operates in Western museums, said that in many German and French museums participatory approach exists as a goal in itself. There&rsquo;s so much of it everywhere, and it doesn&rsquo;t necessarily have intellectual meaning, but being trendy, it is included into all museum programs today.
Most of the visitors I talked to come to Bureau after seeing the shows, so our dialogues are built around their impressions thereof. Some noticed, especially commonly&mdash;during Uniqlo Fridays, that they are very irritated by people making selfies in exhibitions spaces (in particular, in the rooms of Pavel Pepperstein&rsquo;s show). There are several causes of this irritation. Firstly, visitors who make selfies/ take pictures of themselves or of the artworks obstruct other visitors&rsquo; view or walking routes. Secondly, people also get irritated because such visitors only take photos without looking at the works or examining them. In someone&rsquo;s opinion, for such people a visit to a museum turns into a form of social approval which is impossible without documentation. We even received suggestions that using cell phones in the exhibition space should be prohibited, although their authors realized the contradiction between the idea of a museum as a space of freedom and the authoritarian logic and practice of taboo.
Overall, looking abstractly at the contents of the dialogues and moving toward my personal attitude to mediation, I feel myself very inspired and it seems to me that sometimes this inspiration transfers to visitors. I get involved in each dialogue at the Ladder Caf&eacute; installation, while interaction inside the space is less intense, because not all visitors are ready for engagement. But there is also a huge problem which I still don&rsquo;t know how to cope with: I feel emotionally burnt out after the shifts. Obviously, the possible solution&mdash;to get less involved in the process&mdash;doesn&rsquo;t work here, as it would mean bad mediation in that case. We&rsquo;re going to discuss this issue with colleagues when we meet.

Diana Salakheddin’s Diary

Yana Sidikova&nbsp;(b. 1994, Yekaterinburg) Mediator at the III Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art, Yekaterinburg (2015) and the Portal Zaryadye exhibition project at Schusev Museum of Architecture, Moscow (2018), I am a second-year master&rsquo;s student at the Cultural Studies School of NRC HSE. My scope of interests is based around the art museum as a space that builds a variety of connections between the artworks, the modern context, my questions, and someone else&rsquo;s stories, each time leading to some new, often very subtle, intersections. Whether it is possible to use them in the future remains an open question, an answer to which I will be looking for at Bureau des transmissions.
<hr />
It is exciting to keep a diary that someone is actually going to read. By the time I began putting this text together I had done five shifts at the venue, but here I&rsquo;m going to record my observations without references to dates&mdash;this way it is easier to put an incoherent flow of thoughts, bits of conversations, and some actions in order. I&rsquo;ve been drowning in it recently (a lot of things seem obvious or superficial), but I&rsquo;ll try to remember how to swim as soon as I can, and how to hold breath under water.
Another important remark: there are going to be dialogues in this script that in fact are not a precise transcription of my conversations with people. They are merely &ldquo;puzzles&rdquo; composed from many different talks echoing each other. In my opinion, they also intersect with my own observations.
But you are free to disagree with me, of course.
<h2>The space</h2>
It seems interesting to me how the work Collective Strings invokes very opposite types of emotions: from joy and child&rsquo;s delight (indeed, isn&rsquo;t it great to throw ribbons, wrap them around everything, scream with pleasure and feel free and relaxed?) to estrangement and, perhaps, even rejection. One wishes to enjoy the colored threads and play with them forever, but at some point (not always of course) this cobweb reminds of a tumor that rapidly invades a healthy body. On the one hand, the &ldquo;strings&rdquo; create physical obstacles: block the way, catch hairpins, take away the time required to put the piece back in order. On the other, their &ldquo;colorful mop&rdquo;, like the tender voice of the fairy-tale mermaid, spellbinds or distracts, prevents oneself from concentrating on the discussion of serious topics, forces the poor &ldquo;sailor-traveler&rdquo; follow it. And visitors themselves begin to notice that the museum is not a &ldquo;museum&rdquo; anymore, that, because of these ribbons, it looks like an attraction park, or a kids&rsquo; room in a shopping center.
This is neither good, nor bad. The artist&rsquo;s work is already a success if it instigates to build various chains of interpretations and throw in new questions.
This is how, gradually, Collective Strings transforms a set of metaphors concealing the subjects of a &ldquo;beautiful package&rdquo;, a Moscow traffic jam, lingering time, useless/meaningless labor, and, finally, the myth of a liberated museum space. The latter only further supports the idea that freedom doesn&rsquo;t equal chaos. Even a very open museum should have rules and limitations, which is normal.
But some would disagree.&nbsp;
A visitor takes a cup from the microsillons project and reads:
&mdash; &ldquo;Every year the audience is offered the chance to conquer Garage for one day. Festive atmosphere governs in the Museum.&rdquo; Great, I love it! &mdash; Do you think it is true? &mdash; Sure, this is how it should be.
It would be interesting to continue the dialogue, but the visitor goes away.
&hellip;
People play a lot in the space of Bureau des transmissions, as if the venue is meant for games. And whereas the work Translation Wardrobe is openly intended at play (the artist deliberately leaves various toys in the wardrobe and remembers her favorite childhood games), Ladder Caf&eacute; also loses its natural mode at a certain point, turning into a game&mdash;a game in the form of a caf&eacute;.
&mdash; What kind of tea do you prefer: green or black? &mdash; Green. &mdash; And which questions have you chosen?
Visitors sort of seem to feel that their presence here is part of the planned scenario, their answers&mdash;fragments of the artwork/performance based on a script and implying a beginning and ending (even though we do not follow any strict scenarios left by the artists as backup plan, instead we choose the topics and questions that really interest us).
&mdash; I&rsquo;ve chosen the cup with the question &ldquo;Can art transform our life?&rdquo; because I&rsquo;m absolutely sure that yes, it can. 
He finishes his tea, puts the cup back and prepares to leave.
At such moments the question comes up again: why are some conversations are short and not really meaningful? Do they have to be developed, or does it mean your interlocutor is simply not &ldquo;your type of person&rdquo;? And what is your type of person then? Should we look for new communication tools in such situations?
Another note or thought that I would like to develop further in the future.
<h2>The art</h2>
Of course, it&rsquo;s not always like that: sometimes the border between &ldquo;game&rdquo; and &ldquo;reality&rdquo; is torn, and a passionate conversation breaks out.
&mdash; But? Wait, does art necessarily have a positive effect? For instance, yesterday I saw an exhibition after which I wished I could wash myself. &mdash; Really? What kind of exhibition was it?
There are also visitors who believe that &ldquo;contemporary&rdquo; isn&rsquo;t equally good as &ldquo;high&rdquo; art, since &ldquo;high&rdquo; art is beautiful and improves our life, while &ldquo;contemporary&rdquo; is about something evil, is unable to change anything, as it only critiques (and put this way, not everyone eagerly admits that it can also propel changes).
I suggest discussing these topics more often over a cup of tea at the microsillons &ldquo;ladder&rdquo;.
<h2>The visitors</h2>
Returning to Linda&rsquo;s games, one of them resembles Jenga. The participants are a group of people, while their task is to pull, using porcelain sticks, one by one other porcelain sticks from a pile. The game assumes there has to be a winner, so it is interesting to follow the interaction between the players who know each other well. Someone is ready to sacrifice their position aiming to help the others: s/he deliberately rakes the pile in order to create new possibilities for the rest of the players (according to my observations, this role was once played by a father who came with his family). There are players who put the stick back after a failed attempt, so that during the next round another participant wouldn&rsquo;t get it. Others, on the contrary, try to pull a different stick ignoring the favorable combination left after the previous player&rsquo;s move.
On the other hand, games have for a long time been considered absorbents of social relations, so is there any use in saying that such cases could help to study some social topics?
&hellip;
I do not always wish to explain Ladder Caf&eacute; directly, because the visitor can offer their own vision of this work.
&mdash; No, it doesn&rsquo;t look like a ladder at all to me. &mdash; Then what? &mdash; It&rsquo;s a Maslow&rsquo;s hierarchy of needs, but bigger. &mdash; Great! It is about needs, indeed! So, let us think what human needs can occur in a museum space, and why people need museums at all.
Let us think?

Yana Sidikova’s Diary

Natasha Timofeeva&nbsp;(b. 1996, Moscow) I am a teacher at Garage&rsquo;s Inclusive Programs department and a sign language translator. I study at Moscow City Pedagogical University, specializing in two directions: working with people with hearing and vision disabilities, and working with people with speech problems. I am interested in museum and feminist pedagogics, and explore the museum&rsquo;s educational potential through its work with visitors with disabilities.&nbsp;&nbsp;
<hr />
I am a teacher. Before this project, "mediator" was a substance for transferring impulses from neuro cells for me. But basically, what happens between teacher and children is the same as what mediator does with visitors. Impulses that instigate new reflections and questions.
An incident with a boy and girl, both around thirteen years old.
"Why genuinely beautiful and realistically precise images are no longer popular, why do strange, ugly and scary things attract the eye? Are people getting worse?"
Two female students, soon-to-be art historians. They discussed meanings of works that are not immediately evident, e.g. Takashi Murakami: nice flowers and mushrooms with eyes conceal a terrifying story. Nice blue anime-style eyes&mdash;radiation.
Why hide real problems in a beautiful package which not everyone is even able to unwrap?
An unusual young man: "Space! Everything is connected with outer space. We depend on it."
&ldquo;What would an urn with ashes become if installed in a museum&mdash;a contemporary or classic art object? Would it be 'normal' to create a composition using urns with ashes? &nbsp;In Holland, they even organize tours around cemeteries. Where is that borderline between the 'norm' and 'too much'?&rdquo;, says a girl who came to the museum earlier today to "hook up&rdquo; with a guy.

Natalia Timofeeva’s Diary

Anastasia Shestak&nbsp;(b. 1997, Moscow) I am a Cultural Studies student at RSUH, my specialization being European Studies. My interests include research in the field of visuality, especially &ldquo;observation techniques&rdquo; and various spectators&rsquo; strategies used inside and outside of the museum. I write on stereophotography and the ways it is being exhibited today. I also took part in the family festival Garage Under-18 and in Art Experiment. The Miracle of Light.
<hr />
<h2>Notes on Mediation</h2>
March 10
The mediation experience is unique. Everyone&rsquo;s got their own one. A different one. One cannot mediate simultaneously with the rest. When there are a lot of people, you choose one or several visitors involved in the project to interact with. And this experience remains unique for everyone. For some, a talk with a stranger is a nightmare taking one out of their comfort zone. They would run away from it. Others, on the contrary, constantly look for a person to talk to. Mediation is both an inclusive and exclusive experience.
From a conversation with visitors at Ladder Caf&eacute;: &ldquo;Voting is always manipulative to a certain extent. The freedom of choosing between several given options always means omission, exclusion of many other positions.&rdquo;
March 14
On the one hand, my personal attitude to the installations. Your own emotion. On the other, speech patterns that you develop and fix on.
Visitors spend different amount of time at the installations. Perhaps, they would spend more time at the project that you tell them more details about.
March 17
Today I&rsquo;ve had a unique mediation experience, when the role of the leading narrator was taken over by my interlocutor. It is important for us to build horizontal relationships, but still, I almost always remain the one who knows everything about the project, and speaks about it, while the visitor listens and shares their opinion. But today, the girl I was talking to, started asking me such questions: would I myself come to a venue where it is allowed to create handmade things? And if it were a permanently transforming artist&rsquo;s studio? And the like. And while I was reflecting on her questions, she made me some tea (!).
Is it possible then, that visitors can teach museums, and not vice versa?
From a conversation with visitors at Ladder Caf&eacute;: &ldquo;Is an authentic impression possible today, when we have access to the Internet, social networks, and so on? When we can read reviews, descriptions of a performance or exhibition via social networks, check various selections at the Village and Afisha, Telegram wall texts and reviews which we haven&rsquo;t even asked for&hellip; When there are trendy directors and curators, as well as projects that everyone has already praised or blamed. Is it still possible today to elaborate an authentic attitude toward an artwork?&rdquo;
March 24
Today I had visitors who came for the second time. A young man who has already been to this space, came back with friends. He asked for ribbons to throw from upstairs, extending Karoline H. Larsen&rsquo;s installation. Throughout that day we had been throwing the ribbons a lot, so by the evening we ran out of them. Only small-size fabric debris were left for inscribing wishes and tying them to other ribbons. So, this is what my guests did. I was intrigued by the fact that the visitor who had already been here, could not repeat his experience, and couldn&rsquo;t share it with his friends either. Returning somewhere aiming to live through an identical experience: is it really possible? In what circumstances? Interestingly, the young man brought his friends along to share it with them. Which he did, but the experience turned out to be different. And it is different for every visitor.
March 27, Arseny Zhilyaev and Asya Volodina&rsquo;s board game
Arseny Zhilyaev&rsquo;s board game appeared to me visitor-oriented and inscribed into our project with amazing precision. After discussing the last, fourth session of the game, one of the participants said that she had only had two options in the process: either doing nothing, as she did not understand the rules and what exactly was going on or improvise without knowing the limitations. She chose the second.
When the players were moving up to Status 2, they received from Asya a given situation and &ldquo;a lot of freedom&rdquo;. The way the game would turn next, how captivating and exciting it would be, depended on the players alone, on their wish to cooperate with each other, to open up, and fantasize. The game&rsquo;s stages developed depending on their communication.
Another participant noticed during a collective discussion that, after returning to the carpet in the Status 2 stage, the players discussed Status 1 players as objects, which is implied by the game&rsquo;s plot. But the same happens in real life: a subject can perceive the other as an object, and this is wrong. It made me think how a museum actually sees its visitor. Is it possible that a museum perceives visitors as objects, just as it does with the exhibited items?

Anastasia Shestak’s Diary

Anna Yakushkova&nbsp;(b. 1994, Yalta) I graduated in Practical Cultural Studies from NRC HSE&rsquo;s partner program with the Polytechnic Museum. My academic essays and the thesis study film, leisure, and love. Since 2017, I have been coordinating volunteers working at documentary film programs at the Moscow International Festival. My interests focus on the issues of conscious consumption and re-use technologies in art and design.
<hr />
12.03
The first shift of the project and my first &ldquo;field&rdquo; mediator&rsquo;s experience. I worked together with Zhenya, there were not so many visitors, so we had time to chat. There were foreign students (mainly Americans) who had chosen Garage among other venues to visit during a short stay in Moscow. Over a cup of tea, I discussed emoji with a young female psychologist, although initially she was telling me about her life near Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia and, generally, about living in a prestigious district and looking at tourists every day.
I know that my personal tastes dictate the way of I emphasize certain aspects about the artworks on display at Bureau des transmissions. Perhaps, with time I will be able to devote more visitors&rsquo; attention to the project of Tereshkina and Jitlina. But as of now, I can&rsquo;t relate too much with their piece for the show. Although obviously I understand why we have this project here.
I enjoy seeing adults and children being surprised by the fact that the ribbons can really be thrown, and it is EVEN permitted to climb the tower. Linda&rsquo;s Translation Wardrobe attracts much fewer people even though it is an interactive piece. Visitors rarely try on the masks. Are they afraid of looking funny?
A girl came with her family. She worked as a mediator at the Riga Biennial and was very happy to explore Bureau because everything is so &ldquo;cheerful and active there&rdquo;. Her children threw ribbons and made dolls. Cool that each family can enjoy doing something.
13.03
It is difficult to communicate with people, sometimes reminds me of a mine picking game, but visitors give you so much energy and impulses, that it remains unclear who is a greater contributor to the process. Today I talked to a girl who is an interpreter and ornithologist (well, where else could interest in communication with people or birds lead oneself?) about politics in art, about the left, and that everyone should start with themselves and change others acting like a soft force. I was shocked to learn that in her student years the girl decided to try the life of a homeless person and slept at the Kursky railway station aiming to experience how it feels to be a homeless individual in Moscow. She was astonished how many university professors there are among the homeless. We discussed who is responsible for these people. The state? Ourselves? Why are we so lost, and why do protest movements degrade so often (take even Occupy Wall Street from one of our cups)?
The most complicated communication is with old people. They sort of wish to set you up and expose your ignorance. But this is how art mediation becomes an even more compelling game.
My third and fourth shifts
Quiet afternoon hours. Few visitors, which allows to pay more time to everyone. Children with their mother make dolls and even spiders. The mom recalls making similar dolls with her grandmother, while her own kids are doing it for the first time perhaps.
A man comes, wanders on his own, the cups. Here we start a conversation, and I&rsquo;m having difficulties. I would label him &ldquo;skeptic&rdquo;. I explain the ribbons concept to him&mdash;he notices, sarcastically, that he is reading the messages, many of which sound like having come from street walls. Then he climbs the tower to throw ribbons. And why do I feel so good because of this gesture of his?
On Friday the weather is nasty, so the visitors, one after another, prefer to drink some tea. We discuss whether spectators should be allowed to touch museum items, how contemporary art helps women interact with their children, and how a visit to a museum can inspire and make you stronger (whether art transforms life, using the words of microsillons). Can a museum change the life around for the better? This is the topic of another tea-drinking ceremony. And very soon, we begin talking about GULAG with one of the visitors, and if there is freedom in today&rsquo;s society. Funnily, I&rsquo;ve already talked to several interpreters on this project. And this is the case when I get more than give.
While drinking tea I was watching, out of the corner of my eye, a couple who spent probably one hour making dolls in Linda&rsquo;s Translation Wardrobe. The guy was sitting on one of the ear-flapped fur hats from that wardrobe. I think this is why I love being part of this project&mdash;it allows you to meet infinitely amazing and very different people.

Anna Yakushkova’s Diary

Maria Piskunova&nbsp;(b. 1995, Orsk) I am studying Animation at the NRC HSE Art and Design School and make animation films. My interests include teaching, especially creative disciplines, and formats of interaction with the audience. In 2019, I participated in Art Experiment at Garage as a moderator.
<hr />
Friday, March 8, 2019
The most memorable episode was a dialogue with a girl at Ladder Caf&eacute;. We discussed what kind of a background an artist should have: what is more important, immersion into the artistic context&mdash;or unique life experience and knowledge of other life spheres? We didn&rsquo;t find a universal solution, of course, but talked about different combinations of knowledge and experience, recalling real-life examples.
Approaching Ladder Caf&eacute;, some visitors asked about the price of the cups: they wanted to purchase them ))). I took this episode to note, in order to develop this idea with other exhibition guests. What can a visitor expect from an exhibition: entertainment, material acquisitions, spiritual enrichment?.. What, in turn, does the museum have on offer and what kind of approaches does it approve?
Saturday, March 9, 2019
The exhibition was full of people. I think I was constantly distracted and that&rsquo;s why there were no exciting conversations on that day. I only remember a dialogue with a woman who said she used to sew clothes for dolls as a child, and that there even was a fur coat and skiwear in the wardrobe she created. We talked about it while making dolls in Linda Vigdorčika&rsquo;s installation Translation Wardrobe.
Tuesday, March 12, 2019
That day&rsquo;s visitors shared at least two striking interpretations of Karoline H. Larsen&rsquo;s project. The first was: the bundle of ribbons in the center of the space stands for the center of Moscow which pulls ribbons together from periphery, like automobile roads on a high-traffic morning. The second: the installation with ribbons is a metaphor, or visualization of the relationships between people; a single ribbon means a person; they interweave, intersect and disperse, just as in human life.
During a discussion about the engagement of audiences in the museum&rsquo;s life one guy remarked wittily that the highest level of involvement would have been the need to wash the mug after oneself following a conversation in the Ladder Caf&eacute; installation.
Thursday, March 14, 2019
I had a wonderful talk with a female visitor on that day. Standing underneath Karoline&rsquo;s installation, we were inventing various readings of Collective Strings, when suddenly her phone rang. But she explained immediately that it was an alarm clock rather than an incoming phone call: she set alarm time on every hour aiming to practice mindfulness. This practice is designed to help people notice where they are, what they do and feel at a particular moment of time. The girl then smiled widely saying that she was so happy that the signal caught her in our hospitable show talking about art and made her adore the moment. That confession meant a lot to me, as I felt the importance of my job ))).
The same visitor shared a very beautiful interpretation of Collective Strings. The ribbons are neural networks in human brain. Inside the installations, just like inside the brain, there are plenty of fragmentary thoughts, desires, promises, many of which even don&rsquo;t belong to us.
Saturday, March 16, 2019
This day was full of discoveries!
I had a lengthy and captivating conversation with a married couple. After discussing briefly the concept and meaning of the show, I went into detail about Linda&rsquo;s project and asked the man and the woman to remember the games they used to play in their childhood, which fell onto the 1950s&ndash;1960s as they said. And they started recalling, enthusiastically, and explaining the rules of their long-time favorite games. As they ran out of words, they switched to illustrations!
The man took a pen and portrayed how they used to make kick scooters using bearings and boards. He also drew the game &ldquo;Chizhik&rdquo; (Tipcat) (see the image on the right).
CHIZHIK. Put a board on the brick, and 12 sticks on the lower end of the board. The host of the game hits the raised side of the board, so that the sticks on the opposite side fly into the air. The task of players is to catch a stick while it is in the air. It can be played as a separate game, or as an auxiliary one for choosing a host for another game.
The woman meanwhile made a drawing of a hopscotch field and explained the nuances of its rules. For example, the players have to cross the entire field jumping on one leg only and use the same leg to move the stone from one square to another. And there is just one attempt to throw the stone without touching the line. By the way, if the hopscotch field if drawn on the ground, it is easy to see when someone crosses the line, as it would simply be erased. For kids there is a rest break midway through, while &ldquo;kids&rdquo; means children under 5 years old.
My interlocutors interrupted each other while talking, trying to remember as many details and nuances as possible. I&rsquo;m sure they were really excited to have shared that knowledge and memories of their childhood years. While I was delighted to listen and remember to pass it to someone else afterwards.
I had another interesting conversation with two female visitors. We discussed each project in detail. And it was a really captivating and mutually enriching communication. First, we talked about the possible connection of Karoline&rsquo;s project with the traditions of Northern peoples, who interact with the spirits by tying ribbons to trees. We came to the conclusion that material manifestation of very different concepts can in fact be similar. And that imagination and associative thinking allow to find unexpected interpretations and meanings.
Our talk in Ladder Caf&eacute; was devoted to emoji. We remembered examples from life when emoticons can irritate or help. The visitor compared contemporary emoji to the Ancient Egyptian writing. So, we concluded that emoji are actually a part of culture which cannot be denied.

Maria Piskunova’s Diary

Sofia Kulagina&nbsp;(b. 1998, Togliatti) I am a fourth-year Cultural Studies student at RSUH (Moscow). In compliance with my academic interest in the topic of politics and culture, I research the transformation of borders between private and public in social institutes, including contemporary art. I believe that participatory museum practices can help humans manifest the importance of their personal experiences.
<hr />
<h2>March 8, 2019</h2>
My first day at the project wasn&rsquo;t easy at all. Mainly because of a huge flow of visitors, even though they spread around the space quite organically, and everyone, individually or in a group, found something entertaining for them.
&ldquo;Entertaining&rdquo; is the most problematic word for me in this context. At least two installations in the project imply a game element, which, I think, helps people to interact with the exposition in a &ldquo;leisure&rdquo; mode, while questioning the contemplative (intellectual) aspect of the process. As a mediator I had to work on my modality when talking to visitors. I didn&rsquo;t want to be too dogmatic explaining everything, trying to avoid my own interpretations, but rather wanted delicately, via a dialogue, exchange opinions, allowing the person to free their own &ldquo;museum unconscious&rdquo; and at the same time instigate them to analyze their feelings and thoughts.
Communication was complicated at times because it was hard to guess at first glance what kind of experience in art a certain person has. A few times, visitors cooled down my enthusiasm about the project by telling me about their own art historical education and background ))). But such skepticism was easy to overcome by asking their professional opinion about the exhibition. Art historians regarded Bureauas a project for beginners in contemporary art, most of all they were attracted by Ladder Caf&eacute;and the newspapers by Zhitlina and Tereshkina&mdash;an &ldquo;island of academism&rdquo; in our, as they called it, kids&rsquo; room.
Less committed visitors enjoyed everything that was going on and spent around 30&ndash;50 minutes in our space, focusing primarily on Linda&rsquo;s wardrobes. Interestingly, many saw Collective Stringsand Translation Wardrobeas a single project and space for creative activities, even despite mediators&rsquo; explanations about the artists and their concepts. People would constantly try to hung the dolls, shells, notes on the ribbons, which seemed pretty logical. There were many allusions to Mardi-Gras. The masks were not so popular: although people looked at them with interest, they probably were afraid to look silly.
Ladder Caf&eacute;, indeed, operates as a catalyzer of communication in the space. Sometimes there was a feeling that people waited all their life to have the chance to discuss contemporary art and museums with someone! In the meantime, usually it is very difficult to keep the dialogue in one direction: people switch subjects from art to everyday matters and metaphysics. Many questions seem confusing to visitors, perhaps because of translation. Younger people are more open to horizontal communication, while older ones tend to talk and examine, and it is me myself who feels their didacticism.
<h2>March 11, 2019</h2>
Monday is a low day in terms of visitors, so I could concentrate more on those who came. I found it an effective strategy to begin with a question what the person would actually like to do in this space. To offer them to choose between playing a game, reading a newspaper, engaging in a conversation, or listening to a brief overview of all projects. This way the visitor a priori feels a delicate and flexible approach and becomes fearless and flexible themselves in their preferences. Ladder Caf&eacute;continues to prove its status of a &ldquo;game changer&rdquo;: following a conversation over a cup of tea based around a selected subject, the visitors&rsquo; optics readjusts to a more critical one. They start showing interest in the newspapers and the public program, promising to come again.
My first impression was that the subjects on the mugs were too sophisticated for many people to discuss, but now I believe that it was the non-triviality of questions that instigated the internal search of meanings and reflection. Oftentimes, new participants joined the already started dialogue between other visitors. And a discussion occurs.
The question what will happen to the cups after the project is a constant subject of discussion. Meanwhile, the key leitmotif of conversations with visitors from St. Petersburg is the comparison of Garage with Erarta, unfortunately, not in our favor. The main argument against us is usually the absence of permanent collection.
<h2>March 19, 2019</h2>
Today&rsquo;s agenda is the following: can a museum avoid imposing opinions?
I can&rsquo;t explain why, but we discussed this issue three times, and all the three times the conclusion was &ldquo;no&rdquo;. We talked about the curator&rsquo;s choice and neoliberal implications in a contemporary museum, the possibility to choose from only what&rsquo;s on offer.
All the three times I noticed that people have problems with not falling into extreme viewpoints when talking about such things. Some ideas were quite absurd, like, e.g. an artist (Pavel Pepperstein, in this case) &ldquo;should not have their own mythology, because it means pressure upon the viewer who cannot interpret it freely&rdquo;. Or, &ldquo;an artist should create only for people&rdquo;, &ldquo;an artist should make something everyone would understand&rdquo;, and the like.
Nevertheless, I thought I saw some truth in those absurdities. Apparently, people still feel the pressure of a museum narrative. One young man told me one important, as it seemed to me, thing: participatory elements within a single (ours) project doesn&rsquo;t have much influence and has more of a therapeutic character after you have watched a few curator&rsquo;s exhibitions where you had zero participation and entailed silent observation and perception. This can be seen as a need in participatory approach within an exposition where the authority of a celebrity artist is so powerful that it demands to be balanced out buy the viewer&rsquo;s freedom.
Many are hopeful about the Internet.
<h2>March 24&ndash;26, 2019</h2>
Zhilyaev&rsquo;s board game
<h2>April 4, 2019</h2>
People started leaving tags on Karoline&rsquo;s ribbons. It convinced me once again that virtual identity is almost equally important as the real one, especially after I asked a girl standing in front of me:
&mdash; If it&rsquo;s not a secret, why did you leave the link to your Instagram instead of a wish?
&mdash; I would like people to know more about me!
<h2>April 6, 2019</h2>
Discussions around the mug with the question &ldquo;Can a museum be feminist?&rdquo; fail again and again. According to my inner feelings, the very intention with which men (and in my case, it was only men) take these mugs is somewhere in between humiliation and the wish to exercise in chatting. But the even deeper problem concludes in the misunderstanding of not the question on the mug but the feminist theory as such.
It seems to me that the reason is not the problem of translation as such, but rather in the necessity to reformulate some things bearing in mind local realities. Feminism has not yet become a common phenomenon and category here and is not taken seriously by many Russians. This is why turning the conversation towards the subject of feminism is in most cases impossible in a museum, since many visitors do not see it as an important issue at all. Visitors ask themselves &ldquo;Why does feminism exist?&rdquo; &mdash; rather than &ldquo;Do we need feminism in museums?&rdquo;
Once again I felt that our project transforms into a labor market. I was offered the chance to collaborate in several projects. Today especially actively.
&ldquo;We need people with theoretical background. You do this job for free much better than someone would do it for money. Because you are all committed to the idea here.&rdquo;
Obviously, it is very pleasant to feel needed and be in demand, but the idea that in the field of culture everyone can work only for the idea, frustrates me a bit. It is really sad that we didn&rsquo;t discuss the mug with a relevant topic. This is an important thing.
It seems positive to me however that this half-playful communication inside the project space helps to form short-term yet interesting connections. It&rsquo;s a known fact that loose connections are the best carriers of information, which is vital for an education project.
I wonder whether people perceive interaction with us, mediators, within the museum space as something different from communication in the &ldquo;real world&rdquo; behind the museum&rsquo;s walls. Perhaps, people are inclined for a dialogue because our &ldquo;playful space&rdquo; exists as a micro-world, a safe space for them, where one can say a bit more than usually, since everything will remain inside this space. So, the question is whether the internal dialogue will continue in the visitor&rsquo;s mind after they leave the museum&mdash;or this experience wouldn&rsquo;t have significant impact on their real life?
P.S. Queueing to the bathroom, I heard someone say that they are &ldquo;fed up with the museums&rsquo; promotion of equality, feminism, tolerance, ecology, and whatnot.&rdquo;
As of today, the three most popular questions (in my approximate wording) people choose to discuss will be:
<ol>
<li>Can Instagram influence exhibitions?</li>
<li>Is it possible to provide access to art without imposing one&rsquo;s viewpoint?</li>
<li>Can a museum be feminist?</li>
</ol>

Sofia Kulagina’s Diary

Anna Nepsha&nbsp;(b. 1997, Moscow) I am a Cultural Studies student at RSUH. My academic papers analyze theater as a space for communication. My main interest as both the spectator and the researcher is opera. I dream about creating my own Mnemosyne Atlas.
<hr />
Many issues raised by microsillonsdeal with one&rsquo;s civil position: an artist is a figure who not only creates something, but also transforms the society and environment. This is how I explain to myself the impossibility&mdash;during a conversation with a visitor&mdash;to limit ourselves by the &ldquo;museum walls&rdquo; or &ldquo;art as such&rdquo;. Probably, each of our team members keeps in mind their own examples related to these questions, and in my case, they are mainly from my Moscow experience. So, it is especially interesting to interact with people from St. Pete who provide their own examples of exhibitions and museums (and one should remember, how ideologically and historically different the museums in Moscow and St. Petersburg have always been). Talking to me, people recalled Erarta, but also The State Hermitage, providing rather ambiguous characteristics of all those institutions.
Trying to answer the question whether anyone can be an artist, one visitor ended up with a very complex metaphysical construction, based on his understanding of fate and the movement of energy in space. I didn&rsquo;t understand a thing, so as he looked into my eyes, I asked to explain it once again.
This episode is really hard to paraphrase. Some girls took two questions which at first glance seemed to me as opposite as possible: the first being if art spaces help to build horizontal connections, and the second&mdash;whether control can be a form of participation. But concluding our talk, we agreed that these questions actually match each other very well, since the visitor takes the position of a museum attendant and can experience their work, allowing them to look at the rest of the museum&rsquo;s workers differently in the future.
Many would call one of my today&rsquo;s visitors, who came like 15 minutes before the closing time, a &ldquo;conflict&rdquo; guy, but I really liked him! He asked tricky yet proper questions. The most memorable moment was, when I suggested taking part in the installation by tying a ribbon, he said &ldquo;And what if I bring a box and throw it down from upstairs on those ribbons? Will it still mean my participation?&rdquo; Unfortunately, the museum was closing, and we didn&rsquo;t have time to chat over a cup of tea and discuss the questions asked by the artists.
I admire people passionate about certain historical periods, characters, or music styles. I had a visitor, a fan and connoisseur of Andy Warhol, he knew so many tiny details about his habits, in particular his boxes where he collected artefacts from different periods of time. That visitor reproduced Warhol&rsquo;s hobby himself by collecting his own boxes with various stuff and talked about it as of a personal museum in his own room. There is some kind of mental logic to me in it&mdash;that all the works and installations displayed at our exhibition are sort of interconnected by the ribbons, as in an illustration of a Tadjik wedding, and this is my favorite thing about the project.

Anna Nepsha’s Diary

Irina Pavlovicheva&nbsp;(b. 1998, Ulyanovsk) I study General Art History at the Faculty of History of Lomonosov Moscow State University. My main academic interest is the art of classical antiquity, especially the forms of exhibiting and representing it to the public. Garage is a vitally important environment for my research, as it helps with understanding whether modern exhibition methods are applicable to other contexts, and whether they correlate with the formats of displaying classic art.
<hr />
First impressions from the project
On the opening day it was puzzling to find a fine line between not &ldquo;imposing&rdquo; and not &ldquo;leading an excursion&rdquo;. Now it seems, I have managed to cope with it. But approaches to people should be modified each time (both literally and metaphorically speaking). When we run out of ribbons, we have to find a new catalyzer for interaction. The colorful space interests but sometimes repels people, perhaps being seen as a game room at first with separate playgrounds. This is why I consider Ladder Caf&eacute;an ideal space for interpreting the rest of the projects in the most compelling and meaningful way.
What visitors say about the Museum
&ldquo;I like Garage because here no one will stare at me, and I could come and see the same show five ties just to watch other people. By the way, why are we not allowed to see Pepperstein&rsquo;s survey!?&rdquo; (17 years old)
A dialogue: a moderator explains the Bureau des transmissionsproject at the entrance to the space. Visitor: &ldquo;This is what I love Garage for!&rdquo;&mdash; and rushes to the ribbons.
&ldquo;Does Garage run charity events?&rsquo; (reaction to Ekaterina Muromtseva&rsquo;s video).
Multiple approving comments in the manner &ldquo;I haven&rsquo;t seen anything like this before&rdquo;.
Additional comments (real and ironic)
&ldquo;If there were Shishkin in between the ribbons, it would have been wonderful&rdquo; (an elderly woman).
It turned out that many people approved of seeing classic art (in different understandings of the term, of course, but still) in dialogue with contemporary one.
Visitors read the wishes/inscriptions on the ribbons (&ldquo;looking for a friend&rdquo;, or &ldquo;down with feminism&rdquo;, etc.) and said they would rather not participate in this project&hellip; During a short talk, a young couple said they hadn&rsquo;t missed any Garage exhibitions so far. Perhaps, it began distracting.
An idea came to shoot reports over a cup of tea and edit a video for YouTube.
Emotions
March 6, from a conversation with a Brazilian:
&ldquo;Oh, thank you, these ribbons made me feel like home, at my favorite carnival.&rdquo;
A visitor took off his shoes while drinking tea. This was his first visit to the Museum: &ldquo;I saw the building, and they said it&rsquo;s a museum.&rdquo;
A two-year old kid is running across the ribbons, murmuring &ldquo;beautiful, beautiful, beautiful.&rdquo; It was amazing when people of different ages, from kids to old ones, gathered together at the same table: this is when the connection between generations was especially felt, even between representatives of different families. Rather than being a place where &ldquo;an elderly woman&rdquo; asks you not to touch the walls, the museum turned into an environment where she shares her emotions with school students and everyone discusses Pepperstein together. For me personally, certain stereotypes about the &ldquo;unsociable Russians&rdquo; have fallen.
Ideas that popped up during tea drinking
The complexity of a contemporary museum concludes in the fact that it is quite difficult to explain to people that contemporary is in any case part of the entire art historical process (a dialogue about primitive art), and that the emotional component remains one of the most important things. People oftentimes do not understand why they actually come to a museum, why they have to queue (one visitor referenced the Frida Kahlo show with just one phrase: &ldquo;her neck seems to be so long!&rdquo;).
All museums move in the direction of contemporaneity anyway.
A question from the mug in theLadder Caf&eacute;installation: &ldquo;Can the viewer select the contents of the show?&rdquo;
Answer 1: And who is the viewer, what do you think? Can a moderator be called a viewer too? Or an artist who came to see another artist&rsquo;s exhibition?
Answer 2:&nbsp; Would be great to gather a small group of people (non-connected directly to art, and with different professional backgrounds), maybe twenty persons, who would discuss and select together the materials for exhibitions.
It turned out that it wasn&rsquo;t even the question that visitors understood differently, but certain words: the viewer, the audience, etc., with these ones people had most of the problems.
&ldquo;At first, I felt very unfamiliar in a contemporary museum, it differs so much. But now I even start loving it&rdquo; (an elderly woman).
The daughter is playing with yarn, the father is waiting for her drinking tea, emphasizing how important it is to instill in a child the feeling of understanding beauty from very young age (hinting that his older daughter already attends Garage education courses, and he would like to enroll the little one too).
Surprisingly, these separate dialogues coincided and intersected with each other at some point, so we had the chance to discuss whether parents should take their child to the Hermitage at a very early age. Coming to the conclusion that art is like religion&mdash;something intimate, personal, and can be fostered, or not within a given family, unconsciously. A museum as a place puts in the child the idea of a system as a whole. The return to tactile contact with the exhibited items is an equally great experience for adult visitors (this is from a dialogue with a preschool teacher).
One of the key elements of the project is the lighting, the way it is directed, and its intensity (in the evenings, the lighting above the tables is quite dim, so we were asked about table lamps).

Irina Pavlovicheva’s Diary

Ekaterina Panchenko&nbsp;(b. 1991, Moscow) I graduated in Defectology from Moscow Pedagogical State University, specializing in Oligophrenopedagogics and Logopedics. I have an experience of working as a guide but prefer the mediation format which implies more options for discussion and feedback. I mediated at the exhibitions Here and Nowat Moscow Manege and the III Biennale of Street Wave Art Artmossphere at Winzavod. Some visitors who previously attended my mediation sessions and tours recognize me and come up to say hello as to an old acquaintance.
<hr />
So, &ldquo;Dear Diary&rdquo; &hellip; I will try to break my story into several dates. There have been days when people were not in the mood to communicate, hence the different amount of lines devoted to different days.
<h2>March 9</h2>
The first visitors who came to the show during my opening shift were a middle-aged, skeptically looking man of affairs and his silent wife. She listened with some interest, as her husband disdainfully observed Karoline&rsquo;s ribbons from the Collective Stringsinstallation and also listened with half an ear about the exhibition. &ldquo;Why is it here at all?&rdquo;, he asked looking at the knitting yarns. After the explanation we sat down to make a doll out of the yarn, and he actually enjoyed making a pigtail for it. In the meantime, another mediator continued the dialogue with his wife.
&ldquo;Ok, it was worth its 500 rubles&rdquo;, he said scratching his chin with a ticket to the Rasheed Araeen retrospective, allegedly meaning Garage. He thanked me and left, pretty satisfied, taking the doll with him, as, he said, &ldquo;he put a lot of effort into making it and who knows if it&rsquo;s going to be thrown out after the show ends&rdquo;. He didn&rsquo;t want to discuss the exhibition. And I preferred not to insist on forcing him into a dialogue. The right to give no comment is also an important freedom which has to be respected.
We had a workshop together with Karoline, which everyone enjoyed a lot. After the workshop, a group of school teenagers came up to the microsillons&nbsp;installation excited about the possibility to drink some tea. As they learnt that they had to discuss politics and art in the process, it made them even happier. They jumped from one topic to another smartly, being constantly distracted by completely side ideas. The conversation was captivating. They approved of the conception of a feminist museum where works of various female artists would be represented. How many female workers among the rest of the staff of such a museum should be didn&rsquo;t seem so important to them. They came to the conclusion that art could serve democracy, since it generally serves political goals (while discussing politics and art everyone always remembers propaganda posters). On March 30 a classmate of one of the school students who visited on March 9, also came and sent a personal hello to me. Oh god, it was so nice!
<h2>March 14</h2>
At the Ladder Caf&eacute;&nbsp;installation by microsillonsme and two other girls chose a mug with a clandestine and pretty difficult question: can an artist stimulate the situation downward? Aiming to clear things out, we found the question in English with an example attached to it, in Russian. It turned out that it meant an action, or performance which doesn&rsquo;t develop towards a climax, but instead, rather starts with it and then goes &ldquo;downward&rdquo;. Such an action is quite hard to realize because its structure is unusual. And secondly, climax is always the most exciting and emotionally sublime part of the act, so it is hard to keep the attention of the audience and the participants on the same level after it, hard to maintain the suspense.

Ekaterina Panchenko’s Diary

Kseniya Petropavlovskaya&nbsp;(b. 1996, Saratov) I graduated in Cultural Studies from NRC HSE, and in Art Management from the RMA Business School. I&rsquo;ve been artistic director at XVI Gallery from its opening until today. While working on gallery projects I focus on the research of contemporary national art, particularly the Near Eastern art, having dedicated several academic papers to the study of diverse aspects of contemporary Syrian migrant artists&rsquo; practices in the context of decolonization.
<hr />
There a certain clich&eacute; about people in Russia. They are said to be very closed and typically unwilling to communicate or interact in any possible way with each other. One has to admit that this prejudice is not groundless, as many Russians, indeed, somewhat draw borderlines around them. In my view, one of art&rsquo;s key functions is to rid of stereotypes or at least change one&rsquo;s opinions about them. A chance to look at the situation from the &ldquo;outside&rdquo;. As an experiment, the project Bureau des transmissions has demonstrated that, put in a creative and friendly atmosphere, people more eagerly open up and show that they really need to communicate, express and &ldquo;discover&rdquo; themselves through conversation.
<h2>Part 1. The Dare-devils</h2>
Some visitors&mdash;apparently, Garage regular attendees&mdash;turned up in the space already pretty relaxed, open and self-confident. At first glance, it was clear that they felt extremely free in the museum, jut as at home. Talking to such viewers was usually especially captivating, lengthy and productive. Here is one such situation.
Having entered the Bureau space, two young people immediately proceeded to me asking whether it was allowed to use Skype very quietly, to discuss some urgent business matters, no longer than for twenty minutes! As I said yes, one of them sat on a pedestal with a laptop and earplugs, while the other began exploring the show in my room. After a short while, the three of us were enthusiastically discussing the position of migrants in this country. At Ladder Caf&eacute;the atmosphere was both creative and chaotic: we drew schemes, put down ideas, and discussed the future project by the young people the conception of which derived from our talk and interaction with the installations&hellip;. Overall, our conversation took almost three hours. 
<h2>Part 2. Quieter than water&hellip;</h2>
Obviously, not all visitors were so keen to enter into a dialogue. Most people were still embarrassed and shy as if they were slightly afraid of what was going on around them (avoiding contact with me, too). It was a great success to finally find common language with them and engage in a conversation about the exhibition and the discourse around it.
A visitor&mdash;evidently, a university student, a very shy guy&mdash;was alone in the room. It wasn&rsquo;t his first time there, however. He already came an hour before but, apparently, my initial attempt to talk to him seemed too embarrassing for him, so he left horrified without saying a word. But no matter what happened then&mdash;he was back here, ready for communication. Although he chose a particular topic which turned out to be&hellip; Pavel Pepperstein&rsquo;s show which he came to visit for the third time and had no one to discuss with. The guy said he was a physics student, and his group mates or friends don&rsquo;t share his passion for contemporary art. Ultimately, I did manage to shift his interest in the Pepperstein project towards one of the issues raised by the microsillons group, leading to a new discussion. I&rsquo;m sure the young man left pretty satisfied with that visit to Garage: he enjoyed the exhibition, discovered for himself something new in the space of the Bureau, experienced the magical effect of art therapy, and finally, met someone who could discuss it all with him.
<h2>Part 3. The third age</h2>
They say, retired people usually are not fond of contemporary art, as it seems incomprehensible and alien to them. Bureau des transmissions has helped to prove the opposite for some of hem.
A woman aged 70+, very stylish, wearing a hat, literally &ldquo;rushed&rdquo; into the room and began actively exploring it. Seeing her enthusiasm, I initiated a conversation straight away. She constantly interrupted me, not allowing to finish my thought and suggesting her own visions instead:
&mdash; Here is Karoline H. Larsen&rsquo;s installation, just imagine, she created with the help of the visitors&hellip;.
&mdash; We should throw a ribbon immediately, am I right? They are needed to be thrown, right??? Can take a few ones? (she took a bunch of ribbons and climbed into the tower faster than the wind to throw them from upstairs)
I couldn&rsquo;t catch up with her in any possible ways: she moved so quickly across the space that it seemed she was simultaneously everywhere and elsewhere.

Ksenya Petropavlovskaya Diary

Ekaterina Lomeeva&nbsp;(b. 1997, Moscow) I&rsquo;ve worked in the field of contemporary art since 2015 and study Cultural Studies at RSUH. My interests include contemporary art, visual culture, and gender studies (especially the &ldquo;male&rdquo; and &ldquo;female&rdquo; constructions in different cultural environments). I can easily find common ground with anyone and explain complex things in simple terms.
<hr />
When you watch visitors throwing the ribbons, you can notice the absence of age or physical limitations. Visitors with disabilities enjoy the game as much as children. Adult visitors forget for a while about everyday troubles and behave like kids.
The destruction of the museum&rsquo;s patronizing function allows people to receive information in accordance with John Dewey&rsquo;s theory, meaning the best education is based on participation and personal experience.
During communication at Ladder Caf&eacute;the visitors felt their involvement in the process of cultural production: they were trying to figure out solutions to the questions on the mugs, remembering more and more examples from history. Answering the question about a manipulative art project, visitors referenced Marina Abramovic&rsquo;s practice, asking &ldquo;what manipulation actually means&mdash;is it a consequence of the artist&rsquo;s intention, or the way the audience itself interprets the artist&rsquo;s idea.&rdquo;
Visitors from Tajikistan enthusiastically discuss a light box. &ldquo;Wow, how realistically it looks! But, four thousand for a photo shoot? I&rsquo;d rather shoot your wedding with my phone!&rdquo;
Tea drinking blurs the social distance between educator and visitor. During evening sessions, the conversation often reaches beyond intellectual reflections turning to personal issues and private experiences. Intimate feelings in the context of museum visits come into foreground, with the concept of complicity often becoming the topic for discussing the possible options of interacting with the museum.
Some reflections of a Ladder Caf&eacute;visitor:
&mdash; What does tea drinking mean to you as part of your visit to the museum?
&mdash; Tea is an entire culture and aesthetics. By immersing into the cultural environment via tea drinking, we become a part of something bigger.
&ldquo;Linda&rsquo;s wardrobes invoked nostalgia of my childhood years. After the war, we had nothing. We played in the streets, using sticks, twigs, stones and, amazingly, ice! Ice on the sun was the most precious diamond. We had entire competitions where the main trophy was just ice.&rdquo;
Watching people moving chaotically around the exhibition, you can notice the difference between visitors who have read explications, those ones who learnt everything from a mediator, and the third category&mdash;who simply walked by and decided to have a look at what&rsquo;s going on in here. The difference is huge. The first type of visitors is relatively relaxed but cautious: they may enter the tower, ask in advance whether they can open the wardrobes or take the newspapers. The second category feel very easy, participate in Collective Strings, put on the masks, engage in games, and share their thoughts openly at Ladder Caf&eacute;. The third explore the space very cautiously, without touching anything, looking at mediators with silent questions in their eyes, trying to act in full compliance with regulations commonly in use in cultural institutions (don&rsquo;t touch, don&rsquo;t be noisy, etc.), and usually they quit Bureauvery quickly.
Thirty minutes before the museum closes. A girl aged around 25 is running across our space, destroying &ldquo;ribbon enemies&rdquo; with a wooden sword.
&mdash; Why do you feel so free in this part of the museum?
&mdash; I feel energized by the Bureauspace. We came here at 17 hours, stayed for a while, then left to see the Pepperstein show. Soon afterwards we were planning to leave, but I wished so much to return to Bureau! I think this is the only museum (she meant particularly theBureauproject) where everything can be touched and created without control. I can be myself here. Because I know no one would be watching every step of mine, and I can interact with all the items and installations on display. I feel like I am a part of this project.
Linda&rsquo;s wardrobes:
&ldquo;I see so many things here. This is wonderful, don&rsquo;t even know where to look first. Perhaps you remember that in our childhood we had boxes with various stuff, like tickets, stones, shells. I had one. We brought them to school approximately once a month. And the kid with the most beautiful and full box became the most&hellip; I don&rsquo;t know&hellip; the coolest person, as it were.&rdquo;
Visitors leave their messages and wishes on the ribbons so eagerly! They are trying to make their ribbon particularly memorable. And take photos of and with them.
And they are so happy when they receive messages from other visitors via their Instagram accounts they&rsquo;d put on the ribbons.
Ladder Caf&eacute; 
&ldquo;During a conversation, a question arose: why don&rsquo;t we believe in anything supernatural, if art proves its existence in many possible ways?&rdquo;
During a talk we agreed on a psychological theory which says that humans are unable to imagine things they haven&rsquo;t seen in real life.&nbsp;
<hr />
Bureau des transmissionsis an extremely important project which allowed me to see how much modern society is ready to work and interact with the Museum&rsquo;s projects. Most of the visitors come not only to receive information at exhibitions&mdash;but also to share their experience. The time has come for the audience to have their say, but in order to do so, they need a new type of a museum worker, one who will listen to them and provide some space for a discussion, i.e. a mediator/educator.
While working on the project, I met a lot of like-minded people who think in a similar paradigm: people who reflect on the Museum&rsquo;s space, the Museum&rsquo;s future, the power of art, etc. This project gave me what I would call extraordinary inspiration. Communication is the most significant aspect of life for me, it&rsquo;s my element, whose energy feeds my mind and helps to realize my ideas. This is why the participants&rsquo; mutual interest in a dialogue is the most important thing for me in any communication.
A mediator, however, is quite a flexible figure who has to &ldquo;read&rdquo; whether the visitor is in the mood for a conversation. People may come to a museum ready for communication. Such visitors already have certain ideas about culture. For them, Bureau des transmissions is a space where these ideas are interpreted from various new perspectives and acquire a verbal life, which is great. Others come here to spend time with themselves. For them, our space is a place for meditation, relaxation, and rest. Such visitors are usually not willing to talk, their logic is deeper. They can sit for hours on the platform watching other visitors&rsquo; activity, taking notes, or reading. Very rarely, they would come up to a mediator after spending a lot of time on their own&mdash;not even to ask something, but rather to instigate a conversation that would sometimes last for hours and give something unique to each of the participants in the end. The category of visitors that invoked my most passionate interest were the so-called &ldquo;passersby&rdquo;: with visitors, it is always a lottery, you never know what their reaction would be like in advance. But the response of the &ldquo;passersby&rdquo; always surprised me: after a brief summary of the show, the majority of such visitors wanted to stay&mdash;to explore the entire LAB space and each of the installations. Rather unexpectedly, I found a lot of inspiration in the stories of visitors from other regions and countries. Each of them stimulated my wish to learn as much as possible about their countries, cultures, traditions, etc.
Since I had been more used to working with large groups as a guide, the mediation experience was new to me. Before the start of the project, I was sure that not everyone at all would be ready to talk to a stranger t&ecirc;te-&agrave;-t&ecirc;te. But the two months spent at Bureau des transmissions proved the opposite: the visitors were so happy to be involved in communication and get an individual approach that many would return several times specially for another mediation session, bringing their friends, reflecting on the museum of the future, unable to imagine this institution without mediation anymore. Ladder Caf&eacute;gave the mediators the freedom of interaction in a comfortable atmosphere: a cup of tea with a pleasant view through the window was certainly helpful in bringing the visitors closer to the mediators, while the active games organized near the wardrobes encouraged to make friends with visitors, who either had to become the mediator&rsquo;s teammates or opponents, both during the games and in the discussions afterwards.
I&rsquo;ve analyzed all of my conversations about what the museum of the future should be like, and this is the definition that I&rsquo;ve got: the museum of the future is an open space where, along with acquiring information, visitors can also share it. The museum offers various formats of interacting with visitors, which can be divided, in terms of the depth of communication, into, for instance, lectures&mdash;where visitors only listen, and projects where they become the producers of installations (or any other things). Another important aspect of the museum of the future is its eco-friendly character and green space expansion. The museum is not just a leisure spot anymore (with a library, caf&eacute;, book and souvenir shop, cinema theater)&mdash;but also a place where anyone can find a comfort zone for themselves (by talking to a mediator, making something creatively, or merely spending time with a laptop). Even though Bureauis an experimental project, it demonstrated precisely how the visitors see the museum of the future. And as an art mediator, I am always happy to help them.

Ekaterina Lomeeva’s Diary

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