As part of the exhibition visitors will get the chance to hear first-hand evidence about the research the project evolves from, as Dmitry Gutov and David Riff deliver special curator-led tours around the show.
Among other issues, the curators are going to discuss the limits of artistic research, will explain the historical significance of Mikhail Lifshitz, analyze his texts, as well as the complications readers may face coming across Lifshitz’s works.
Gutov says: “These texts are terribly deceptive. First of all, by their simplicity, and secondly, by the contents. Lifshitz once said about Chernyshevsky: 'He was writing cleverly, with subtle, sometimes almost indiscernible irony, taking, for the sake of research, the alias of a simple man, like Socrates, or shaking contemporaries with harsh judgments, aiming to wake them up from deep sleep'. Literal interpretation of these texts, ignoring their historical condition the show is set to reveal in the first instance, would lead to complete misreading.”