A program of experimental video works from the 1990s and 2000s by artists from Udmurtia.
The title of the program is ironic: there are no tropics in Izhevsk, just as there is no official institution that would archive and describe local underground art. The archive in question has been collected by artist and curator Zhon-Zhon Sandyr, who has recorded extensive interviews with people active in the Izhevsk art scene from the 1980s to the 2000s and has collected and digitized video materials. His focus is on the events that spurred the development of underground art in the region, as well as the reasons behind his contemporaries’ interest in particular works. Among the people whose archives he has collected and systematized are members of the art groups Lodka and Archaeopteryx, artists of the ethnofuturist movement, and representatives of the Izhevsk electronic music scene from the 1980s to the 2000s.
The screening program ing consists of materials from the archive, including video works by the art groups Lodka and Archaeopteryx and artist Aleksandr Germesov and a video documentation of Kuchyran Yuri’s solo performance Oti-Tati, Ottsy-Tatsy. «The artists explore new dimensions, creating personal and collective mythologies, unique visual languages, and conceptual dramaturgies, ” Zhon-Zhon Sandyr writes, «using visual experiments, transformations, reassembling the narrative, creating visionary interventions, and works at the intersection of artistic mediums.»
The choice of the period covered in the program was suggested by the medium, and the screening follows the transition from analogue media (VHS and MiniDV tape recordings used in the 1990s–2000s) to digital. The program opens with the film Sky Last Dream, a re-shoot of footage projected in an abandoned cinema, and ends with the work Beetle, a metaphor for the abrupt end of the analogue era.
- Archaeopteryx, Sky Last Dream, 1997. 24 min.
- Kuchiran Yuri., Video documentation of the performance Oti-Tati, Ottsy-Tatsy, 2001. 15 min.
- Lodka, Ontology of Ritual Life, 1992. 30 min.
- Archaeopteryx, Gardens of Adam, 1999. 8 min.
- Aleksandr Germesov, Beetle., 2006. 2 min. 20 sec.
The program is curated by Zhon-Zhon Sandyr.
The screening will be followed by a discussion with Zhon-Zhon Sandyr and Kuchiran Yuri.
