On September 28 and 29, Garage presents a two-day presentation of the film and research project by the art center Inner Udmurtia as part of the Museum’s film program and with the support of Garage Field Research. The program focuses on the underground art scene of Izhevsk and an archive of underground art from Udmurtia.
The name of the creative center Inner Udmurtia is based on the Udmurt term «udomu, ” where «mu» means «the subconscious of a territory, ” an unreachable land that exists in a different dimension.
The first day of the program will open with a lecture by artist Zhon-Zhon Sandyr, co-founder of the art group Emnoyumno (Divine Elixir) and the art center Inner Udmurtia. He will talk about art groups, movements, and events that have shaped the Izhevsk art and music underground from 1980s to the 2000s and about the part that archiving art plays in his practice.
The Tropics of Izhevsk, a screening of a video archive of underground art, will follow in the evening. It includes works by members of the art groups Archaeopteryx and Lodka and by artists Aleksandr Germesov and Kuchyran Yuri dating from the 1990s to 2006. The latest work marks the technological transition from analogue media (videotapes) to digital cameras, which were generally available by the early 2010s.
The second day of the program (September 29) explores the ethnofuturist movement in the art of Udmurtia. In a joint lecture, artists, co-founders of the creative group Emnoyumno, and leaders of the ethnofuturist movement in Udmurtia Zhon-Zhon Sandyr and Kuchyran Yuri will discuss the history of ethnofuturism, which originated in Estonia in the late 1980s and spread to other Finno-Ugric cultures, including in Udmurtia, and its influence on current trends in Udmurtian art. Since 2013, Emnoyumno have been organizing ethnofuturistic performance and video art symposia in remote villages of Udmurtia, where for one or two weeks invited artists create works that explore the history of the place and the current situation there.
The Journey to Inner Udmurtia will conclude with a retrospective program of video art, Ethnostalking: Reconstruction of Ritual Practices. For the artists of the Emnoyumno circle, the term «ethnostalking» describes the process of searching for one’s roots, not only in art but also in terms of identity. The program includes video works made by participants of the ethnofuturist symposia over the past 12 years. As the curator of the program Zhon-Zhon Sandyr writes, «it can be argued that it is impossible to reconstruct ritual practices. Artists must allow themselves the luxury of not compromising anything. Therefore, there is always the possibility of ‘giving birth’ to a myth, of creating it anew with the help of intuition, insight, and mystery.» After the screening, Zhon-Zhon Sandyr and Kuchyran Yuri will answer questions from the audience.