The second season of events held in Silence—a spatial installation by Polish artist Paweł Althamer—focuses on therapeutic practices and mutual support. The meditation garden near Garage is a place where guest artists, psychologists, community members or Museum visitors can meet to create collaborative projects and feel safe.
For Althamer, a garden is a collective trope, every element of which—be it be a fallen tree or a particular deciduous bush—is a deliberately concealed quote, while the composition as a whole is a unique environment where visitors who feels immersed in the negative flow of information can alter the regime of time for a while and experience a safe, secluded space. As the artist says, this is “a space beyond madness; Silence is something that all of us can achieve through meditation.”
An integral part of Paweł Althamer's artistic practice involves working with various communities, in particular with people with disabilities, with whom he organizes workshops, where, for example, they collectively create small home interior items and large-scale garden and park sculptures. Althamer sees this special type of interaction as endowed with the therapeutic power of art and with art’s ability to socialize individuals whose life is otherwise almost invisible to society. According to the artist, community support is especially important today, which is why the garden is set to become an environment where representatives of different social and cultural groups can find a mode of being that best suits their needs, through meditation and other activities.
For information on public program events click here.
Twice a week a morning meditation (free of charge, advance registration required) will run in the installation. It will be either an independent audio meditation or one guided by invited experts. The audio meditation prepared by artist Taus Makhacheva is available in Russian and English.
The garden will also host a series of events organized together with the Social Volunteer Center of Moscow’s Gulag Museum. Center members, who are mainly third agers, will take part in group choir classes conducted by choirmaster Katya Steppe and in theater practice sessions delivered by artist Masha Obukhova.
In turn, a number of group meditation sessions will be held in the Gulag Museum’s Garden of Memory, which opened in 2021 and is a symbol of overcoming a lack of freedom.
Silence will also host events initiated by Garage Inclusive Programs Department, including the dance laboratory Movement Lab 3.0 for visitors with developmental disabilities, classes as part of the Peak to Peak! summer camp for deaf children, and a tea party for visitors with migration experience as part of the Point of Displacement festival, and much more.
Curator: Andrey Misiano
Architecture: MOX landscape architecture