Garage Research Laboratories
Laboratories as a type of research activity were launched at Garage in 2021. Laboratory participants — scholars, artists, curators, activists — join forces to produce new expertise and knowledge in diverse areas of contemporary culture.
The laboratory format comprises a one- or two-year cycle of thematically focused collective work by research groups that leads to the publication of academic texts and edited volumes, education courses, conferences or film screenings, and additions to Garage Archive Collection.
Between 2021 and 2023 there were three laboratories at Garage. Space 1520 investigated the multilayered interconnections between the territories of North Eurasia which were once part of the Russian Empire and the USSR. Plus History explored HIV as a phenomenon in late-Soviet culture through materials in Russian archives and publications in the Soviet press. The laboratory "We Treasure Our Lucid Dreams", which arose from the eponymous exhibition and research project of 2020, examined a number of themes linked to the tragic biographies of early-twentieth-century artists whose work was defined by a supersensory exploration of the world and their membership of secret societies. In 2002–2003, participants of the laboratory J100R researched ideas about the contemporary art of Japan in the USSR and Russia over the past century and produced a chronology of exhibitions of contemporary Japanese art from the 1920s through the 2020s.
In 2024, the laboratory VOKS kinema was launched. Participants are studying the influence of the Soviet Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS) on Soviet filmmakers and the film industry in the 1920s and 1930s.
