Daniil Galkin - Self-education Classroom

Daniil Galkin “Self-education Classroom” Dnipropetrovsk Art Museum Everyone who deals with organizations, understands the bureaucratic logic of Catch-22. In high school or college, for example, students can participate in student government, a form of selfgovernment and democracy that allows them to decide whatever they want, just so long as the principal or dean of students approves. This bogus democracy, that can be overruled by arbitrary fiat, is, perhaps, a citizen's first encounter with organizations, that may profess 'open' and libertarian values, but in fact are closed and hierarchical systems. Catch-22 is an organizational assumption, an unwritten law of informal power that exempts the organization from responsibility and accountability and puts the individual in the absurd position of being excepted for the convenience or unknown purposes of the organization.1 Inspired by the 2007 scandal in Germany when a goalkeeper disclosed the data on goalposts not conforming to the international DBNs (National Building Standards), DaniilGalkin has had the idea to create a “Self-education Classroom” – a platform that would be dedicated to rules and standards, and to facilities or reports violating them. Wishing to play by the book in Ukraine, people often find themselves in a vicious circle restricting them in their lawful actions in relation to the authorities. Thus the project proposes a collaboration with the viewers to create a library of private stories which shape an alternative truth in the bureaucratic lines of Catch 22, and also an attempt to counteract corruption by looking for the opportunities of a legal inspection of inspectors who being empowered by the rules to charge individuals and entities with crimes are themselves predominantly incapable of complying with those rules.

----------------------------James E. Combs, Dan D. Nimmo. The Comedy of Democracy. — Greenwood Publishing Group, 1996. — 218 с. — ISBN 9780275949792.

Documentation of the “Remove the Blinders” campaign, 2017. On an open house day, the artist placed posters in the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine, proposing to remove the “French” curtains whose heavy folds tend to remind of the iron curtain times in a post-Soviet space. This “grand” method is still used to decorate windows at miscellaneous state institutions providing a dull lighting which seems to hint at the non-transparent financial system reigning in those buildings.

Size table or “ruler” sticker designated for scaling and recording the location of government facilities which may fall under a viewer’s suspicion.

Ballet Exam, 2017. The video refers to the 1982 National Police Day which became the symbol of the Soviet Union’s collapse; on this day the television channels broadcast the Swan Lake instead of a gala music concert. Galkin thus compares an adult, i.e. political choreography against a children’s one, elegantly pondering over what might become of the young ballet dancers in the future

Urban Improvements, 2018. In the artist’s opinion, the major threat that the public space has been facing lately, apart from physical destruction, is represented by murals which are meant to “improve” the city’s facades. Using his installation to make a “before and after” comparison, Galkin casts doubts on the artistic value of this method through the example of murals created in Soniachnyi residential area (Dnipro), and questions the competence of the city’s council approving them.