IMBALANCE magazine issue 5 | autumn 2015 - "List"

MAGAZINE ON CONTEMPORARY BELARUSIAN PHOTOGRAPHY

AUTUMN 2015

ISSUE TOPIC «LIST»

«L IS T»

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> EDITOR:

A L E X A N D R A S O L D ATO VA

ENGLISH VERSION: OLGA BUBICH D E S I G N : K AT E R I N A D Z I V N E L / J U L I A B R A I C H U K WEB: MAXIM DOSKO I N FO R M AT I O N A L S U P P O R T Z N YATA . C O M / ST U D I O 6 7

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Cover: Vasilisa Polianina-Kalenda

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EDITORIAL

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«ONE YEARS’S LONG LANDSCAPE»

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S E R G E Y KOZ H E M YA K I N

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«PERCEPTION DUALITY»

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VASILISA POLIANINA-KALENDA

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«THE MENU FOR ANCESTORS»

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SIARHEI HUDZILIN

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«A DOLL’S DRESS»

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JULIA NAZAROVA

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VICTOR HILITSKI

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«#MYIMAGINARYCOLLAR»

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ANNA BUNDELEVA

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«DOUBLE REFRACTION»

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A L E X A N D R A S O L D ATO VA

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«COLLECTING ONESELF: KUNSTKAMERA, MUSEUM AND PERSONAL SECRETS»

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OLGA BUBICH

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A list or a typology as the enumeration of objects united by some characteristic is a form that has been present, perhaps, in all the types of arts since the archaic times.

In photography which at its early stages existed as single shots and developed through photo stories and journalists essays, typology appeared together with symbolic projects by August Sander and Bernd and Hilla Becher.

As it often happens, a simple definition hides a phenomenon too broad that in practice can be comprehended through a number of examples. Thus, lists can be divided into practical and poetic, they can describe finite and infinite number of objects, they define a subject or a concept by enumerating its properties. A list can be a collection of objects or places and finally it can be a chaotic enumeration with its elements bearing no link to one another.

In this issue we have put together projects and examples of various lists in the Belarusian photography.

Among them there are both practical and finite in their nature types of biscuits familiar to all of us since childhood – the project made by Victor Hilitski - and infinite unreal Anna Bundeleva’s «dresses»

In Siarhei Hudzilin’s project we can find the list of lists, where in a series of photos that represent quite a classical typology, each image in itself stands for a list of objects.

In my own project there is a chaotic set of examples and the process’ properties, which I fail to precisely define.

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EDITORIAL

In general, photography of lists may not only describe phenomena or concepts, but also show the impossibility of such a description, for example, because of its infinity or variability. The act of the lists’ deciphering depends mostly on the viewer for whom comparison of the list’s elements makes it possible for new personal associations to appear.

Thus, the attempt to classify, to give an exact definition to what a list is fails. And it only means that today any project in contemporary art photography appears to be a list in one way or another.

A L E X A N D R A S O L D ATO VA

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ONE YEAR’S LONG LANDSCAPE Sergey Kozhemyakin

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Sergey Kozhemyakin himself defines his creative goal as the analysis of the space in which we live and the factors that influence its perception. The most important aspect that characterizes the current stage of Kozhemyakin’s creative path is his addressing absolutely intimate things, incredibly subtle, delicate and primarily concerning the photographer himself. Thus, with all the neutrality of the chosen visual object, the project «The Fifth Season» is very personal. If the author used to be more concerned with creating a visually striking image, now the inner analysis comes to the fore.

The project’s method can be described as a living landscape in time. The series is composed of pictures taken within the limited space of a particular place in Minsk.

On the one hand, it is observation, on the other - so to say, a psycho-geographical research. The relationship with nature is continuously getting enriched with real spatial experience and the analysis of its mental correspondences. The author’s ultimate goal is immersion into the mental landscape.

Opportunities for research were deliberately minimized: low trees on

the background of a gentle slope, the absence of the horizon, the same absence of background and details that could shape the nature of the location.

With the most simplified conditions the most sophisticated game occurs: the changeable pattern of trees and grass, the light which alters the landscape with every passing minute.

Space limitation accounts for a surreal effect: time passes here and nothing seems to be happening. However, the most important thing that lies in the nature of our perception of the world occurs: the light creates the form and makes it visible to us. It is in this way that we get a visual proof of the existence of objects and at the same time - the evidence of their illusory nature and constant changeability, visible dematerialization under the influence of the rays of light. The photographer purposefully singled this situation out of the reality and made it a subject-matter of his analysis.

Despite the fact that the game is played with a minimum set of components - the object, the background and the light - in this formula with three variables the result turns out to be unpredictably significant.

S E R G E Y KOZ HE MYAKI N

The light that affects everything remains a factor that shapes constant variability.

The series was planned to be made as a year’s cycle and the shooting was made in the course of the whole year. The photographer was coming to catch these capricious sights and their imprints on his own mind. The series reminds us “The Rouen Cathedral” by the impressionist painter Claude Monet, in which the artist pained one and the same object at different states of the environment and light. In fact, he was studying the laws of form emergence: through fine arts means he analyzed the states the light creates and found their correspondence in the painting matter. The photographer had essentially different relations with the light: things become the subject-matter of a photographic work only because the lens captures the reflected light that falls on them. The absolute reality of photographs brings the project close to a scientific experiment. However, here everything is much more illusory, it is easy to trace the mental and psychological state of the author behind the factual coldness of the shot. He accidentally gives himself away due to his choice of the object, angle and point of view ...

In a broader context the project «The Fifth Season» presents an opportunity to feel in a more intense way what is happening in space. Thanks to the protagonist, the sun, the landscape “scenery” is modified.

It shapes the stage colors, adds details, dictates the laws of contrasts, details and in general - the change of seasons. Our comprehension of the actual landscape is determined by the fall of sunlight on the land, the degree of human intervention.

These ghostly states and their transitions affect us with an incredible intensity.

The mental landscape is not given to us totally in the act of seeing. In this way a statement according to which the form in photography presents something changeable and may carry different semantic promises is asserted. And then comes the understanding that only surreal manifestation helps to get closer to the heart of our world and create our mental landscape ...

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KOZ H E M YA K I N . D I R O N W E B . C O M

7 TEXT: ALESIA BELIAVETS

ON E Y E AR ’S LO NG L AND S CAPE

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ON E Y E AR ’S LO NG L AND S CAPE WWW. I MB AL A NCEM AG A Z I NE. COM

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S E R G E Y KOZ HE MYAKI N

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ON E Y E AR ’S LO NG L AND S CAPE WWW. I MB AL A NCEM AG A Z I NE. COM

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ON E Y E AR ’S LO NG L AND S CAPE WWW. I MB AL A NCEM AG A Z I NE. COM

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S E R G E Y KOZ HE MYAKI N

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ON E Y E AR ’S LO NG L AND S CAPE WWW. I MB AL A NCEM AG A Z I NE. COM

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S E R G E Y KOZ HE MYAKI N

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ON E Y E AR ’S LO NG L AND S CAPE WWW. I MB AL A NCEM AG A Z I NE. COM

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S E R G E Y KOZ HE MYAKI N

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ON E Y E AR ’S LO NG L AND S CAPE WWW. I MB AL A NCEM AG A Z I NE. COM

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S E R G E Y KOZ HE MYAKI N

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PERCEPTION DUALITY

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Vasilisa Polianina-Kalenda

A person is the subject of knowledge, but at the same time in relation to him/herself (s)he acts as an object. The topicality of the search for the nature of one’s self and a permanent inner questioning are absolutely inherent and necessary for each of us.

This project examines the objectification of the author’s own personality by means of combining floral compositions and photos.

The technique of the performance is seems to be present in itself: in the photographs we see another image to which other semantic elements are added.

Free organic ornamental frames the artist’s face and figure, thus enclosing the author’s personality within a particular form and -which is even more importantly - at the same time disclosing new inner space available to it.

The second approach is an apotrope, an attempt to protect oneself. Conditional or partially-closed elements transform into a hat and a ritual protecting circlet of flowers. Thus, as if the bride’s crown, the photograph, on the one hand, represents virginity, on the other hand - the death in the old life and birth in the new one.

Two approaches to the perception of the self as such are present here. The first approach lies in the search and comprehension of insularity, the border.

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PE R CE PT I O N D UAL I T Y

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THE MENU FOR ANCESTORS

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Siarhei Hudzilin

Radunitsa is an Eastern Slavs’ memorial day, it is celebrated on Tuesday - the ninth day after Easter. In today’s Belarus it is an official public holiday and a day off – the All Souls’ Day. Radunitsa is a Slavic pagan tradition, accepted and supported by the Russian Orthodox Church. In the Orthodox Church of the Middle East and Greece it is absent.

On that day in the afternoon the whole family goes to the cemetery to their relatives’ graves and brings cooked meals. The number of dishes should be uneven. At the cemetery, a memorial meal is organized. The leftovers of the memorial meal used to be given to the poor.

Now a little bit of food and drinks are left on the graves «for the dead.» In different regions of Belarus the traditions of celebrating Radunitsa may vary. In the central part of the country food is laid out right on the graves as if on the table. For many Belarusians this ritual is the symbol of the unity with the dead ancestors and the manifestation of love and respect for them.

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S I AR HE I HU D Z I L I N

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THE ME NU FO R ANCE STO R S

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A DOLL’S DRESS

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Julia Nazarova

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«A Doll’s Dress» is my collection of the kindergarten photography for a period of 30 years, as well as my attempt to ask a few questions. Do these pictures affect us and our children?

Why is it important for us to try on some characters’ roles? What masks do we wear, who do we want to be and who does the society see in us? And how can we find among these masks, costumes and dolls’ dresses that very genuine essence? Our own dress.

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JU L I A NAZ AR O VA

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JU L I A NAZ AR O VA

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Victor Hilitski

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Every day on shop shelves we see familiar products. Once got used to them, we do not pay attention to their details any more, their packaging and sometimes even their tastes might remain out of our attention.

By scanning familiar to all of us from childhood cookies that stay unchanged through years, I wanted to concentrate my attention on their forms. Usually it remains unnoticed practically the next moment we open the wrapper. A variety of shapes, the images of animals and traditional Belarusian patterns are all imprinted on cookies, pack after pack. These small ÂŤcanvasesÂť of the art of culinary are made not to strive for beauty at all, the producers are only interested in taste and purchasing potential. Most of the images go unnoticed, being instantly swallowed by consumers. By bringing all the cookies together, the entire picture is revealed showing what work is hidden in each of the names and patterns, as well as the logical relationship of form and packaging.

see the difference in images that seem similar at first sight, they can compare and observe the individual character of each of them.

To find out what is hidden inside your name, what flavoring qualities your friends have is an offer we get from one of Minsk bakeries. This is an interesting game: to find in the confectionery department a wafer hero who has the same names as yours.

Affectionate names on packages seem to add some twist of animation to an ordinary conventional waffle. Forgetting about the functional purpose of these objects and taking them out of context, the opportunity is given to take a look at what images are made available to us as a universal description of names.

By this typological series the viewers are given a chance to stop and quench their own visual hunger. They can fix their look at the picture for a little longer than it happens in everyday life, thus they can

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#MYIMAGINARYCOLLAR

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Anna Bundeleva

Imagination is an endless fight for something that does not exist. It is chimeras. But once you calm down, you lose sensitivity, if you are not enchanted and seize to react – you disappear.

Any epoch cannot be just a period of time, it also requires the plot, just like music needs tunes.

Today, when digital technologies are so popular and mobile devices and applications for the transmission of information and endless communication constitute a significant part of our lives, I decided to become an integral part of this game and to put myself into the same frames, but following my own scenario. I made up my mind to transform a mobile phone into my mirror and an accomplice, to animate its functionality and through this – to transform a square instagram window into a place for illusions of deceit and selfreflection.

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The portrait part of the project «My Imaginary Collar» is a game of dressing-up

and embellishment, it is a constant trying on of lace collars, the same ephemeral and disappearing in their present form, from the starched white lace, like a shadow that they cast on me. Playing with these collars, I imagine that it is the only way for me to see what femininity and my sexuality are.

I repeat this ritual again and again, I open the heavy lid of my imaginary dowry chest, I admire and carefully move in my hands new collars. Not belonging to any particular time, coming to me from different eras and places in the world, these white beacons emphasize even more evidently the gap between the reality and fiction. Femininity is a tangible category, the same as the nature of a woman can be evaluated and recognized only as a matter of fact, in reality.

Just like a female prisoner locked in the tower dreaming her lace dream, I am doomed to a permanent recursion of my illusions.

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DOUBLE REFRACTION

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Alexandra Soldatova

To divide means to convert the whole into separate parts. But if you take the world for the whole, will you be able to identify in it some elements that are relatively unrelated to one another?

I conduct a series of experiments, moving from the general to the particular. At first glance, everything seems simple to me: the light and the darkness, nature and man, the living and the dead.

Photography slides on the surface, stubbornly ignoring the hidden structure.

I think that the border of any surface, its junction with another layer is that very place where division occurs. But it is there, at this very point, where the definition of general concepts takes place, possible only through one another: the dead is the lifeless, darkness is the absence of light.

Thus, the surface becomes a place of connection, otherwise the darkness ceases to be such.

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I switch to the “common sense” level and try to discern parts within the structure, some pieces. Each of them inherits the attributes of the class, the general structure of DNA, the memory of it. All of them are parts of the whole and are connected with one another by the space

of the shot and by the observer, that is myself. It is too easy.

I try to dig deeper, at least in theory.

Everything is made of molecules, but where does one molecule end and another one begin? Strictly speaking, such a place does not exist, there is only an asymptotic tail, which on Physics classes is usually neglected to simplify it all, to create a model and somehow to get an ideas of what is happening.

The harder I try to divide the things, the more I think about the object, the more links I detect. And what for me used to be independent and simple, suddenly becomes a part of something and changes in my mind by its own. To separate the object, I have to look at it in a way when at this particular angle these links are not visible.

And here it is in front of me a piece of feldspar, a mineral similar to glass. If you put some threads on top of it, two images appear under it. One is called “ordinary”, the other one – “extraordinary.” But is there among them that very thread that lies on the piece of paper?

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COLLECTING ONESELF: KUNSTKAMERA, MUSEUM AND PERSONAL SECRETS

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Olga Bubich

In different cultures collecting has always been a hobby the upper classes would permit to practice. Items of collections that can be stored and purchased in the whole course of one’s life may vary from precious stones and jewels (the collection of the Archduke of Austria Ferdinand II), watches, scientific tools, objects of hunting, medicine and printing (August, the King of Saxony), plants, animals and minerals (Ulisse Aldrovandi), instruments used in science (Manfredo Settala) and

many others. The passion for collecting and organizing in typologies objects of a certain kind led to the appearance of two important notions: «cabinet of curiosities» (or «kunstkamera») as a more the local container of collectable items and the museum – a space to showcase collections to the public.

As a remarkable example of transforming a private collection into a museum one can recall the famous «Museum of Innocence»,

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A part of the exposition at Orhan Pamuk’s «The Museum of Innocence» in Istanbul, Turkey

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Curiously enough, the passion for collecting as well the interest in kunstkamera as a form of representation of collected and classified objects does not disappear in time at all. And, as the American journalist Susan Moor notes in her article «Links between the Renaissance cabinet of curiosities and contemporary artists’ works», in

contemporary art field the popularity of this «strangest phenomena» is only growing [1], whereas in the world not only group exhibitions, but also congresses and monographs take this phenomenon as their subject-matters.

Variations of both collections themselves and the ways of their presentation in contemporary art could be traced already in the beginning of the XX century, it is enough to recall the famous «wall» made by the Surrealist painter Аndre Breton. In the 1920s he started to chaotically fill in the rooms of this flat with sculptures from Oceania and Mexico, pictures, prints and drawing by Joan Miro, Vasily Kandinsky, Pablo Picasso and other outstanding figures of his time. Later, the wall was highly praised by critics and art historians and in its original form moved into one of the halls of the Pompidou museum in Paris.

Belarusian art and photography did not stay away from the epidemic of interest in typologies either. In this respect, one should mention such projects as «Project of the Century – 12 of XX» by Vladimir Tsesler and Sergey Voichenko [2] and Sergey Shabohin’s «Reliquary XX-XXI (Necrologues XX-XXI)» [3].

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made a Nobel Prize Holder, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. In 2014 the project was given the honorable title of «the best museum in Europe». The collection insane in its volume and logics presents an objectified love story of the character of Pamuk’s eponymous novel. According to the plot, Kemal, the protagonist of the literary sensation of 2008, loses his head due to the unreal love to his poor distant relative and manically begins to collect various items that remind him of the beloved, thus totally devoting himself to creating a museum of his own memories of her. Figurines, shoes, a scarf, a cup, an inkpot, cigarette butts (and even a wooden bed!) – all gets into the collection as well as the infinity of other things that bear personal importance to Kemal. And it is all these things that thanks to Orhan Pamuk’s efforts and imagination became the exhibits of the museum in Beyoglu Street in Istanbul.

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The former presents a collection of twelve «portraits-images in sculpture», which stand for the most prominent artists and poets of the XX century whose creativity, in the sculptors’ opinions, expressed and in many ways formed the minds, tastes and destinies of millions of their contemporaries. The conceptual portraits were united into a single collection by their

form of representation, namely an egg 210 x 300 mm of size, as well as by the uniform spatial orientation. The idea is elegant both due to its originality and artistic expression: the features of «the portraits» in the geniuses’ collection are immediately deciphered, striking the audience by the irony of their representation.

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Аndre Breton’s wall shown as a part of the exposition in the Pompidou museum in Paris

Vladimir Mayakovsky. An object from the series «Project of the Century – 12 of XX» by Vladimir Tsesler and Sergey Voichenko [2] (cast iron, casting 210 x 210 x 285 mm)

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Sergey Shabohin’s «kunstkameras» are also of immense interest. The project «Reliquary XX-XXI (Necrologues XX-XXI)» consists of two tables, each of which is divided into a hundred cells numbered by years from 1901 to 2000 (the first one) and from 2001 to 2100 (the other one). The author placed in every of them fragments of artifacts that stand for artists deceased in this or that particular year (pieces of photographs, objects, etc). Thus, Sergey Shabohin creates a collection of loss: with the thoroughness of a pathologist from the Enlightenment epoch, he states the physical deaths’ of the prominent artists, filling in the cells gapping with the void.

The archivist himself comments on his concept in one of the interviews: «The work shows that nothing is left - the artists died, their works are cut into pieces,

the blank void stands in front. It inspires as well as frightens. After all, we will sooner or later get into such a table, and even the memory of us will vanish. Time knows no mercy. My task was to demonstrate it methodically, indifferently and clearly». [4] As we can see, the projects of the Belarusian artists deal with the idea of a collection/typology in a fairly broad scope of meanings that appeal to them.

In both the «Project of the Century» and «Reliquary XX-XXI (Necrologues XX-XXI)» the authors build their own paradigm in assessing vast cultural heritage. Through critical analysis of the achievements of the figures important in the field of art, they generalize, classify and highlight, thus taking on the role of the researcher and art collector, in addition that of the artist.

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Sergey Shabohin «Reliquary XX-XXI (Necrologues XX-XXI)» [3]

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A fragment of Аliona Haiduk’s project «Angulum lingo» presented at the exhibition «Аnatomia-2» in April, 2014 in Vitebsk.

Photo: Olga Bubich

A young artist Aliona Haiduk demonstrates a much more personal approach in creating her own collection in the installation «Angulum lingo» [5]. She incorporates into a vast mural posted on the wall numerous images, drawings and other objects that seem to have meaning solely to herself – all of them appear to be included into a growing moss cloth. The air of secrecy, unexplained pagan mysticism in contact with the forest and the earth where we as children, just like the artist, once buried our small treasures dominates when giving her “kunstkamera” a closer look. Like in the Museum of Innocence, the objects in Aliona Haiduk’s forest seem united into a single collection only very conditionally. But, just like the hero of the Turkish writer’s book,

the artist certainly has her own ground for caging the objects into the moss prison.

Ignorance and attempts to guess both fascinate and frighten the viewer stunned with the given trust.

Another project related to the collection of artifacts that at first sight presents high importance to the «collector» is the project «Inciting Force» [7] by the conceptual artist Zhanna Gladko. At the exhibition held in the gallery Ў in November-December of 2012, the audience was faced with the artistically reconsidered anatomy of Zhanna’s relationship with her father. On the screen put inside the gallery room various items from the artist’s family archive were placed, such as her father’s personal belongings, photographs, as well as objects specially

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created for the exhibition. Sergey Shabohin, who curated the project, in the «Inciting Force» explanatory text underlines the fallacy of the project’s linking to the personal museum format. After closer examination and analysis, according to Sergey, it could be understood more like «the author’s strategy of building through denial that transforms privacy into a universal abstraction, into the scheme, that creates a distance between us and the superficial base of the objects» [6].

or to a psychotherapeutic «museum» of the closets of our subconscious. It is only us and no one else who transform material objects into symbols in the attempt to freeze memories or to live through them one more time, destroy them or pin to the walls. And it is only up to us to decide whether the box with letters from our old friends is rubbish or a priceless cabinet of curiosities.

The curator characterizes Zhanna Gladko’s project in terms of ambivalence and the audience’s freedom of interpretation.

Quoting the artist, he says: «No subject, person or event can be classified unequivocally». If to keep reflecting on this thesis, we can assume that the personality of the collector stands as the main criterion in the formation of any collection, regardless of whether we apply this concept to an innocent child collection of stickers

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REFERENCES

1 - W W W . F T. C O M / I N T L / C M S / S / 2 / 5 5 F 9 6 6 A 4 - 2 C F D - 1 1 E 3 - 8 2 8 1 - 0 0 1 4 4 F E A B 7 D E . H T M L 2 - WWW.TSESLER.COM/EGG/EGGRU.PHP 3 - SHABOHIN.COM/RELIQUARY-X X-X XI/ 4 - K Y K Y. O R G / A R T / I N T I E R V I U - S - K H U D O Z H N I K O M - S I E R G H I E I E M - S H A B O K H I N Y M 5 - W W W . Z N YATA . C O M / O - FOTO / A L E N A - G A J D U K . H T M L 6 - Y G A L L E R Y. B Y / E X H I B I T I O N S / 0 0 0 4 7 7 8 / 7 - Y G A L L E R Y. B Y / G A L L E R Y / P H O T O / 0 0 0 6 0 5 1 /

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MANY THANKS: «CEH» ART SPACE AND JULIA DARASHKEVICH

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