Making a Stop In the Present Moment
The world as we knew it has changed. And this isn’t only about the new social norms, or dismantling the habitual behaviour models, or any of the temporal restrictions of the moment. We have had a new perception of our relationship with time. The pandemic nostalgically moved the recent past to the archives, tagged each one of us with a question mark in the present, and, what’s important, opened anew the possibility of discussing both personal and collective future. The Arsenal offers you to have a look from aside, with some help from artists and researchers, at what’s going on, to get a feel of the atmosphere, and to move on along the line of life.
Igor Kobylin
philosopher
Cyril Shirokov
composer
Vasilisa Filatova
musician
Eugenia Suslova
artist
Alik Yakubovich
photographer
Dmitry Stepanov
multimedia artist
Essay
A philosopher and culture historian Igor Kobylin is taking the note of the phenomena and characters having emerged during the pandemic and discussing the return to ‘normal life’.
Igor Kobylin. Video Address. 2020. Courtesy of the Author
To the beginning
An essay clip v_future.3
Composer Cyril Shirokov and musician Vasilisa Filatova: concerning time with its pause button pressed
Cyril Shirokov (composition, text, voice), Vasilisa Filatova (video). 2020. Video, sound, 7’26’’. Courtesy of the authors
The futurocentric momentum of time with its pause button pressed help formulate questions, amplify the critical apparatus, and discover submerged perspectives, shifts, turns, and faults. However, it’s more often used as a dispensable building material, used in the habitual artificial practices of an artist.
This essay clip reflects two mental front lines, and in between there’s doubt: the very marginalized behavioural (non)model, inside of which the critical mass of the pause is being destroyed to make way for a possibility of motion/shift.
Cyril Shirokov
To the beginning
Analytical Meditation (audio)
Artist Eugenia Suslova offers a meditation on how to clarify what the pandemic is. During the meditation you will be able to view the situation as a whole and see how it can develop in future.
Eugenia Suslova with Vladimir Markov (voice) and Ericka Janes (sound). An audio composition. 11’6’’. 2020. Courtesy of the authors
A discourse arising around a phenomenon, like a pandemic, is a slippery surface on which the very possibility of analysis and forecast of the situation is blocked. But one can shift from that and try the analysis-without-analysis. In this meditation you are offered to work with words associated with the COVID-19 in a non-typical way, by using your imagination. When you meditate, you move from the notions to the areas of tension arising in your body mapping them and going back to the notions to make the in-depth matching of those. Some hidden aspects of the situation may surface as the result of this work. Appended to the meditation audio there is a short thesaurus of COVID-19 terminology which can be used for further analytical work.
Eugenia Suslova
COVID-19 Thesaurus
WHO, Hydroxychloroquine, the Decameron, PPE, antiseptic, unemployment, biopolitics, virtù, time of introverts, Zoom, Zoom party, IMV, immunity, isolation, intubation, holidays, quarantine, quantum transition, COVID-dissidents, covidiot, conference, coronacrisis, red zone, lockdown, mask, medical power, nationalization, online, pandemic, conversion, gloves, a feast in the time of plague, plateau, a mere flu, “the nature has healed itself to the point that…”, please be conscientious, recession, recirculator, respirator FFP2, emergency, self-isolation, hand sanitizer, singularity, social distancing, stream, working remotely, funds instead of accounts, flowers for doctors, green pass, exponent, epidemics.
Consultants for the COVID-19 Thesaurus: Irina Mironova, Dmitry Stepanov
To the beginning
Acoustic Photography
Topical Fortune-telling from the Past by photographer Alik Yakubovich
***
Не стоит бояться будущего –
Оно все равно станет прошлым.
***
Город зарешёченных лиц,
Застекленных глаз,
Всплывающих окон.
***
Уйти от себя в отпуск,
Запереться в любимом деле,
Стать на неделю Богом.
***
Они, наверное,
Снесут мой город,
Чтобы увидеть,
Как он прекрасен.
***
И дальняя дорога
Станет кратчайшим путем,
А пауза – действием.
***
А что если болезнь – это лекарство
Или новый вид творчества,
Ведь еще вчера
Ты не мог вспомнить,
Зачем родился,
А сегодня – такое желание жить.
Alik Yakubovich. Photos and texts. (2015–2020). Courtesy of the author
The series presents some ‘photo-verses’ by Alik Yakubovich in the genre of ‘acoustic photography’ from his collections from diverse times. One of these collections is titled Scent. The author remarks in a humorous way that his books are often used for divination; that’s what we attempted to do with his books too.
To the beginning
Video art FutPre
Multimedia artist Dmitry Stepanov speaking about present in future
Dmitry Stepanov. Video Address. 2020. Courtesy of the Author
Dear Friend, you’ll ask me what I see the future like. The answer is simple: I don’t see it, I’m creating it. My eyes operate in a simple way: they don’t receive and digest phenomena, but emit rays of vision to touch matter with. With my eyes I feel the future which isn’t yet to be known. Power of vision isn’t passive; it’s active. What will the future be like, depends on our disposition. I can make this sculpture, or that sculpture. All this is irrelevant; what’s relevant is that I touch the present with my eyes and mould the future out of it.
It’s absolutely true that the ancient world of the past had the same problems as the shining world of the future will have. What only changes is the channels through which information about these problems is transferred; and that means that the methods of its encrypting and deciphering also change. This is only technologies, only the means. And real problems of the past will forever be the real problems of the future. Real future is the the future which we friends all wish for. How it will be different from present and the more so from future present is quite a different story. We’ll probably learn the answers to these questions in due time.
Dmitry Stepanov
To the beginning
