AUTHOR(WRIT)Y
Curated by: Konstantin Bokhorov - curator, contemporary art critic, Moscow. Cooperates with MediaArtLab on different projects since 2000.

Author(writ)y video programme from the Centre Georges Pompidou collection. France. Montevideo, the Netherlands. Videotage, Hong Kong. Anthology, New York. MediaArtLab, Moscow. Vasulkas archives, Santa Fe, USA.

The authorities’ impersonal discourse realized through media and media use by contemporary artists in their author rhetoric are the virtual problems of avant-garde, later developed in video art. The programme is based on MediaArtLab collection and presents turning points of this development during the last 30 years. These points can be called median against media. The programme includes:
• Anthology of American video art classics by Richard Serra, Bill Viola, Woody Vasulka which visualize the context semantics of TV culture;
• Contemporary works representing the media intrusion of power discourse as biopolitical problem, for instance, Chris Oakley’s work, baring the realities of contemporary global media panopticon.

The programme aims not to popularize the theme but to give the viewer an option of autonomous retrospective analysis.

List of works
• Richard Serra, USA, Television Delivers People. 1973, 5’00”
• Bill Viola, USA, Reverse Television or Portraits of Viewers.1983-1984, 15’
• Antonio Muntandas, USA, Political Advertisment. 1984, 35’00’’ (excerpt)
• Woody Vasulka, USA, Art of memory. 1987, 36’00’’ (excerpt)
• Afa Chang, Hong Kong, «97 tons of memories», 1998, 14’20”
• Chris Oakley, UK, The Catalogue, 2004, 5’30’’

Running time 110 min.

Art House In Shorts. Main character’s view collection
Curated by: Tatiana Danilenko – director, programme curator

Art house presupposes a special point of view and position. It is close to lyric poetry, where the author always makes himself hear, even if he isn’t the narrator. A film’s author sends his alter ego on a world journey as a Main Character to live trough different changes declaring/demonstrating himself to the world.

Main character’s view collection
«Totally», (èãðîâîé, 10 min., I. Beka)
Who am I? Whence do I come? Where am I going?
«Maria Jesus» (feature, 2003, 12 min., M. and G. de Serio)
The story of a woman form Peru who’s looking for a job in Italy.
«U» (feature, 2001, 17 min., T. Daniliants)
One day from a young Moscow poet’s life.

Running time 40 min.

Aleksei Isaev’s Virtual Attraction Fair
Curated by: Olga Shishko

My work is autobiographical by nature – the autobiographical criterion being in the clearly articulated art language non dependent upon technique, situation etc. Any event in my professional life, any utterance is a reference to the main event (beyond time and context) of the hypertext kind (Aleksei Isaev).

A basic collection of all art projects by Aleksei Isaev – the attraction assemblage. It characterizes not only technology and the outer presentation of art but also art’s ideology and artist’s social strategies. Every attraction is based on some principles and has own ideology. Isaev plays upon different aspects of interpreting the attraction: revolution as attraction, politics as correctly staged attraction. These are different forms of art and technology –these are all attractions.

Attraction calls for a certain technological provocation. It has some technological script, hidden in the form’s mechanics. That’s why it’s called a new art form, which forces and more significantly – provokes - people to turn from audience into participants.

The projects Labyrinthology, Underground Land, Revolution, Assemblage of Attractions, Trash Art, New Cannibals (1990-2000) show the artist in his various possible functions as author, ideologist and director. Each project consists of a range of performances, video works, exhibitions and ideological manifestoes and texts. The author’s individual aesthetic is demonstrated by use of various technologies, such as drawing, video, sound, text, computerized animation, Internet, etc. For the artist each new technology is a newly appropriated language.

The slight irony of all these projects and their futuristic potential has attracted the audience in both real (the Metro actions, Labyrinthology) and virtual space (Trash Art, Revolution in Circles).

In the Assemblage of Attractions project Aleksei Isaev tried to restore Sergei Eisenstein’s 3D vision, which could not be converted into the cinematographic montage at the beginning of the century.

In this project video version the main role was played by new technologies, and it’s the digital 3D modeling that helped create a new screen model. In it the traditional linear screen progressed by stages from monoscreen to the new screen space in the shape of Moebius strip, on which the endless stream of video projection was running. In his video Isaev uses various cinema montage devices –from horizontal to vertical –so the screen stops being plain and is becomes the plastic substance of the image.


ALEKSEI ISAEV: PRO MEMORIA – TO REMEMBER ME BY
Media art is the contemporary art’s outpost. And the people who make it are special. Something in their psychological built makes them turn from the well-traveled road to the wood of Unknown. They are woodcutters in an obscure forest. Media art is today the newest of art forms. And the people who make it are desperate. They don’t look for immediate dividends, they work for later, for the future, with a sly joy leaving their laurels to be sown by the followers –it’s a mission of sorts. Aleksei Isaev was one of such woodcutter missionaries, a media artist and activist. Despite his early departure he managed to achieve surprisingly much in the field he chose. By doing two extremely important things – founding the MediaArtLab Mediatheque and the MIFF Media Forum – he actually managed a coup d'etat in the then art context. He forced society to regard media art as part of Russian art history and audiovisual culture establishment.
Aleksei Isaev is an artist. Creating these structures is an art gesture, the main artifacts of his rash and vivid life. (Nina Zaretskaya, TV Gallery Art Media Centre)

Aleksei Isaev, an artist, one of the pioneers of Russian media art, founder and director of the MediaArtLab Centre for Media Art and Culture considered promotion and establishment of contemporary progressive culture values one of his main goals of his work. His contribution to the Russian media art scene development as artist, curator, critic and publisher was extremely profound. Unlike many Aleksei Isaev has from the start seen media art and independent media culture not as a fashionable trend but as a phenomenon of significant cultural and socio-political potential. He believed it was important to support and develop non-conformist experimental and critically spirited forms of creativity. This has defined his views till the very end. Contemporary art has grown firm roots in Russia. Works of Russian media artists are now included into the historical cultural heritage. The new generation mostly prefers to analyze creatively the role of media technologies in contemporary society. All of this has been possible in many respects by Isaev’s efforts. His untimely death is a great tragedy for the Russian progressive art community. (Tatiana Gorucheva, theorist, new technologies art expert)

Aleksei Isaev
Founder on the MediaArtLab information and research centre. Media artisr, theotrist, curator, editor-in-chief of View form the East. Media consciousness/Media technology and Media Art in Russia series. Member of Russian Federation Cinematographers Union (new screen technologies committee). Russian Internet Academy member. Pro&Contra 2000 international symposium author and curator. MIFF Media Forum programme director since 2000.
Published a range of articles on media and video art in Russia and abroad, participated in various conferences, events and festivals on video and media culture/

Videography
1992 Labyrinthology, video, Hi 8, 25 min.
1993 Topological Book Invariant, Betacam,12 min.(IBM 486: 3DS, AnimatorPro,Targa+)
Underground Land, Hi8, 7 min.(IBM 486: 3DS,AnimatorPro,Targa+)
1994 Videoscenario, Hi8, 7min. (IBM 486: Animator Pro,Targa+)
Dance and Video, Hi8, 7min.(IBM 486: AnimatorPro,Targa+) distribution "Coronado film", France.
1995 New cannibals (Neyromancero), Hi8, 7 min, (Pentium 120, 3Ds4, Animator Pro, Adobe Primer, MiroVideo) -distribution "Coronado film", France.
1996 Assemblage of Attraction, (Sergei Eisenstein Pavilion) Hi8 30min. Pentium 120, 3Ds4, Animator Pro, Adobe Primer, MiroVideo).

Something About Power
Russian video art programme.
State Centre for Contemporary Art, 2006.
Curated by: Marina Koldobskaya, Maria Korosteleva.


Marina Koldobskaya is an artist, critic, journalist, curator of numerous art projects. Since 2002 she works as a Director of St. Petersburg branch of National Center for Contemporary Art.
Maria Korosteleva – curator, contemporary art critic.

Every artist has something to say about power, especially in Russia. Power changes hands, our attitude towards authority changes from acute hate and aversion to acute desire to be accepted and participate. Apart from political power, there’s the power of money, body, desire, ideas and objects. The elder have power over the younger, men over women, bosses over subordinates and vice versa. And maybe all around there’s God. Everyone is entangled in the cobweb of relationships which are to some extent relationships of power. That’s how widely the theme is interpreted by programme’s curators.

List of works
Giya Rigvava. You Can Rely upon Me. 1993. 1’29
Viktoriya Begalskaya. Nutcrackers. 2004. 5'58
Pavel Dubov 2005. 0'50
Glukla (Natalya Pershina-Yakimanskaya). Secret Advices. 2004. 2'40
Dmitry Vilensky. Contact. 2002. 4'40
Anna Ermolaeva. 3 min. 2000
Kirill Shuvalov. Massacre. 2003. 0'59
Aristarkh Chernyshev, Vladislav Efimov. Schwarzen Ecke. 2002. 2 '21
Viktor Alimpiev. "Is it yours?". 2004.
Elena Kovulina. Waltz. 2001
Oleg Kulik "I love Europe, she doesn’t love me back". September 1, 1996. Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin. 6’16
The Blue Noses Group (Viateslav Mizin, Alexander Shaborov. New Russian 2005 Sharades. One minute’s Animate Sculptures. 2'20
Yasha Kazhdan. Mona Liza. 2005 0'58
ZER GUT Visualization of taming or incident of contemporary Ornithology 3’20
Radek Community. Manifestation. 2002.
Factory of Found Clothes. (Glukla (Natalya Pershina-Yakimanskaya) & Zaplya (Olga Egorova). «Scarlet Sails». 2005. 7'00
Anton Litvin. Restoration. 2006
Natalia Mali and PMP Group “The people and the government shape the image of a new Russia together”
Vladimir Bystrov. "Magnificat". 2005. 5'05

Freedom Territory
British video art programme
Curator:Elena Zaitseva -contemporary art curator, researcher of the Newest Tendencies Department of the Tretyakov Gallery.

Art in our society is possibly the only territory in which people’s yearning for freedom is realized. In the global performance society where TO BE is transformed into CONSUME and PRETEND art enables us to see the underlying meaning of events while keeping aloof from ideology. A major part here is played by art’s appropriation of the spheres not originally belonging to it such as mass media, public space and everyday routine. This is where an important humanitarian aspect of artistic appropriation is revealed. It gives people the much longed for “third way”, an opportunity to break free from the system’s stereotypes. Art working with appropriation always makes people feel freer than before. This is one of art’s most powerful magnets. Due to it art remains one of the most enchanting spheres of human activity despite having rejected the function of aesthetic pleasure.

Participants:
Beltran Obregon
Flávia Mueller Medeiros
Melanie Manchot
Noemi Mccomber
Doug Fishbone and others

Feature Film «Volga-Volga»
Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe art project
Directors: Andrei Silvestrov, Pavel Labazov
Composer: Eduard Sivkov
Starring: Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe
VIDEODOM production, Russia, 2006.
Running time: 70 min.

Andrei Silvestrov (film director, one of the CINE PHANTOM club and festival founders) presents VOLGA-VOLGA – the cult soviet comedy of late 1930s directed by Grigory Aleksandrov. This is a story of a gifted village girl. Local bureaucrats try to hinder her going to Moscow for a song competition. The lead was played by Liubov Orlova –the Russian Marlene Dietrich. This is the strangest remake in the history of cinema as the 1930s version has been preserved completely, with the exception of the leading actress. In this new version the main character is played brilliantly by the well-known Russian artist Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, which gives the film an absolutely new metaphysical sense. The world premiere of the film took place at the 35th Rotterdam International Film Festival as part of the CINE FANTOM Day programme.

Leading media artists, journalists, non-profit film directors, alternative cinema producers and animation-makers are invited to join the round table discussion. The author(writ)y of new media language and various art strategies in working with them will be the central topic of discussion. Oleg Kireev’s “Media Activist Cook Book”, Shamanov’s “0 roubles” project and young art festival “Stop! Who’s there?” (Darja Pyrkina) will be presented along with other projects realized in 2005-2006. Moderator — Nikolay Palazhchenko.

Media Activist Cook Book
Oleg Kireev

The history and practice of the tactical media movement in Europe and the USA in mid-1990s. The tactical media are means of free copying and reproduction of information, which became available with the advent of computer technologies. The book has chapters on radio, video, technological collective actions in urban space and free software. The author hopes for wide propagation of tactical media practices in Russia.

1. BigFinn British group
Gold In the Age of Copper Programme

2. NJ'ING by Oleg Kireev & DJ Osadchiy
News-jockeying is an artistic practice characterized by NJ’s mixing not music tracks or video images but news downloaded form the Net through different news agencies. As the result of switching from different news groups pieces on hunger in Africa are interchanged with pop industry news. Thus the nj'ing practice becomes a source of information on world’s condition and creates a power metaphor in manipulating the news. The most impressive results are created by news coming at the exact moment of their screening.

3. Pop-group "Doors"