the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts

Screen paintings for the exhibition created by:
Eve Sussman (USA)
Galina Myznikova and Sergey Provorov (“Provmyza” art group, Russia)
Cristina Lucas (Spain)
Alex Verhaest (Belgium)

Throughout the 20th century, artists and avant-garde filmmakers strived to create a film that would be an installation – a visual work that would continue the multimillennial history of visual art. Kazimir Malevich and Marcel Duchamp thought that cinema, as a contemporary of modernism itself, should be transformed by artists into a form of visual art. Moreover, this new moving art (as distinct from the static one) had an additional dimension – time. As Malevich declared: “If you have a film camera, you should think about having a location in space. And you, as artists, should have the expanded time that should be shown to the viewer”.
In their search for a new language, artists turned to the moving image, assuming that if the film or video camera had been invented earlier in history, previous artists would have certainly used it in their attempts to represent the world around them in movement.

One of the goals of this exhibition is to demonstrate to the viewer that video art allows a temporal expansion of the borders of visual art. It also continues artistic research into the fields of colour, form and light in space.

The “Impressions 2.0” project is a starting point for the creation of a new platform to research new visual language developments – new classic art that is born before our very eyes. A form of time travel awaits the viewers through endless projections of classic art and the vivid echoes of the past in our contemporary reality.

Video, sound and performative practices can be clearly included into the context of a traditional museum due to the timeless qualities of the new media which make static objects “breathe” and “move”.

In the near future, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and MediaArtLab centre for art and culture will realise a series of projects to initiate a dialogue between contemporary art works and the masterpieces of old. The viewers will be able to trace the development of media art form the magic lantern to cinema, from optical illusions and panoramic paintings to virtual reality, from the avant-garde utopia to the Universal Art Work, which integrates all art forms into a united whole.

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MEC "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman"

"Disturbances in the state of things." Graduation show of the Open School "Manege / MediaArtLab" students
MEC "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman", Mira prosp., 123 b, April 2 — April 26, 2015

Organizers: Department of Culture of Moscow, Museum and Exhibition Association "Manege", "MediaArtLab" Center of Art and Culture

Project team: Olga Shishko, Olga Lukyanova, Andrey Parshikov
Architect: Anastasia Potemkina
Participants: Gusakova Darya, Dolinina Eugenia, Vadim Kartashov, Kishchenko Sergei, Koptyaeva Elena, Maria Kramar, Leshchev Alexander, Gleb Nechayev, Alexander Obrazumov, Obukhova Maria, Ponirovskaya Zlata, Ragozina Marina, Sakirko Maria, Sokol Mary, Taezhnaya Alice, Toropitsyna Natalia, Andrei Cherkasov

In April 2015, the Museum and Exhibition Center "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman" hosted the exhibition "Disturbances in the state of things." It presented diploma of the first graduates of the Open School "Arena / MediaArtLab" who completed the course, the leitmotif of which was the theme of "visual experiments."

Open School "Manege / MediaArtLab" is a unique project in the field of contemporary art, implemented jointly by the Museum and Exhibition Association "Manege" and "MediaArtLab" Center of Art and Culture with the support of Mikhail Prokhorov. A key feature of the School is its mobility and interdisciplinarity, willingness to answer questions of modernity and work with the most current topics and issues of the day.

Technopolis "Moscow", Moscow, Volgogradsky Prospekt, 42, 5 K

Organized by: MEH "Manege", MediaArtLab Centre for Art and Culture
Curated by: Olga Shishko, Elena Rumyantseva, Boris Debackere

  Exhibition "Digital Dreams" in the catalogue of the Cultural program of the Forum "Open Innovations" (rus/eng)

One of the directions of the Open Innovations Forum is to present the newest Western and Russian projects and ideas in the field of media culture. The Forum seeks to identify connections between art, science, economy and technologies. Its Cultural program takes the united form of an open platform exhibition space. It is a sort of a university with a mighty potential for communication. The project’s objective is not only a presentation of innovative media solutions, but also a production of knowledge, assessment and understanding of culture.

Today it is important to define the role that media plays in contemporary society, to support Russian authors in creation of innovative projects, to test the viability of experimental art in an environment, where no allowances are made for age, ideology, aesthetics and technology.

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MEC "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman"

Post-digital. Different Borders. Exhibition of young artists — students of the Open School "Manege/MediaArtLab"
MEC "Worker and Kolkhoz Woman", May 19 — June 17, 2014

Organized by Open School "Manege/MediaArtLab", MEC "Manege", "MediaArtLab" Center for Art and Culture

Young artists possess an especially subtle perception of the cultural processes and a flair for the upcoming changes. They analyse the changes in our perception in the contemporary post-digital environment, investigate the ways human subjectivity changes in the world, connected by the global networks and flooded with informational noise. the ways we perceive the increasingly elusive reality, we feel and touch it.

The exhibition presents the projects of the new generation of Russian artists, working in the field of video art, media installation, photography, performance and interdisciplinary practices.

The exhibition consists of four sections: Touching Art, Shame and Disgust in the Post-digital Age, Escape and Mutual Action. The subjects are closely intertwined and create a broad panoram of the look at the modern world from different points of view - from the tactile perception of the surrounding processes to the analysis of the people’s interactions in the post-digital society.

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Central Exhibition Hall “Manege”, Manezhnaya square, 1, Moscow

Peter Greenaway, Saskia Boddeke. The Golden Age of Russian Avant-garde
Central Exhibition Hall “Manege” (Manezhnaya square, 1, Moscow), April 15 — May 18, 2014
Press conference: 14 April, 17:00
Opening: 14 April, 19:00

Organized by Moscow Government, Moscow Department of Culture, Museum and Exhibition Association “Manege”, Center for art and culture “MediaArtLab”
Supported by British Council 

Exhibition curators: Olga Shishko, Elena Rumyantseva

The Golden Age of the Russian Avant-Garde is a large -scale exhibition project, created especially for the big exhibition hall of the Moscow Exhibition Complex “Manege” by Peter Greenaway (Great Britain) and Saskia Boddeke (the Netherlands).

The world premiere will take place in Moscow in April 2014 and will become one of the key projects of the bilateral UK-Russia Year of Culture. The project will allow the broad public to acquaint itself with the most important works of the Russian avant-garde of the 20th century in the context of media.

The multimedia installation of Peter Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke will animate more than 1000 masterpieces of Russian avant-garde. With the help of multimedia techniques rare pieces of Russian avant-garde from the collections of the The State Tretyakov gallery, The Russian museum, A.A.Bakhrushin State Central Theater museum, The Schusev State museum of architecture, St.Petersburg State museum of Theater and Music, State museum of contemporary art (Thessaloniki, Greece), Stedelijk museum (Amsterdam, the Netherlands), Van Abbemuseum (Eindhoven, the Netherlands), The Centre Pompidou (Paris, France), Museum of Modern Art ( New-York, USA), The Guggenheim museum (New-York, USA) and private collections will be shown. Black Square by Kazimir Malevich - perhaps the most famous work of Russian avant-garde - will be taken as the basis and the central metaphor of the exposition.

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The Manege Museum and Exhibition Complex, The Museum of screen culture Manege/MediaArtLab

Organized by The Department of Culture of Moscow, Museum and Exhibition Association "Manege", The museum of screen culture "Manege / MediaArtLab", Gallery "Triumph"

Great Expectations is a new exhibition programme in the Museum of Screen Culture Manege/MediaArtLab with the participation of the Triumph gallery. The project is a progressive platform for visual experiments and media innovations for young Russian artists. They have their own voice and a recognizable approach but continue to search permanently for the new means of expression. They have participated in many exhibitions, but are ready to try new methods of communicating with the audience, experimenting in spaces, taking risks and exploring border areas of visual arts and multimedia.

Great Expectations exhibition programme presents a series of personal exhibitions in the Media Library in the Museum of Screen Culture Manege/MediaArtLab. Each exhibition of the series will last approximately one month, when the artist uses his recognizable style in new exhibition area and presents his new work to the public — these video and media installations that have never been seen before. Each exhibition of the Great Expectations series is a unique statement of an artist and his curator, a special screening of lively new pieces of work. This exhibition in the artist's biography marks the transformation from a young promising author to a serious professional. It opens new perspectives in personal research and self-identification in the art system. And of course Great Expectations is a great possibility for a young artist to open a personal exhibition for a large audience in one of the main exhibition halls of Moscow, and still enjoy freedom in his experiments.

Crocus Expo, as a part of the Open Innovations Forum

Media project "Immersions into the Future"
In the frame of Open Innovations Forum
Crocus Expo, October 31 — November 2, 2013 

Organizers: MEC «Manege», centre for culture and art « MediaArtLab», Museum of screen culture «Manege/MediaArtLab»

Curator: Olga Shishko (art critic, curator, MediaArtLab founder and director, art director of the MIFF Media Forum of the , director of the Museum of screen culture Manege/MediaArtLab)
Producer:  Elena Rumyantseva (program director of the Museum of Screen Culture Manege/MediaArtLab and the MIFF Media Forum)
Architect: Dina Karaman
Coordinator: Olga Pogasova

Participants: Where the Dogs Run (Russia), Dmitry Kavarga (Russia), Sergey Katran (Russia), Alexandra Dementyeva (Russia-Belgium), Boris Debackere (the Netherlands-Belgium), Elena Gubanova and Ivan Govorkov (Russia), Yury Ankarani (Italy), Vladimir Potapov (Russia), Dmitry Bulatov and Alexey Chebykin (Russia), ABC (Russia).

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Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation 
Museum and exhibition complex Manege
Museum of screen culture Manege/MediaArtLab
Center for art and culture MediaArtLab
Moscow Biennale Art Foundation
Triumph gallery

Curators: Catherine de Zegher, Alexandre Kauffman, Olga Shishko
Coordinators:Selena Volkonskaya, Olga Pogasova, Elena Rumyantseva

Place: CEH «Manege», Manegnaya Sq,1, 2^nd Floor

More Light / Bolshe Sveta (For a Different Space-time) is the title of the 5^th Moscow Biennale. It is an open-ended title, which allows for many interpretations. The diversity of interpretations is apparent in our international selection of films—interpretations of ‘more light’ ranging from the practical to the philosophical, from the material to the immaterial, from the physical to the spiritual.

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In the framework of the XIV MIFF Media Forum

Expanded Cinema—III. Mocumentary: Reality Is Not Enough
Moscow Museum of Modern Art (Gogolevsky Boulevard, 10), June 25 — July 28, 2013
Press conference and press tour: June 24, 2013

Curator: Olga Shishko (art historian, curator, director and founder of the MediaArtLab, director of the MIFF Media Forum)
Producer: Elena Rumyantseva (programme director of the MIFF Media Forum)

Participants: Harun Farocki, (Germany), Omer Fast (Israel), Milica Tomić (Serbia), Monica Studer and Christoph van den Berg (Switzerland), Walid Ra'ad/ The Atlas Group, USA—Lebanon), “Janez Janša” (Slovenia), Nonny de la Peña and Peggy Weil (USA), Dmitriy Venkov (Russia), Dina Karaman (Russia), Roman Mokrov (Russia), Jack and Leigh Ruby (Australia), Ranbir Kaleka (India), Vladimir Arkhipov (Russia), Nikolay Onishchenko (Russia).

The third installment in the MIFF Media Forum Expanded Cinema series — Mocumentary: Reality Is Not Enough presents the cutting-edge selection of contemporary art works in the genre formed in-between cinema, video and media art. The exposition curated by Olga Shishko (art director of Moscow Media Forum of MIFF) is compiled of the masterpieces of the modern artists from Russia and abroad, utilizing pseudo documentary and mockumentary strategies in their creative practices. Mocumentary: Reality Is Not Enough poses the question of blurred borders between fiction and reality in the era of media addiction, information pollution and uncritical consumption of data and images.

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Exhibition sound:frame "COLLECTIVE" and VIENNA ART NIGHT. Moscow Museum Night Afterparty
18 May — 26 June 2013, Museum and Exhibition Complex Manege (Moscow, Manegnaja Square 1), Mediatheque

Opening: 17 May 2013, 19:00
Open lecture and Workshop: 20 May 2013, 19:00
VIENNA ART NIGHT: 18 May 24:00 – 5:00

Organized by Sound:Frame, Museum of screen culture "Manege/MediaArtLab", with support of City of Vienna, Vienna Tourist Board and Austrian Cultural Forum Moscow

The Museum of screen culture "Manege/MediaArtLab" and sound:frame present project consisting of Exhibition sound:frame "COLLECTIVE" and multimedia audio visual concert VIENNA ART NIGHT. Moscow Museum Night Afterparty as well as open lecture for public and workshop special for the students of Open School Manege/MediaArtLab.

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As a part of the Year of Germany in Russia 2012/13

Exhibition "Contemplating Death"
April 17 — June 26 2013, Central Exhibition Hall «Manege» (Moscow, Manege Square, 1), ground floor
Opening: April 16, 19:00

Organized by the Government of Moscow, the Moscow City Department of Culture, Museum and Exhibition Association "Manege", the Museum of screen culture "Manege/ MediaArtLab", Goethe-Institut in Moscow

Artists: Joseph Beuys (Germany), Felix Gonzalez-Torres (USA-Cuba), Simon Dybbroe Møller (Denmark), Anna Hepp (Germany), On Kawara (Japan-USA), Marcel Mieth (Germany), Julia Charlotte Richter (Germany), Peter Rösel (Gemany), Anri Sala (Albania-France), Bill Viola (USA), Yang Zhenzhong (China)

Concept: Leonhard Emmerling, Wolf Iro
Exhibition design: Catherine Garet
Assistants: Catherine Garet, Elena Rumyantseva, Elisaveta Velichko

This show was curated and organized by the Museum of Screen Culture "Manege/MediaArtLab", the Moscow Goethe-Institut and the Department of Fine Arts at the head office of the Goethe-Institut in Munich.

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Organized by the Moscow City Government, the Department of Culture of Moscow, GBUK Moscow «Manege», Moscow museum of screen Culture "MediaArtLab".
Opening: 29 November, 19:00, Central Exhibition Hall «Manege» (Moscow, Manege Square, 1), ground floor
Press Conference: 29 November, 11:00

Support: The French Embassy and the French Institute, the Embassy of Finland, the Polish Cultural Centre, the British Council, Mondrian Foundation, Holiday Inn Lesnaya, National Cenre for Contemporary Arts (NCCA), Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA), the Buro Tolpin Peter Architects

Leading curator, author of the concept: Olga Shishko
Co-curator: Elena Rumyantseva

This November the MediaArtLab Centre for Art and Culture opens the Museum of screen culture at the Central Exhibition Hall Manege. This new space will become a unique platform for exhibitions, screenings, multimedia performances, a kind of interactive laboratory which will present major stages of media art history and also a bustling centre of creativity and education.

The Museum opens with the "VIDEO HOLES: I do not know what it is I am" exposition, an attempt to step across the borders of our perception of reality and carry the viewers away to other dimensions. Nine works by video artists in the language of video, an unprecedented channel for transmitting the states of mind, feelings and perceptions, trying to find nine routes, nine ways of man’s unending search and wanderings through space and time. An endless search for something that often is not the main purpose of the journey.

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Days of Moscow in Delhi
A Walk About Moscow Exhibition Project
October 26 — November 11, 2012, Lalit Kala Academi (35, Ferozeshah Road, New Delhi)

Organized by: The Moscow City Government, The Moscow City Culture Department, MediaArtLab Center for Art and Culture, Center Photohub_Manometr

Curators: Olga Shishko, Elena Rumyantseva

“A Walk About Moscow” — an exhibition project about the Russian capital — will be presented specially for the “Days of Moscow” festival programme in New Deli. Moscow is a city of contrasts. Its architectural image, like a magic mirror, reflects all the historical, political and economic processes of the past and those still on-going in Russia the vast and multinational. Photographs and video art works by fourteen artists will be presented at the exhibition. All these artists have their own view point, their own Moscow. From black and white graphics to blurred painting, from close-up to panoramic views, from captured details to multicolored panels.

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In the framework of the XIII Media Forum of MIFF

Expanded Cinema—II The Immersion: Towards Haptic Cinema
The Ekaterina Cultural Foundation: June 23 — August 19, 2012
Curator: Olga Shishko (art historian, curator, director and founder of the MediaArtLab, director of the MIFF Media Forum) 

Organized by: MediaFest, MediaArtLab Centre for Art and Culture, The Cultural Foundation Ekaterina
With the support of: Mondriaan Foundation, British Council
Partners: ARTPLAY Design Centre (Moscow), Centre Pompidou (Paris), Museum of Cinema (Moscow), Archive Vasulkas (Santa Fe)

Nowadays thanks to Hollywood a model for a feature film with a narrative basis and two-three hour length has been established worldwide. This is a cinema viewing situation we are accustomed to, but cinema is not at all limited to it. All through the XXth century artists and avant-garde film directors have been dreaming of quite another cinema, whether a tactile one, wich can be touched, an interactive one – where a viewer can take an active part, a multiscreen cinema or cinema viewing as a meditation experience. In fact such cinema works are also created and they happen to be no less interesting compared with blockbusters — it’s just that we are not particularly aware of their existence and so are not able to watch or touch them.

The Media Forum is a programme at the Moscow International Film Festival which has been created especially to expand the familiar borders of cinema and to show that it can vary not only both in content and artistic construction of the text, but also from the formal point of view, the technology of its making and the viewing situation.

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St. Petersburg, Palace Square
Collaboration with JSC "Rostelecom"

From 21 to 25 June 2012 in St. Petersburg in Palace Square was built a unique structure - a mobile glass pavilion. All the day it worked as a news center, but in the evening turned into an art object – works of Russian and foreign media and video artists were projected on its walls. The program included works by: Francois Vogel, Tony Hill, Ilya Korobkov, Paul Clipson, Erik Olofsen, Perry Bard, Galina Shevchenko, Arev Manoukian, Roman Mokrov, Nina Kurtela, Robert Arnold, Chris Oakley, Evann Siebens.

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In the frame of Pro&Contra 2011 International Symposium

Pro&Contra International Symposium
Moscow, October 8—11, 2011; Krasnoyarsk, October 14—16, 2011

The project is realized with Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation support
Under the patronage of Ministry of Culture of Russian Federation
Organizer: "MediaArtLab" Centre For Art And Culture
Co-organizer: Artplay on Yauza Design Centre
Partners: Royal Netherlands Embassy, Goethe Institut, Moskau, Austrian Cultural Forum

In 2011 at the international PRO&CONTRA symposium an art project competition took place for the artists from Russia and the CIS countries who research various trends in new media art.

During four months applications were accepted at the website http://procontra.mediaartlab.ru/, and at the time of the 4 Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art opening the winners were chosen. The symposium’s board of experts appraised works in four nominations seconding the thematic sections of the PRO&CONTRA conference, where experts in each trend are to give a speach. This structure was suggested by the symposium’s organizers becouse their main goal was not only to create an exhibition of the most interesting competition projects but to organize an expert discussion of the works presented and to evaluate the current Russian situation and its prospects for development as well as to demonstrate to the audience the methods of media works analysis.

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In the framework of the XII Media Forum of 33 MIFF

The Expanded Cinema exhibition
Part 1. Moscow Museum of Modern Art, June 13 — July 3 2011
Part 2. the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture, June 24 — July 24 2011

Organized by: MediaFest, MediaArtLab Centre for Art and Culture 
Co-organizers: Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture
With the support of: Royal Netherlands Embassy, Mondriaan Foundation, Goethe Institute in Moscow, Japan Foundation

In the Moscow Museum of Modern Art exhibition the participants are: Fiona Tan (the Netherlands), Johanna Billing (Sweden), Harun Faroсki (Germany), Gary Hill (USA), Anri Sala (Albania/France), Leslie Thornton(USA), Ranbir Kaleka (India), Arev Manoukian (Canada), Boris Eldagsen (Germany), Juri Kalendarev(Italy/Russia), Evgeny Ufit (Russia), Doug Aitken (USA), Taus Makhacheva (Russia), Keren Cytter(Israel/Germany), Ilya Permyakov (Russia), the Tot-Art group (Russia), Elena Kovylina (Russia), Almagul Menlibaeva (Kazakhstan), Provmyza group (Russia), Blue Soup group (Russia), Juri Albert (Russia) and Victor Alimpiev (Russia). 

At the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture tree multi-screen video installations will be shown: the European premiere of Yang Fudong’s Fifth Night (China, 2010), the most recent work by Eija Liisa Ahtila — the Annunciation (Finland, 2010) and Derek – the central part of Isaak Julien’s famous projects (UK, 2008). 

Probably the first questions a layman asks confronted with works of video artists are: is it a kind of cinema? Why is it so strange? Why is it shown in museums? Setting borders between the territory of visual art and classic cinema have been attempted in dozens of articles. And to answer the neophyte’s question every expert will explain with authority that video art doesn’t have a cinematic narrative structure, linear sequence of events and the category of causality doesn’t apply to it. You will be told of the specific character of museum space, the specifics of temporal works’ perception in gallery space, of an active versus a passive viewer. And... the experts would probably be wrong. Today cinema has accepted the non-linear narrative. Video art in turn has found its own niche in cinema distribution, its masters feel at home at the best film festivals of this planet. Shirin Neshat, Steve McQueen, Sam Taylor-Wood and the Provmyza duo have chosen the red carpet (and not the museum space) to present their projects and the cinema world in its turn has embraced then wholeheartedly, giving them awards of every kind. The last Venice film festival has put directly the question of the cinema’s future as based upon the many years of video art achievements. 

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