Virtual exhibition, video (5´21")
Google maps have become a fault zone, in which parts, semi-amorphous objects, similar in shape to the skulls of prehistoric animals, have cleared up in an X-ray. They scattered and filled everything around, reminding us of the extinction stories of species, of ancient times, stored in the layers of the earth, about the death of those whose remains are present in our bodies.
“The process of passing and moving through points devoid of consistent perception changes and divides digital space with real.
The postulates of posthumanism about the end of the era of human domination over other species, before our eyes become a reality.
What privileges or cultural achievements can be discussed in the disarmed world captured by the virus? The videos shot by city cameras in world capitals are like frames of fantastic pictures of parallel universes of a “world without people”. And so, unnoticed by ourselves, the time is coming when we begin to become aware of ourselves not as individuals, but as a species.
On March 23, an exhibition of the artist Anna Tagantseva-Kobzeva opened in the Kz online gallery, which turned out to be surprisingly in tune with the current situation.
Work on the project coincided with the advent of the pandemic, the exhibition was done in parallel with the introduction of a self-isolation regime. It is this transitional moment that was preserved in the work. The situation of stopping the “usual course of things” partly reminds us that it will not be like before. In such conditions, a journey is made through the closed borders of cities and countries, but through digital instrumentation.
The artist uses “real” google maps panoramas as a “conditionally reliable” source of information. What we want to see – other cities and countries, has already been filmed for us by Google. Today, when we are in the conditions of impossibility of free movement even inside our hometown, these digital landscapes are becoming a reminder of some kind of stability, of that very quiet everyday life that is usual.
At the same time, there’s something utopian in Google’s landscapes, because despite their “universality” and recognizability, they remain a seal of the past and can fix spontaneously chosen private lives while remaining a tool for documenting reality.Interestingly, in addition to the relevance of the theme of the exhibition, its format turned out to be working in modern conditions. Because in the mode of mass self-isolation, the only necessary condition for the survival of cultural, educational and artistic projects is convertibility into digital form.”
Text by Gala Leonova