Robots watching spectators, creativity of neural networks and holographic flowers … At the first international biennial Art of the Future, the Multimedia Art Museum of Moscow (MAMM) has collected the most unusual, extravagant and experimental works, most of which are futuristic predictions embodied in artistic images. As it turns out, the more vital ones are much less interesting than the ones that are maximally divorced from reality.
Various forms of technological art are advancing on all fronts today. The Hermitage holds a virtual exhibition of NFT art, the Tretyakov Gallery opens a permanent space for science art, at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Pushkin’s main project of the year is a retrospective of Bill Viola’s video art … And all these are large state institutions, a priori more conservative than some private galleries. The MAMM Biennale was completely supported by the Presidential Fund for Cultural Initiatives, and the first deputy head of the presidential administration, Sergei Kiriyenko, was appointed chairman of the Board of Trustees.
The point, of course, is not only a formal occasion – the upcoming Year of Technology, but also that the ability of artists to predict, anticipate the future, reflect on where humanity is heading is especially valuable today. And everyone understands this, including statesmen. Art turns out to be a mirror into which humanity is peering, trying to consider its prospects in such anxious times.
But at the same time, such projects are also an opportunity to escape from the painful problems of today. One of the main exhibits of the Biennale is indicative: the new three-channel video AES + F “Turandot 2070”. The huge screens show a futuristic city with buildings breathing like living creatures and a huge dragon plane flying over them. Inside the monster, naked men are subjected to eerie manipulations, and then completely lose their heads. It was filmed, however, in the trademark glossy aesthetics of AES + F, where the constant slow motion and artificiality of 3D graphics do not allow taking what is shown seriously, but caress the eye with the bright colors of the painted scenery and the model beauty of the actors. It turns out to be a strange hybrid of cyberpunk computer games and filming for glamorous women’s magazines.
The AES + F participants told Izvestia that the Turandot 2070 demonstration will be tied to the lunar cycle, and the entire algorithm is supposed to be “sewn” into the NFT smart contract. Whether it was possible to realize this is not clear from the MAMM exposition. The video is shown, like the previous works of AES + F, in regular non-stop sessions. But this situation is symbolic in its own way: not all futuristic ideas can be realized.
However, at the exhibition there are a lot of works striking precisely the technical component. For example, Ekaterina Popovich’s installation “If you look into the abyss for a long time, the abyss begins to peer into you” includes robotic objects reminiscent of the guardian machines from The Matrix. Coming closer, the viewer discovers that they are following him, turning the camera-eyes. The work “Metamorph” by Anastasia Koroleva is also based on interactivity: if you bring your hands to two antennas that form an electromagnetic field, the mysterious black substance inside the glass cube will begin to “come to life” and be modified.
“Art of the Future” is, of course, an attraction project. Is it possible, for example, not to get carried away by the contemplation of holograms in glass pedestals – “flowers” (Donacien Aubert’s project “Cybernetics, Biosphere and the City”)? Or not feel childish curiosity, getting into a dark room and realizing that the luminous lines around correspond to sounds, and you interact with all this (installation “Optical Hearing” by Maria Molokova)?
But no less interesting are quite traditional works – for example, Pavel Pepperstein’s huge graphic cycle Victory over the Future, exhibited back in 2009 at the Venice Biennale (MAMM’s founding director Olga Sviblova was then the Commissioner of the Russian pavilion). Suprematist figures – a transparent homage to the futurism of the 1910s – are here in the most phantasmagoric scenery and mise-en-scenes. There is no doubt that this is not a serious reflection on the future, but the fantasy of a storyteller. That is also their appeal.
You want to find yourself in the world created by Pepperstein, AES + F and other “Münchhausen” of our days more than in that quite possible near future, which is manifested in the works of socially oriented authors. Aristarkh Chernyshev suggests pointing a smartphone at a tondo with a QR code – and mountains of garbage are flying at the viewer from the opened Instagram window. Exact image. But this is already real: ubiquitous rubbish, including digital, and QR codes, and Instagram. And Pavel Chekulaev in the video “Novosti” inserted footage from computer games into real TV reports about incidents. It turned out, again, a statement not about “beautiful distant”, but about the unsightly and, alas, very close. Fake news as they are.
Exhibition warning? Certainly. An illusion exhibition? It is truth too. What message in this polyphony of meanings to hear in the first place is up to the viewer to decide. Disputes about whether art should reflect the existing reality or shape its own, comfort or excite, took place in the past and will undoubtedly continue in the future, no matter how you imagine it. But one thing is certain: art, however critical, strengthens faith in humanity. And the MAMM Biennale confirms this once again. In the end, when you see what technological heights have been conquered in a relatively short period of time and with what imagination the artists use these achievements, you begin to believe that the global problems of our days are solvable.
Author – Candidate of Art Criticism, columnist for Izvestia
The editorial position may not coincide with the opinion of the author
