In 2019 I had a chance to curate and produce the annual re:Store Digital Art exhibition in Moscow again.
re:Store, Apple Premium Reseller company in Russia, challenged me to conceptualize their new "re:Store Digital Art" festival, which led to a digital art exhibition, held for a month and a half in Moscow's Winzavod art center in December 2019-January 2020.
Here again we divided the exhibition in two parts - Professional, where we showed self-produced artwork, and Amateur, where anyone could get a chance to see their picture exposed after submitting it to an online competition.
This time the focus was on film, we had to artistically open the theme of 8 Seconds - the limit of our ability to focus attention on a certain subject.
I developed a concept of three short films which had to be shown simultaneously in a row on three big screens with one music track composed by a contemporary Russian composer Kirill Richter.
Being constantly distracted, the viewer had to make an effort to follow the chosen story.
We worked with a big team of film professionals to produce the shorts in Alvar Aalto Library in Vyborg and St.Petersburg.
With all artwork shot and filmed on iPhone Pro Max, our aim was to offer a conceptual experience to our viewers, combining the best cinematography, photography and design.
Three films were presented as a single looped three-screens installation on the topic of clip culture - inability to focus one's attention for longer than 8 seconds in a constant search for new impressions.
Observing three screens in a row, the viewer had to make an effort to follow each single plot, while being constantly distracted by a whirlwind of changing images.
SOTIRIA: A fugitive is trying to escape from his pursuers in a dark forest. They aim for the book in his hands, he aims to save the last printed publication on Earth.
MESHUGGAH: In a futuristic school kids are taught to write with the help of gadgets, any other writing tools are prohibited. One of the students breaks the order, what leads to the "fair" punishment. Could the teacher be mistaken, if a genius is hidden behind a deviation?
SELF: Being under an innovative "clip" hypnosis, a woman, while on a psychoanalyst's appointment, experiences the "free associations" method. Her daily evening run gets a new goal: to overtake, despite all obstacles, a mysterious stranger.
Filmed on iPhone 11 Pro with the Moment Anamorphic lens.
