summ( )n

I just came back from Moscow, and wanted to update this blog with many, many stories, about the lectures I read in Russia, on designing possible futures, and their great reception, about the exhibition we opened in Moscow Museum of Architecture, and other exhibitions I managed to attend, about my meetings with many interesting and talented people, and the projects we discussed.

Instead, I learn in the morning about the blasts in Moscow metro, in the very place I’ve been just a day ago, about the people who died, and people who tried to kill them, and other people who try rescue those who are nearly killed. Black Swan casts his shadows again, changing the landscapes of the future with just one wave of the wing.

As a peculiar echo of the conference on the Russian avant-garde in Vanabbe museum, I found in Garage, another Moscow art center, a large duo exhibition of Russian avant-garde, or rather on the current artistic re-interpretations of this phenomenon. There were no pieces by Malevich, Shagal or Kandinsky there, but instead plenty of artistic references and quotes, hidden or overt, to these masterpieces of art-futurism.

Unfortunately, any photography was strictly forbidden in this center (which is stupid, if you ask me), and I can’t even show the works I saw, and liked. I’d love to show quite a few, but alas, not this time. On their website I found a few examples, including this Tatlin Tower made our of iPhone (it was actually ‘working’, i.e., the buttons were glowing from time to time).

Ok, this is not a result of my passionate involvement – it’s merely a reflection of the fact then when one does read a lecture, it is usually somebody else who takes the pictures
And it was indeed another lecture about possible futures, and how design can help in exploring them. This time I was invited by the Department of Design of the Moscow Academy of Finance, and personally by Ekaterina Khramkova, a founder of the Russian design research agency Lumiknows and since recently a head of the faculty at the Department.

Lecture was also announced in various web-channels for professionals, but also the students of the Academy had been invited, so the audience was in the area of 80 people, and pretty diverse. The content was very similar to the one I presented in St.Petersburg, may be a bit shorter. Here again the audience was very attentive, the questions relevant, and an overall experience great ( I mention that because that was not always the case, I remember talking about similar issues a few years ago, and the level of understanding and appreciate was a way lesser).

Next day I went to the Winzavod (literally Wine Plant), in the past a real winery, or rather a wine-producing factory, and currently one of the largest centers of contemporary art in Moscow, an agglomeration of art galleries, shops, workshop and other creative outlets. Lots of different things, different in terms of size, style, impact and ‘future relevance’, let’s define it in this way.

One of the exhibition, in the Guelman Gallery, was particularly striking; I would describe it as ‘probe into impossible future’, that blends both u-topian and dys-topian project into one quantum nucleus. Not sure that all the energy layers could be understood by non-Russian people, or more precisely, by people who haven’t experienced this exciting and absurd post-Soviet era, including the Russian war(s) in/with Chechnya.

These bright and beautiful paintings, resembling the works by Alexander Deineka, present an imaginary world, where there is a Chechnya without the wars, where there is a parachute jumping sport, and where women can practice it… and all that is shown in the midst of Russia, which is increasingly uneasy, hostile, and intolerant to the region. An avalanche of provocative collisions of meaning, and a rich soil to probe the future.

The reason for my trip to Moscow was an understandable desire to be present at the opening of my own exhibition – One Map, Two Routs, hosted by the Museum of Architecture. I managed to miss its first incarnation in Perm last year, and decided not to step on the same harp twice.

The exhibition, opened by Marat Guelman, head of the Permm Museum of Contemporary Art and Olga Sviblova, head of the Moscow Institute of Photography, was a part of the 8th Moscow Photobiennale, together with some 30+ other galleries and events all around the city (both on the picture above). Somebody even managed to capture my own self, a rare breed.

I came a bit early to the exhibition, way before its official opening, and captured quite a strange situation of the images without the viewers. It is very difficult to imagine such a non-dialogical, non-communicative situation for the aman_geld project, which always existed in a social web space and became a social object already long ago.

Then came the visitors, the media, the critics etc; in fact, tons of them, at the end the halls were entirely packed. But the main reason why this posting is here is not a bit of selfish boasting. For me aman_geld is a logical, and complimentary extension to the work of Summ()n, namely, discovering new ways of thinking and seeing the usual and routine things ‘differently’. You can start with images, you can start with sounds, or meaning, or futures; here and again the question is how many diverse views we can produce, and process, and explore. Same question, just different formats.

When in St.Petersburg I managed to go to the Russian Museum where (in its so called Marble Palace building, on the Neva River bank) was a very interesting exposition on display, of the Russian artist group called New Painters (Новые Художники). The group emerged in St.Petersburg in the beginning of 1980s, and back then was completely outside of any official art life (and I guess social life in general). It was not overly anti-Soviet or dissident, but somewhat a-Soviet, and existed in a kind of parallel world to the existing reality. The artist composing the group (a very fuzzy agglomeration at any given moment anyway) were living and doing their creative work in such a way that it was not even comprehendible by the most at that time – the degree of human individuality and independence, freedom to express yourself and not subordinate to the dominant rules and roles. All these things are more or less taken for granted now (even in Russia), so in some sense their works (and lives) represented a portal into the future, a through-the-looking-glass device that allowed them to sneak preview the coming things.

A really interesting phenomena, that works for any true art, I guess (and may also work as a back valuation criteria of ‘how true’ this art was at the moment of its creation.

I wrote earlier, albeit very briefly, that I am working on the presentation for the Russian Union of Designers. Well, yesterday came the day when I had to present what I prepared

The whole idea of this lecture was quite a surprise for me, it emerged after another presentation I gave at the CreArt forum in Brussels in February. There was a member of the Russian Design Association at this event too, Yelena Yurchenko, who later wrote a very good piece about the event.

At some point I learned that I will have to go to opening of my exhibition in Moscow, and will most likely stop in St. Petersburg as well. Then came an invitation for ‘a small meeting with the peers’; then the meeting with the peers was extended to a meeting with peers AND some students (“about 30-40 people“, they said).

Well, at the end it was public lecture (!) announced on all major web-forums (see the picture above which was used as ad banner for the event; it says, in Russian, ‘Design for the Possible Future’). The union even printed the cards for the event, using the pictures from the different projects I sent them, shaped as a letter F (F is for the Future):

The most dramatic part was the venue: the lecture had to happen in the Museum of Communication, a very old historical building one block away from the colossal Isaac Cathedral. I didn’t take the pictures of the hall where the lecture took place, but on their own brochure it looks like that:

It was, I guess, the most pompous hall I’ve ever presented in And – it was freezingly cold there, people had been asked not to take their jackets and coats off during the lecture. Which itself went pretty well, almost four (4!) hours in total, with a lot of questions and discussions after.

Content-wise it was a sheer panorama of the cases of ‘future designs’, or the various projects and programs aimed at exploring possible futures with design, by design, and for design, over 150 slides in total. It started from Poeme electronique of the 1950s and ended with the latest cases from the Next Simplicity and Design Probes; I deliberately limited the scope with the cases only from Philips/Philips design, partly because I know them most, but also because they provide a clear enough framework of analysis of this design genre.

Last weekend I spent in Vanabbe museum, not as a visitor, though, but participating in the symposium on Russian avant-garde. Why in this museum? Why now? Vanabbe historically has a large collection of the Russian modern art, and at this very moment there is a large exposition of the works by El Lissitzky, a prominent Russian artist and designer, on display, so the time x place combo for such a conference can not be better.

The conference, opened by Charles Esche, current head of the museum, gathered a lot of interesting speakers, who presented their slides and speeches over two days, and yet it was a relatively homey event, with a lot of space for debates and discussions. The topics were very diverse, ranging from a pure art criticism, with their endless discussions of the “Tru Meaning of The Black Square”, to a very contemporary and provocative artistic and curatorial projects. I enjoyed many of the talks, and for different reasons. Instead of doing a quick overview of all, I would rather write a separate pieces on the presentations I liked.

I always knew I’ve chosen the best country for a futurologist to live. Where else an ultimate, an uber-cliche futuristic concept of a ‘flying car’ could finally materialize? Only in Holland, the land of inventors and an invented land itself. Dutch design and innovation agency Spark headed by Robert Barnhoorn is ready to launch Pal-V, the first commercial flying car, apparently as soon as the end of this year.

What is shown on the picture is not yet the final version of the design, which is kept in secret until now, but it’s quite a possible scenario for the Netherlands, according to the article published today by Metro (Nederland bouwt vliegende auto, in Dutch). The concept is particularly relevant for the densely populated countries such as Holland itself, but also Germany, the UK, France, although slightly modified versions can be also used in larger countries, such as the US and China.

Fascinating.

I haven’t been to a bookshop for a quite while (or rather, I haven’t been to its ‘book’, otherwise I stop by at the newly opened selexyz‘s book cafe relatively regularly). So I was quite surprised to see so many ‘business games’ there, of all kinds, when I came there yesterday. I don’t recall them having such a variety of games (I counted four) on the shelves in the past.

The ones I saw where not hugely sophisticated games, just simple board games, or card games, but it is interesting to spot this development, of ‘serious games’ becoming more accepted and almost causal in the business context. They weren’t very expensive either, ranging from 25 to 60 euros per game.

At some point I start thinking that Summ()n should develop its own game(s) too; we have plenty of materials for such a thing, a board game about the future. LF Publisher?