summ( )n

This is already famous installation called 3G International, by the Russian art group Electroboutique (Aristarkh Chernyshev, Alexei Shulgin in collaboration with Roman Minaev). It was a part of the Futurologia exhibition in the Russian center of contemporary art Garage in Moscow (I’ve see it there last year, but was not able to take a picture, so this one is not mine).

It is an allusion to another famous project, the Tatlin’s Tower, or the Monument to the Third International, designed by Russian architect Vladimir Tatlin (but it can also be read as a cleaver mockery of the ongoing efforts of the Russian leaders to somehow bend the technologies and subordinate them to their ever utopian ideas).

These things are here for different reasons, however. To all my surprise, the themes of ‘Russia’ and ‘future’ are increasingly often intersect with the path of Summ()n. The ‘future’ part per se is not such a news, Summ()n is all about the future(s), but I didn’t expect such an interest to what we do from various Russian companies and organizations. In fact, not only Russian – some of the companies here in Europe asked us to help them in exploring possible future developments of different areas in Russia.

Being a bit too busy with the ‘now’ part (we run a couple of large projects at the moment with more traditional ‘people research’ approach), I don’t always have a moment to write about these interesting and exciting opportunities and should really start doing it more often.