All exhibitions
Test Group
Graduation show of The Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia
June 23 - July 10, 2018
Rating: 18+
Curator: Kirill Preobrajensky
In late capitalism, testing is a common way to improve quality of life. All the things we use today, and will use tomorrow, can be upgraded. To make systems better, we give our data over to developers who carefully collect and analyze it. The beta-version state becomes natural for contemporary systems. Where there used to be objects, today we see processes, links, and connections. Ideas of hierarchy and deep structures are replaced with the idea of networks, and networks are becoming more homogeneous and horizontal.
As a result, virtually all user experience shifts into test mode: corporations invest vast amounts of resources into research in order to enhance our purchasing power. The space of interaction between human and non-human agents turns into a massive open laboratory in which everyone is simultaneously tested, and themselves tests, new images, models and algorithms.
A test group is a social unit selected for an experiment, one which is becoming increasingly dispersed, illusory, and transparent, and whose subject is growing more and more elusive. If the world today is not a world of information, but a world of experience, then how fundamental to our being is this "test" mode of existence, and how does this idea affect various artistic practices? Is it possible to say that artists are testing their models in search of temporary autonomous zones of aesthetic and social action, or, without realizing it, are themselves becoming part of someone else's testing practice?
Eugenia Suslova
Artists:
Natalia Alfutova, Elizaveta Karamanova, Ekaterina Karamazova, Daria Barybina, Pavel Bukreev, Galla Guintovt, Gediminas Daugela, Andrey Isakin, Sergey Kazakov, Natasha Kononova, Aleksander Kutovoi, Galina Leonova, DeadJPEG, Anya Marchenkova, Almema, Albina Mokhryakova, Anvar Mussirepov, Ekaterina Popovich, Anna Rotaenko, Kirill Saveliev, Evgeniya Suslova, Nikolay Smirnov, Alyosha Smolyannikov, Alisa Smorodina, Dmitry Starusev, Egor Fedorichev, Egor Tsvetkov, Alyona Shapovalova.
