Ksenia Fedorova: Media Art in Russia

The lecture will address some of the key tendencies in the development of media art in Russia taken in the context of the country's cultural history. A quest for new utopia, special quality of mind and body interconnection, "sotz-art" and conceptualist project to break through ideological constructions (and constrictions) enacted itself in net and software art of the 1990s and early 2000s, leading to contemporary "populist"/ critical position of Electroboutique, re- und depolitization of art media technologies, as well as their purely aesthetic explorations. Among the featured artists: Alexey Shulgin, Aristarch Chernyshev, Andrey Smirnov, Dmitry Bulatov, Olga Kisseleva, Provmyza, Dmitry Kavarga, Blue Soup, Ilya Trushevsky, Masha Sha, and others. A brief account of the institutional infrastructure and an overview of the main festivals and exhibitions, including video showcases, will also be presented.

The russian curator Ksenia Fedorova holds a RAVE scholarship at the ZKM | Media Museum.