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DESCEND INTO HELL. Cults, Prophets, Images, April
2001
Zakharov Vadim
APRIL 24-28, 2001
Vadim Zakharov's noncommercial project is supposed to be held within the framework of the International Contemporary Art Fair ART-Moscow.
There are four monitors at the entrance of the hall. Two of them are before the entrance and another two monitors are inside the hall, «behind» the entrance. On each monitor there are four heads of different «prophets» of four real sects presented as guards. At the same time the video sequence is given in a reduced form and in virtual time. The audio sequence is presented in a reduced form as well, i.e. the viewer can hear every «prophet» but cannot understand him because he is in the real time, not in virtual.
Opposite the entrance on the wall there is a big screen where the images of the «prophets» surrounded by their sects’ members are being projected via the projector fixed in the middle of the hall under the ceiling. The action takes place in real time. The viewer can listen to the voices of the «prophets» with the help of the only pair of the CD player’s ear-phones fixed on the screen. He can listen to these texts in Russia, English, and also in four dead languages.
The artist works in a few genres. His sphere of activity is graphics, painting, media.
By the time of this exhibition the artist has created his own reality filled with the meaning, which cannot be compared with the quasi-meaningful layers of the everyday reality. However, the idea of virtual realities has lost its importance nowadays, the importance of events. Today the artists have to solve the problem they had created themselves – the problem of culture derealization, and each artist has to solve this problem on his own.
The project suggested by Vadim Zakharov can be considered as one of the attempts to solve the aforesaid problem.
Unlike his former works, this project of the artist has got a social character. Its main idea can be defined as a game between the real and the virtual, the dead and the live, between understanding and misunderstanding – the game, which is being realized in the imagination of the artist and the viewer.
video 1: 28 Kbps. fragment; 128 Kbps. fragment; 256 Kbps. fragment
video 2: 28 Kbps. fragment; 128 Kbps. fragment; 256 Kbps. fragment
The site has been created with the assistance of the "Open Society Institute" (Soros Foundation). Russia
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