THERE WERE NO 90S
2002

Martynova Aliona, Emperor VAVA

Exhibition and performance opening – April 25

The concept: the performance and the exhibition are all-sufficient but at the same time from the ideological and visual viewpoint they are connected with the two former performances of the authors ("60 Minute of Silence" and "60 Minutes of Silence 2"), running in November-December 2001 when the artists were standing opposite each other in silence within 60 minutes.

TV Gallery proved to be the right place for the performance and the exhibition because it actively works with mass-media and video and also because this is the only art institution which keeps functioning at the present time and in this very space.

Two characters sitting in front of the monitor, can be identified as two authors and at the same time as two passers-by who "just happened to hear something about this place" (as it was during the former performances, the characters are wearing dark glasses). A collective body of these characters begins "discussions" with the main theme announced on the screen (there happened to be Contemporary Art Center here in the 90s): we can see ruins, stares, rooms, broken walls and windows, snowdrifts and desolation, i.e. we see that there is nothing here now. Flickering phantoms cannot be the evidence of the authenticity of events, which were supposed to happen here. In order to make the experiment in a proper way they make a test run of all materials with the help of computer (to get possible evidences of any visual evidences of what had taken place here?). But what we see, it just says: there are no signs of the 90s. Maybe, they were never there?!

Aliona Martynova            

The site has been created with the assistance of the "Open Society Institute" (Soros Foundation). Russia