Olga Bozhko,Russky Zhurnal (Russian Magazine), 23.06.1999
      Eurovideoart Spezial in Moscow

“TV Gallery” is the key Moscow venue for video art. This winter the French showed their experiments on memory installation (exhibition “Total Recall”). Nam June Paik, this American Buddha of video art, appeared in spring. The Germans, not feeling any confusion about historical memory, occupied the gallery in June.
On the last screening day German curators saw the program of Russian artists working in pretty free genres – cold “Blue Soup” (Daneel Lebedev and Alexei Dobrov), provocative AES, somber Aristarkh Chernyshov, Lena Kovilina rushing hysterically in the future (“Not Everyone Allowed in the Future” – this was the article by Ilya Kabakov); bright projects by Andrei Silvestrov, “Bruner’$ Trial” by Dmitry Troitsky and Olga Stolpovskaya, dabloids’ creator Leonid Tishkov… And there were after each film discussions.
Flashing of saturated shots and rumble; feeling of emptiness and silence, “nothing” is there on the screen. Minimalism is a distinct tendency of contemporary video art. Clear concept, proper embodiment, well selected techniques, minimum time required, sound and image at one.
“Video art, computers, Internet and interactivity become more and more attractive in contemporary art”, remarks the art critic Eleanor Heartney from the legendary American magazine “Art in America”, who has recently visited Moscow. The Americans worship Nam June Paik, the Guru of video art, with his search on the verge of technology and desperation, the French worship the phantasms of childhood and memory, while the Germans worship no one, they do recall something still.