“Beneath Depth, Beyond Surface: In the Screen Space” is a joint project of the Art & Science Center of ITMO University and the Radio House. The impetus for the study of screens was the theme of electricity, which unites the educational projects of the Radio House in 2024. The screen simultaneously resists the development of electronics, preserving its technological primitiveness in the form of a white sheet or a wooden wall, and succumbs to continuous improvement: it acquires sensitivity, bends, refines, becomes brighter and more sensitive.
At almost every exhibition of contemporary art the viewer sees screens, but most often they fulfill a technical role, merge with the gallery space and are not of interest to the artists themselves. “Beneath Depth, Beyond Surface: In the Screen Space” proposes to shift the focus and see the screen as a curious and complex material, to recognize its agency, power, and multiplicity.
As a technical and artistic object, the screen raises questions about the dialectics of the visible and invisible, the boundaries of the image. Its materiality prompts reflection on the resources needed for its production and its relationship to different parts of the body, from skin to ear. Screens shape our everyday life, organizing work and leisure, storing memories and data, broadcasting news, and connecting us with loved ones.
Screens began to enter artistic practice in the 1960s. Nam June Paik dissected televisions, replacing news images with abstract forms. He created total installations and unexpected objects out of TV sets: a bra, a cello. Peter Weibel used his body as a screen for projection. Screens continue to be a medium and a field for experimentation in contemporary art and cinema, the line between which is blurred. Directors turn interfaces into spaces for organizing material, creating feature films and video essays in the setting of folders, files and messengers.
Research interest in screens has become more pronounced at the beginning of the 21st century: Lev Manovich calls modern society a “screen society” and sees the screen primarily as a means of access to information, activating a special relationship between the image and the viewer. The media archaeologist Erkki Huhtamo proposes the creation of a new field of research — screenology — to study screens in parallel with the practices of their use and their impact on culture and media. Ann Friedberg traces the long historical relationship between windows and screens, from the medieval pictorial concept of the “open window” to the windows on the laptop desktop.
The exhibition presents the works of the participants of the laboratory under the same title, which took place in July 2024. The artists explore atypical forms of screens, endow them with volume and depth, create alternative screen objects themselves, combine digital and analog practices, and reflect on the data stored in screens. Alla Mezentseva and the team of artists of the _POTOK_ project explore natural sources of reflection and image, the fluid nature of screens. Polina Enuvesta suggests thinking about the adhesion of the screen to the body and directly engages the skin of the exhibition visitors. Tanya Akhmetgalieva invites us to look deep into the screen and turn it inside out, while Viktor Kertanov, on the contrary, works with the surface and experiments with its endless slipping away from the gaze. Dariella's project manifests the non-obvious connections between the natural and the technological. Inside Vika Ryskina's media installation, the viewer's gaze is trapped in a screen portal between inside and outside. The unbreakable connection between the screen and visual arts is dissolved in Danil Repin's project, the central element of which becomes sound. Nastya Verzhbitskaya dissects screens down to their elementary parts, exposing the material and ideological practices that underlie them.
In the exhibition, the screen shrinks and expands. Its materiality is accentuated, while its ephemerality and boundlessness become a technique. This contradiction is connected to the very nature of the screen as a surface that manifests the image. Usually in the shadow of practical application, screens interrupt the silence and reactualize their presence before our gaze.
Project Team:
Elizaveta Menis, Director of the Art & Science Center
Katerina Ustinova, producer
Arina Belyanina, coordinator
Mila Lutsyk, design and layout
Grigory Rybakov, poster design
PR and SMM:
Ilya Grigoriev, Angelina Pilipchuk, Ekaterina Yudaeva
Technical team:
Alexey Bondarenko, technical director of Radio House
Alexey Feskov, Technical Director of Art & Science Center
Ekaterina Astrakhantseva, Head of Production Department of Radio House
Artists:
Kirill Arkhipov,
Tanya Akhmetgalieva,
Anastasia Balueva,
Nastya Verzhbitskaya,
Viktor Kertanov,
Irina Korotkaya,
Artyom Mamontov,
Alla Mezentseva,
Danil Repin,
Daria Statsenko,
Polina Enuvesta,
Dariella
