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Maxim Zhestkov

Elements
Elements is an experimental art film by Maxim Zhestkov about nature, physics, art and love. More than 2 billion elements / particles governed by tensions and forces of nature were used to tell stories and show emotions through the motion of collective behavior.
The film is a trial to explore the idea that everything around us and inside us is made from simple elements / blocks which can be arranged in complex relationships and become compound structures. We could project this idea into emotions, behaviours, thought processes, relationships, life, planets and the 23.

Roman Ermakov

Роман Ермаков
live sculpture

Our perception — the only true reality. Creation as a feeling that generates the image, expressed in the form. Beauty manifesto calling to go beyond that limit imagination. The aesthetics of art can not be reduced to a clear set of building blocks with which you can strengthen or weaken the perception of contrast. Beauty should not be subjected to analysis, that is communication and the call to participate in the transformation of the emotional to the visible.The process of creating — is the alignment of the mosaic, many repetitions of simple and pure elements, which form a collection, harmonious in its incompleteness.

Alex Ekman

COW

Ekman talents extend to the lighting and stage design and his eye for structuring an environment is unerring. There is no set as such, excepting the plaster cow which dangles overhead, but the stage surface has its share of movement as little island-blocks rise up and pits sink down. The extreme tilting of the stage at one point causes unfortunate Bauch to roll, cow-like, almost into the pit. COW has its iconic Ekman moment in the scene that opens on a stage full of swirling dancers in white skirts set in a magical silvery mist. Mikael Karlsson, whose music partners the piece provides a subtle and evocative soundscape. He offers a hint of percussive rhythm picked up by the dancers who launch into an ecstatic dance: a stage full of whirling dervishes, until they collapse exhausted.

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Ekmans Talente erstrecken sich auf die Beleuchtung und das Bühnenbild, und sein Auge für die Strukturierung einer Umgebung ist unfehlbar. Es gibt kein Set als solches, außer der Gipskuh, die über ihnen baumelt, aber die Bühnenoberfläche hat ihren Anteil an Bewegung, wenn kleine Inselblöcke aufsteigen und Gruben sinken. Das extreme Kippen der Bühne an einer Stelle führt dazu, dass der unglückliche Bauch kuhartig fast in die Grube rollt. COW hat seinen legendären Ekman-Moment in der Szene, die auf einer Bühne voller wirbelnder Tänzer in weißen Röcken in einem magischen silbernen Nebel beginnt. Mikael Karlsson, dessen Musikpartner das Stück ist, bietet eine subtile und eindrucksvolle Klanglandschaft. Er bietet einen Hauch von perkussivem Rhythmus, der von den Tänzern aufgenommen wurde, die einen ekstatischen Tanz beginnen: eine Bühne voller wirbelnder Derwische, bis sie erschöpft zusammenbrechen.

 

Thomas Hirschhorn

توماس هيرشهورن
托马斯·赫塞豪恩
תומס הירשהורן
トーマス·ヒルシュホルン
abschlag

Thomas Hirschhorn’s “Abschlag” installation, which occupies the first room on the main floor, offers a lesson in how not to engage with the Russian milieu: the Swiss artist constructed part of a typical Petersburg apartment block out of cardboard inside the full-height space, ripped off its façade, and deposited the refuse at its base, revealing shabby interiors lined with original avant-garde masterpieces (on loan from the nearby Russian Museum) by the likes of Malevich and El Lissitky. The references allude to a politically radical Russian past; the construction debris acts as a metaphor for history. Though Hirschhorn suggests a recovery of the revolutionary communist spirit of the 1920s, he falls prey to a historically revisionist fetish: citing the Russian avant-garde as a generative point for vanguard culture in the West, and offering it as a source for renewed progressivism in Russia. Hirschhorn seems woefully unaware of the Putin government’s branding campaign, one that aims to sell the Russian avant-guard as a nationalist movement in line with the regime’s own values (perhaps he didn’t watch the Sochi opening ceremony). Hirschhorn ultimately proves Zhilayev right — with its political pretenses, “Abschlag” aspires to make a grand gesture against conservatism, but fails because its critique has already been co-opted..
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STERLING RUBY

Gespenst
Sterling Rubys fluoreszierender orangefarbener Monolith SPECTER erscheint als Erscheinung in der Wüste. Die brillante geometrische Skulptur erzeugt eine erschütternde optische Täuschung, die einem Photoshopping-Komposit oder einer Collage ähnelt, als ob etwas aus der Landschaft entfernt oder gelöscht worden wäre. Der Block fungiert als Chiffre oder Ersatz und ahmt nach, wie er aussehen könnte: ein Schiffscontainer, ein Militärbunker, ein unbekanntes Objekt, ein verlassenes Zuhause. Fluoreszierendes Orange wird traditionell aus Sicherheitsgründen als Warnung verwendet. Hier ist diese Logik umgekehrt: ein gespenstisches Objekt, das aus der natürlichen Umgebung entfernt und in der Öffentlichkeit verborgen ist.

Roman Ermakov

Alchemy 3

Our perception — the only true reality. Creation as a feeling that generates the image, expressed in the form. Beauty manifesto calling to go beyond that limit imagination. The aesthetics of art can not be reduced to a clear set of building blocks with which you can strengthen or weaken the perception of contrast. Beauty should not be subjected to analysis, that is communication and the call to participate in the transformation of the emotional to the visible.

Ying Yu

airmorphologies

Humans, as social beings, use language to communicate. The human voice, as a biometric authentication mechanism, is constantly used throughout daily life applications, such as speech recognition, speaker verification, and so on. Currently, language-based communications mainly fall into two categories: voice over air, and voice over internet protocol. Can we add a new dimension for voice communication such as a wearable material? If so, how could we shape matter in order to physicalize vocal information?

airMorphologiesis an interactive installation that uses soft materials, such as silicon, fabric, and air, to realize these physicalizations. The human voice controls the actuation of a soft wearable structure, changing the appearance of the human body.

Jacob Taekker

Apophenia Cloud Travel Apparatus
“…a visitor must first gear up in a simple uniform of gray booties, lab coat and adjust a safety-helmet-type harness to their head. This harness supports a grey rectangle of plastic positioned directly in front of one’s face, leaving only the periphery vision for navigation. My first assumption was that this blockage was somehow supposed to simulate an unusual visual disability. However, upon entering the designated darkened room, my ‘screen,’ caught the projection of a giant eye, which filled my vision like some early surrealist film.” Sarrita Hunn

Renzo Piano

The New Pathe Foundation Headquarters
Renzo Piano Building Workshop designed the organic creature” in the courtyard of a 19th-century block to house the new headquarters of the Fondation Jérôme Seydoux-Pathé – dedicated to preserving the history of French film company Pathé and promoting cinematography.
The egg-shaped form connects to the surrounding Haussmann-era buildings at four points. Its form curves away from the existing buildings and its top peeks over the roofline.

Studio Drift

L’Orfeo.
Dutch National Touring Opera’s production of L’Orfeo.
Artist Lonneke Gordijn, together with director Monique Wagenmakers and choreographer Nanine Linning, created a new interpretation of L’Orfeo.
The kinetic sculpture EGO, specially developed for LOrfeo, is a handwoven block controlled by algorithms and motors. The block has the ability to shift its shape and state, embodying Orfeo’s perspectives and thoughts. The oldest opera combined with modern cutting edge technology.

NPS TCHOBAN VOSS

nhow hotel berlin
Extreme cantilever alert! A four-storey block with a mirrored underside juts out from the top of a Berlin hotel, 25 metres above the ground (photos by Roland Halbe). The huge cantilever comprises the upper floors of the eleven-storey NHow Hotel, which was designed by German architects NPS Tchoban Voss. The end of the cantilever is fully glazed whilst the underside is clad in polished aluminium, creating a mirror that reflects the hotel roof below. Part of the NHow chain, the 310-room hotel contains music facilities that include a ballroom and a sound studio.

Aranda\Lasch

阿兰达\拉希
アランダ\ラッシュ
Primitives

Primitives is an installation that combines the romantic tradition of ruined landscapes with modular fractals. First realized across the entry of the Venice Biennale in 2010, it is comprised of loosely dispersed furniture elements that appear like rock piles, each one unique but formed from the same universal building block. Like microcosms in the distance, the clusters are imagined as islands falling apart and building back up, organizing and eroding at once.