Moscow: The Topology of Art

The Stanislavsky Electrotheatre, jointly with the Moscow: A Place of Art project, introduces a lecture cycle titled Moscow: The Topology of Art, devoted to contemporary problems of contemporary art.

Moscow: The Topology of Art
Using a map of Moscow exhibits, and considering the peculiarities of its formation, the Place of Art group (Amal Avdezdzhanova, Viktoria Belonenko, Maria Buneeva, Maria Korchagina, Tatyana Mironova, Kristina Pestova, and Natalya Smolyanskaya) will discuss the systemic problems faced by the contemporary art world. At each meeting participants and invited speakers will discuss specific locations - places of art - the relations they have formed, and their exhibit policy.

The purpose of these meetings is to establish an open discussion among artists, curators, and organizers at exhibit sites about the geography of contemporary art and the dynamics of the changes that have occurred in Moscow since 1986. The group proposes to take as a starting point the year when the 17th Youth Exhibition took place, which for the first time presented Soviet underground artists alongside artists already known to the public.

Meeting 4
A Conversation about Galleries

Today we still have as few galleries as we did at the beginning of the development of the contemporary art scene in Moscow during the Perestroika era. Exhibits demonstrating the role of the first galleries in the history of the development of contemporary art in Moscow do not clarify the overall picture. They only seize on a fragment of history, failing to analyze the development of these "places of art.” Why have galleries not developed? What can the dynamics of the development of galleries tell us?

Participants: representatives of Fragment gallery, RuArts gallery, and Triumph gallery