Italian version
. book+dvdedited by Tatiana Goryucheva e Erik Kluitenberg Debates & Credits, Media / Art / Public Domain
<book+dvd> De Balie
ISBN 90-6617-298-3
The concept of public space in a city, even if originally intended as a physical place for debate and confrontation, has undergone a radical transformation during the years, and now fully contains all the immaterial production of the media. This multifaceted project by some russian artists, sponsored by the De Balie center in Holland, succeeds in producing an articulated discussion of life in these public spaces through media incursions which challenge many of the conventions we take for granted in urban territories. One of the most interesting aspects of their actions is that they have opened media windows on reality, grafting projections, wall paintings made with pixel-bricks, tags and sounds in the life tissue of crowded places. The performances staged in Russia, particularly, cast a light on the mutations a twisted nation has undergone during the last twenty years, and highlights the forwards accelerations and the backwards pulls towards a frozen cultural and social past, hardly explainable by a traditional analysis. Inside these contexts, street interaction and the rips that digital alphabets open up in daily life can interact perfectly, giving us a vision both innovating, in that it makes a contradictory media reality blossom, and historical, in that it bring our attention back to the public spaces, against the morbid trend of intrusion in private spaces, so practiced by the entertainment multinationals. Finally, a word of praise for the excellent graphics, which reproduce the cyclostyled samizdats, reflecting the dame spirit of reappropriation of reality and media.