Project “Tomorrow. Art in the Imaginary Future”

Moscow City Department of Culture
Manege Association

Special section of the 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, 2015. With support from the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation. Joint project with the Art Caucasus non-profit foundation for culture, art and architecture, and the North Caucasian branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art

Curators: Rostan Tavasiev, Sasha Burkhanova, Galina Tebieva

Research coordinator: Yana Nikulenko

Private view – 25 September, 19.00

“Tomorrow. Art in the Imaginary Future” is the title of an experimental project of curator Rostan Tavasiev which he has carried out together with young artists. The exhibition will feature ideas of artworks designed by the artists for the imaginary future reflected in science fiction. A series of frescoes on the walls of the exhibition room will represent the imaginary history of art dating from the year 2020 through to 143029.

Science fiction creates an image of the future world and is also believed to influence the progress of the present. At the same time, art of the future is almost never addressed neither in books nor in movies.

Spaceships, cities and incredible technologies of the future have been described in books in full detail and visualized by filmmakers. Meanwhile, the visual arts look dim through the fog of the imaginary future. The question is: Will there be visual arts at all in the future as imagined by mankind?

Science fiction has influenced the development of human civilization, increasing the pace of technological advances powered by the inventive minds of the authors. Could the visual arts, if visualized in science fiction, get a fresh impulse for development?
The program called “Tomorrow. The Visual Arts in the Imaginary Future”, which was first launched on the Internet as a tool to attract and select interesting ideas and later transformed into a real-time workshop, allows the artists themselves to take care of their own future.

The program was successfully tried in Vladikavkaz in the autumn of 2014 when fifteen young artists participating in the Third Forum of Young Artists of the North Caucasus “Art Caucasus Next” held with the assistance of the North Caucasian branch of the National Center for Contemporary Art devised for the first time ideas of artworks for the imaginary future. In the beginning of 2015, the program was joined by young artists, students of the Institute of Contemporary Art, the Rodchenko Art School, the BAZA Institute and the Independent Studios of the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art.

The exposition at the Worker and Kolkhoz Woman will showcase the results of the artists’ work under the program as well as pieces by their peers from other countries who have been also exploring models of the “imaginary future”.
The achievements of the program and ideas proposed by the artists are laid out at the program website.

Media accreditation:
Manege Museum and Exhibition Association | +7 (495) 645 92 76 | pr.manege@gmail.com
Head of PR Office Elena Karneeva | e.karneeva@moscowmanege.ru, +7 (926) 576-40-53

16+