During the night between May, 7^th and 8^th a part of the multimedia installation «Construction Side Board» by Anton Sarokin and Alaksiej Navumčyk presented within the project «OFFSIDE» became a victim of vandalism.

Unknown author(s) aggressively «refined» one of the elements of the installation, displayed on the fence outside the gallery. The further fate of the body of work, unfortunately, was resolved without the curators and artists participation: due to the May 9^th holidays people in charge of «cleanliness and order in the city” took the work because of its provocative nature.

Valancina Kisialova (the project curator): 

«In my opinion, it is an act of vandalism. The work is signed, it has someone’s logo or signature, and hence there is a claim to authorship. The original message of the work is completely lost, now it brings forward a very different idea having nothing to do with Anton and Alaksiej’s original intention. Of course, now together with the artists we need to think about what can be done to give the work back its original authorship».

Таnia Arcimovič (the project curator):

«On the one hand, this evolvement of the events was predictable, because if an artist displays his/her work outside the „white cube“, that is taking it into public space, one should be ready to engage into the dialogue with the environment. The space begins to interact with the work, which is becoming a distinctive feature, a specific test of the public space. So this is what happened in our case, which, in my opinion, is actually a success for the artists. Their work received feedback.

On the other hand, it is not just an act of vandalism. As Valancina noted, a signature has been added, and it means that unknown person/people also lay(s) claim to the authorship. That is already more than just the reaction of the public space to the artistic act. This is a claim for art.

It is a pity that the work could not be saved (there were a few ideas about how it can be modified). But the fact of its „disappearance“ is also a prominent characteristic of our public space».

Anton Sarokin (one of the installation authors):

«On the one hand, we did expect something to happen to our objects located outside the gallery. But we thought that ice might be more likely to suffer or tags on the green grid might appear. That is we did not expect exactly that sort of the actions to take place and thus we do not perceive them very positively. A new interpretation appeared, which took up much more space than the work itself, than what was originally formulated by us. The new idea is absolutely understandable, but it is radically different from what we had intended to say. It is interesting to observe the reaction of people. How will they interact with the work now? Will they understand that this meaning was added after the work was created, will they see it as a separate independent act?»

Multimedia installation «Construction Side Board» was created specifically for the project «OFFSIDE» and consisted of two parts — inside and outside the gallery space.

CHRONICLE

26.05.2014

26.05.2014

26.05.2014

26.05.2014

1.05.2014

8.01.2014

 More about the project HERE