Works

Kirill Savchenkovb. 1987 Moscow, Russia.

web:kirillsavchenkov.comcontact: kirill.savchenkov@gmail.com+7 (903) 1013790

Kirill Savchenkov works with various media including performance, installation, video and photogra-phy. His artistic practice appeal to the relations between mediation, learning, education, communi-ties and institutions. When innovative attitudes through “self-improvement”, “life-long learning” contribute to the blurring of work and life, earning and learning, leisure and control. This changes the role of cognition in interactions between human and objects which transforms into relations between knowledge and data when mind is the battlefield.

Selected solo and duo exhibitions 2017 Office of Sensitive Activities \ Applications Group, MMOMA, V-A-C Foundation, Moscow2016 Museum of Skateboarding. Calvert22, London2015 Horizon Community Workshop. Agency of Singular Investigations, CCA Fabrika, Moscow2014 Avalanche. FotoDepartament, Saint-Petersburg2013 Anabasis. Culture center «Vdohnovenie», Moscow2012 The frenzied urge to struggle / w. Sasha Kurmaz. Paperworks gallery, Moscow

Selected group exhibitions2017 First person. Amsterdam2017 Dance, Dance, Dance. BURSA Gallery, The Kyiv International - Kyiv Biennial 2017, Kyiv2017 Between fatigue: towards the new forms of life. Palace of culture for railway workers, Ekaterin-burg2017 4th Ural Industrial Biennial, curator Joao Ribas. Ural Instrument-Making Plant, Ekaterinburg2017 Between fatigue: towards the new forms of life. Palace of culture for railway workers, Ekaterinburg2017 Metageography Space Image Action. Pushkin House, London2017 Space Force Construction. V-A-C Foundation, Venice2017 Hosting the Inhuman. Moscow Museum of Modern Art, V-A-C Foundation, Moscow2017 BoCA - Biennial of Contemporary Arts Porto and Lisbon. Porto, Portugal2017 Inconvenient Questions. Tartmus, Tartu Art Museum, Estonia2017 Toward the Source. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow 2016 Young blood. CCA Winzavod, Moscow2015 Programme «Expanding Space. Artistic practice in the urban environment». V-A-C Foundation, GES-2, Moscow2015 Metageography. The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow2014 Truth-seekers. Victoria gallery, Samara2014 Semiconductors. Stella Art Foundation, Moscow2014 Angelic conversation. Electromuseum, Moscow2014 Parallel Program Manifesta 10. St. Petersburg2014 Look into it. Zamoskvorechie gallery / Grinberg gallery, Moscow2013 Dali. CCI Fabrika, Moscow2013 Stability. Ghosts. Curator- Alexander Evangely. Random Gallery, Moscow,2011 Young photography’11, «Margin». FotoDepartament, St. Petersburg2011 Performing archive. E.K. Artbureau gallery, Moscow2010 Silver camera. Central Exhibition Hall «Maneg», Moscow

Books2015 Atlas, Selfpublish2014 Iceberg, Selfpublish 2011 SPBN – Self Publish, Be Naughty, Self Publish, Be Happy

Selected publications2018 Moscow Art Magazine No. 1032017 ArtReview, may 20172016 Flaneur magazine, issue 6, fall\winter 20162015 British Journal of Photography, february 20152014 Afisha magazine No.3722014 The Guardian, june 20142013 Artchronika magazine, march/april 20132012 Afisha magazine No.3192011 Photo.Art, October 11.2011 Ojodepez, When We Were Young, Editor Bruno Ceschel, Spain Online publications2016 i-D, august 20162016 032c, august 20162015 Svilova, april 2015 (exhibition in artist-run online platform)2014 032c, november 2014 2014 Calvert journal, august 2014 2014 Dazed digital, june 20142014 Afisha mag, june 2014 2014 Calvert journal, may 2014 2014 Calvert journal, april 20142013 Around art, november 20132012 W-O-S, october 20122012 Prism Photo Magazine #03, january 20122011 Satellite voices, april 2011

Education2012 The Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia2009 Moscow Technical University of Communication and Computer science

Awards2014 Shortlist MACK First Book Award2011 «Silver camera». Grand Prize in the nomination «Architecture».

Office of Sensitive Activities / Applications Group. MMOMA and V-A-C Foundation, Moscow, 2017

http://www.v-a-c.ru/exhibition/office-of-sensitive-activitiesapplications-group/

Installation and performace. This project is a study of survival modes in controversial condition which we are living nowadays, in the context of worldwide entropy and the post-human future. The work is ded-icated to exploration of various systems of knowledge and practices through which human cognition interacts with the non-human. What can help us to relate to the new subjectivity, while living with this feeling of the upcoming exclusion, which is much more powerful than the fear of death. One could say that exclusion is the new death in the network centric world.

Talking about survival and alternative ways of living the work features the story of the Big-foot, considering them as a bearer of another kind of social relations. The way we interpret events and decide how to act will increasingly demand changes in logic, and, consequently, a change in the way knowledge is used and the process of education itself. That is why the notion of education is so essential for this project — education that combines different types of practices and regimes of working with information.

The work consists of the massive installation that resembles the CQB training room crossed with library featuring small number of objects that are telling a story of the alternative being. The story of mutation and the narrative is embodied to he format of the work itself — gradually the objects will vanish and replaced by the mediators who will be telling stories about the objects and pieces of installation as they witnessed it.

Curated by Katerina Chuchalina with Maria Kramar

Bene qui latuit, bene vixit

Knowledge Editing Division. V-A-C Foundation, Venice, 2017

https://vimeo.com/230663705/f9576d6ee7

Installation (wood, anodized aluminium, speech prompters, sound, light, plexiglas, sofa, LED screen, and media player, font Helvetica for Theranos). In Kirill Savchenkov’s view, the avantgarde operated in a contradiction whereby the socialist state was to emancipate individuals (including artists) through a program of com-prehensive reeducation that it nevertheless tightly controlled. A comparable paradox obtains today, when globalization signifies at once open access for individuals to information through a digital network that is opaquely managed and all-powerful. The interaction between humans and objects, as well as the interchange between data and knowledge, constitutes a social sphere operating under a threatening shift in cognitive behavior that Savchenkov finds analogous to the shift effected in Soviet times. He has installed an edu-cation course in a multimedia play-station based on what he identifies as Soviet avantgarde practices. A fictional organization, Horizon Community, founded by a time traveler named John Titor, synthesizes data obtained through the course to facilitate metacognitive research on time, hominology (the study of wild bipedal primates), and survival tactics in this shift-ing ecosystem.

Space Force ConstructionCurated by Matthew Witkovsky and Katerina Chuchalina, with Anna Ilchenko

Horizon Community Memorial Center. Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2017

https://vimeo.com/208045631

Performance, navigation system, glass stellas. For this exhibition, the Horizon Community organisation has created five navigational objects and prepared a group of mediators, as part of a Memorial center dedicated to the ab-stract theory of ‘’the Elsewhere’’ while also constituting a navigation system for locating the Elsewhere, a concept developed by Alexei Yurchak in his groundbreaking book, ‘’Everything Was Forever, Until It Was No More’’ (2006).

While undertaking research in Garage Archive, Horizon Community connected Yur-chak’s theory of the Elsewhere to a metaphor found in the recorded conversations between Moscow conceptualists Andrei Monastyrsky and Joseph Backstein. In these they discussed how being an artist in the Soviet times was a way to hide from the external unresolvable par-adoxes of the everyday life of that era: In this way, their work was detached from the context they were working in, because they felt they belonged somewhere else. Hence the Horizon Community memorial is dedicated to the practice of existing the Elsewhere, with visitors guided by two invigilators from the Horizon Community who have been trained to elucidate on the Horizon Community practice.

Toward the SourceCurated by Kate Fowle, Garage Chief Curator, in collaboration with Sasha Obukhova, Garage Archive Curator.

Horizon Community Workshop. Agency of Singular Investigations (ASI), CCA Fabrika, 2015

https://vimeo.com/156475730

Performance, installation. Savchenkov is interested in the lesser known aspects of this emerging before our eyes reality: corporate ethics and the ‘new spirit of capitalism’ as sources of models and cognitive schemes for various systems of knowledge and activities, from cosmology to the martial arts and from the esoteric teachings to the methods of navigation in urban environments of the near future.

Kirill Savchenkov’s work is difficult to define using conventional formats; it has traits of socio-cultural research and performance, of installation and discussion platform. Be that as it may, the key artistic tool of Savchenkov is the live speech, or the language in action. Word-as-event it his practice becomes both the tool and the material for the construction of situations, for creating a special aura of ‘f lickering presence’ of the abstract in the factual, of the ephemeral in the global, of the irrational in the quotidian.

Horizon Community is an organization founded by time-traveler John Titor. The general idea of this community finds relevant system of surviving.

The project includes a series of thematic meetings that Kirill Savchenkov will conduct in the space of ASI throughout the month. The number of participants in each session is limited.

ASI

CALENDAR OF SESSIONS

OBSERVATION #the third-party witness #cryptography of traces #cultural wars #directory of institute of sand #mental traps #interpretation of movements

December 12 (Saturday)December 17 (Thursday)

ORIENTATION #consealment #biological tools #agamben #yeti #illegal intelligence #man named thursday

December 19 (Saturday)December 24 (Thursday)

DECISION#simultaneity #ooda loop #mental models #games & play #new cultural story #proximity fight #making decisions #black shark

December 26 (Saturday)January 5 (Tuesday)

ACTION #bridging loops #new discipline #spiral #network-centric war #burning bridges #special group kaskad#the crisis as an opportunity #aikido #overcoming failure

January 7 (Thursday)January 9 (Saturday)

The number of participants in each session is limited. You can register at info@asi.moscow. Please specify the date, time and name of the participant. During the sessions the space will be closed for the public.

Museum of Skateboarding. Calvert22, London, 2016 / Programme «Expanding Space. Artistic practice in the urban environment». GES-2, V-A-C Foundation, Moscow, 2015 https://vimeo.com/179098920https://vimeo.com/172086753https://vimeo.com/169368959

«For Kirill Savchenkov, skateboarding is the method to understand the human body, mem-ory and consciousness on the one hand and the peculiar landscape of city space. An architec-tural project gets an unexpected interpretation through sport and related practices.

The project is a collection of photo and video materials, artifacts and research results looking into skateboarding as a unique method of studying the city and space.

In the course of a separate study, the overlapping points between skateboarding and the other areas of human activity (military arts, political science fitness, martial arts) and men-tal practices are brought to light. Also studied is the secret language of skateboarding - there are objects in the city environment whose purpose can only be understood trough skate-boarding practices.

The exhibition presents a video projection, demonstrating the skateboardist’s perspective of urban space and a module of crossfit implements with installation components inside: a replica of a perfect skating spot, a promo video of skateboarding practice, metallic and plexiglass boards with artist’s drawings, studyguide and skateboard tracks on the wall.»

2016. Mixed media. Metal, two-channel video, carpet. 80х120х280cm. Calvert22.

2016. Mixed media. Metal, projection, oracal, manual 11х17cm. Calvert22. 2016. Mixed media, mirror acrylic plexiglass. 144х244cm. Calvert22.

2016. Mixed media. Metal, asphalt, concrete, marble, carpet. 100х170х80cm. Calvert22.

2015. Single channel, fullHD video. 2:32 min. Calvert22.

2015. Manual. Digital printing, offset paper. 11х17cm, 48 pages. Edition 750.

ECHO, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 2015

Full HD video, 12:42 min. The author investigates the process of construction of the identity in the context oflandscape of the postsoviet city. Such landscape is similar to the ruin of the idea, which gives a rise to the soviet project – today this ruin combines the footprints of soviet project and the fragments of contemporary capitalism of images. It’s not surprising that metageography became the most adequate practice of understanding such complicated space. The video is the screen version of the selfpublished artist book Iceberg. There are three main narratives mixed in the book – each one is the form of perception of the reality and relations with memory of the protagonist. One of the narratives is a fantastic story about the colonization of alternatives worlds, the next one is some memories of protagonist’s childhood, and the last one is the dialogue extracted from the Mad Men series. There is a interlacement of the inner and outer, experience and knowledge of everyday life. The ability to divide the unreal-ity and reality of the protagonist. Such tension is inherent to the world system of images and meaning, formulated in postsoviet space.

AVALANCHE, 2014 https://vimeo.com/213426879/f98b7101cb

FullHD video, 19:19 min

Nowadays conflicts coming about such concepts as values, foundation and religious identity could be called cultural wars. The cultural meaning of images and symbols is underlined by war’s hybrid character - compilation of conventional warfare, irregular warfare and cyber-warfare. In this context the desire of the stratas to fight for its identification sovereignty became an engine of the conflict. Violence within it sharpens the problem of give and receiv-ing information till the insolubility; everybody is a victim and a torturer, and the difference between then and now are vanished. Such conflicts filled the everyday relations outside the wars, the instauration of reality chasing the truth became a meaning for many people. And survival inside this became crucial.

This work is a commentary to the events of the spring of 2014 in Crimea. Within this cul-tural conflict, subcultural formations quickly merged into urban guerrilla, and barricades were lied through our relationships and identity. Back then, just returned from Crimea I’d immediately dived in the information f low, and my friends, who lived there, had become it’s part. This became our apocalypse. Unlike the cliche of the end of the world, this was a non-material catastrophe - impossible turn. What used to be a foundation was ruining online. It’s similar to a confusion before the irreversible event, watching one you can stop asking yourself: “is it for real or just an imitation?”

video: gurzuf.me, commercial film about Jaguar energy drink, news, documentary film about Canadian special forces, Lakai skate video, Adventure time, Rick and Morty.

music:M.I.A. - Paper planes (acoustic remix)M.I.A. - Paper planes

2016. Single-channel fullHD video, glow sticks. Young blood, CCA Winzavod.