The Energy of Error
curator: Anna Zaitsa Multimedia Art Museum 2019
In this project Igor Aeroplane interprets the image of a modern man through his emotional fragility, showing his vulnerability within a giant digital space. The screen culture dictates new rules of the game and interpersonal algorithms: social networks and a variety of chat rooms have replaced «living» human communication, tones have replaced emoji, and faces have been replaced by masks in apps with which users exchange photos and videos.
And, of course, the new reality requires a new visual language. Igor Aeroplane’s objects refer to the «form content» as the screen screen of the artist’s phone, which includes playlists, news, communications in Massengers, self-portraits from masks, and social media posts, all of which seemed to be very important. The author shows how a screen shot can become a sort of «decision moment» — a new form, a new genre in the photograph.
The installation of fabrics and other light materials, on which the daily content of the artist’s smartphone, in the form of screen shots, symbolizes the ephemerality of a digital space that has no physical parameters, yet each of us «makes himself virtual clothes».
Unlike the tradition of postmodernism, which conceals the character of the artist behind a set of quotations, Igor’s «Energy of Error» project is as personal as possible. In the title of the exhibition, the artist reveals the essence of his creative method: «The error of imperfectness personalizes the experience and thus makes it interesting. All of my answers are personalized, and I draw my daily experience as the main point of support in the creation of my work… by describing my reaction, I describe the very time in which I live and find myself involved in global processes.»
The exhibition is essentially an artist’s diary that is deployed in space. On his pages of scrinshots, by including his friends and viewers in the discussion, the artist is asked one of the main questions of interest to mankind at all times: how to be happy in the proposed historical circumstances?
The effect of the virtual diary is reinforced many times by the real paper diaries of Moscow’s 1936–1937 schoolboy Oleg Cherniavsky from the archives of the International Society Memorial, a unique historical testimony to one of the most tragic periods of Soviet history. The youth wrote about the arrests, high-profile trials, and shootings that touched his family, Father Oleg of Cherniavsky, and arrested on 15 November 1937 on charges of military conspiracy. These records are in a diary with stories of school success, friends of the same class, shopping, filming, celebrating a new year, first — in — love experiences — everything that fills the lives of every person every day and makes it possible to find reasons for joy in the most difficult circumstances.
Igor Aeroplane considers himself to be a generation of artists of 20:20 (twenty-twenty). A term that sends us back to the tradition of seeing and sifting double numbers on a phone clock, while making a wish, he came up with it himself. The generation of artists formed in the era of neuronets, news aggregates and social media algorithms re-thinks the fundamental problems of human existence: freedom, happiness, faith, self-identification in digital reality, as well as modelling options for its development, focusing on the most problematic aspects. For example, the appearance of harmless entertainment apps undetected by social media users, such as the «Old Brother» from George Orwell’s «1984» romance. In Igor’s installation, the alarming sense of external presence is visualized by surveillance cameras, which have become a symbol of modern civilization. Their continuous winking says, «The big brother is watching you!»
By placing an spectator inside his communications field, the author raises the issue of privacy in the digital age. Personal data becomes a commodity, and our desires, tastes, and preferences are valuable material for global corporate markers analysing search requests and offering services to any taste. (from the press release of The Energy of Mistake)
The exhibition took place at the Art Museum Multimedia from 20 December 2019 to 2 February 2020.
