Cyber Dream performance
Production bureau ARTMIX presents new performance Cyber Dream, made in partnership with Sergey Kuryokhin Center of Contemporary Art. Egor Zvezdin generated the idea gathering together memories about “home lockdown” period of the first term of COVID19. Online translations, conferences and common feelings we had during that time. The expressive medium of the project emphasized its philosophical content and the depth of the experiences of people all over the planet. All of us had been in a constant suspense, fear and daily digital routine, like in a slow dream that lasts long, and we do not remember its beginning and do not know when it ends. But this dream might be the only salvation.
What is Cyber Dream?
Cyber Dream is a meditative digital video, designed by media artist Morgan Korolkov and accompanied by the duet of Alexander Ronin and Dasha Melia, experimental electronic musician and master of handpan. The peculiarity of the performance is that it is an illusion of online broadcasting, that we have all got used to, and that is a part of our daily life by now. The digital projection of one of the musicians constantly gives visual glitches – this is an artistic reference to the digital noise in common video broadcasts. At the same time, the video that we watch also has its own “glitches”, which makes it unclear where reality ends and where digital sleep begins.
“A few months later, I reacon up first lockdown as a long, tough dream. I woke up, spent all day trying to get busy, sorting things out, occasionally going out to breathe fresh air, going to bed. And all over again. For me it was a vicious circle, timelessness and apathy, highlighted by new means of communication. It was they, these long video calls with friends and relatives, who became a thin thread that connected me with reality. The thread was cut off when the session time ran out, or when a connection was unstable.
Cyber Dream is a performance commemorating that difficult time, when reality flowed into digits, and digits into dreams. When you were lost in your own thoughts and dreams, trying to find a way out. I am glad that my work has become a sort of escape for me. “
Egor Zvezdin, inspiration instigator of the project.
New reality or cyber-dream?
The project proposes to rethink the very concept of being at a concert and what happens to the audience. Unlike the usual concert, during the broadcast we can turn up the volume or skip a part. The spectator becomes a full-fledged accomplice of what is happening. In digital reality, what does it mean to “play a musical part together or play along with a second musician”? What happens in the relationship of musical partners when they are presented to each other in the broadcast, and are physically in different places? These are the questions that arise when watching the performance. But do they matter, if the spectator follows the process through the screen. We get lost in the notions of “reality” and “happening”, since we no longer know what it is and what might be trusted. Everything is mixed up and creates a long, soothing and enjoyable cyber-dream.
Participants
Sergey Kuryokhin Center of Contemporary Art. Big goal of the Center – to unite talented representatives of contemporary art scene, who are out of mainstream pop-culture and give them ability to represent their individual and group art. The Center also aims to represent Russian contemporary art abroad.
ARTMIX bureau by Egor Zvezdin and Margo Bor products projects in the field of contemporary art in Russia and Europe. Key method of work is the synthesis of cultural codes of different eras, philosophical rewise of the heritage of the past, present and future. Based on the cultural experience of previous generations, ARTMIX creates contemporary art in a digital environment.
IDEA
Egor Zvezdin – artist and visionaire, art-producer, who makes art-performances by means of new media.
Music
Alex Ronin – a musician who combines electronics and the whole experience of sound creation. His art is almost a tangible noble flair of the ideology of lSaint-Petersburg, subtle masculine lyrics and no obsession.
Daria Melia is an electronic musician, multi-instrumentalist who grew up in a musical family. A professional folk musician who studied the influence of music in psychology and discovered the miracle of handpan sound. Sound therapy, meditation and vibroacoustic massages are another area of Daria’s activity, which changes her life and life of people around in a positive way.
Video-art
Morgan Korolkov. Morgan strives to immerse the audience into the charming metamorphosis of geometric forms that respond to manipulation of performers with their musical instruments. He constructs and experiments with communication of the visual world of music with human perception.
