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Evgeny Granilshchikov: nothing is lost. Evgeniy Granilshchikov: “It is useless to fight with us because we have already won and you have friends there

Exhibition curator: Anna Zaitseva

On June 7, 2017, the third exhibition of the anniversary series “Farewell to Eternal Youth” will open in the Workshop of the White Center for Contemporary Art WINZAVOD. Evgeny Granilshchikov, one of the most prominent Russian video artists, will present a multimedia installation “The Last Song of the Evening” about his generation, love and politics. At this exhibition, the artist, a graduate of the Rodchenko School, winner of the Kandinsky Prize, will for the first time show a two-channel video installation of the same name “The Last Song of the Evening” and other works, including the short film “In the predawn hour our dreams become brighter,” photographs and graphics made over the past year .

The key work of the exhibition is the two-channel film “The Last Song of the Evening”, originally conceived as an experimental series. The author himself defines the genre of the film as “documentation of a performance that lasted for a year and a half.” To implement this project, the artist and director invited his close friends. Every day the characters start by watching the news and discussing what is happening live.

Another film that viewers will see at the exhibition is “In the predawn hour our dreams become brighter”; it was filmed entirely on a mobile phone. The action takes place in Paris and is built around the daily life of two main characters, who, despite their happy Parisian everyday life, still feel cut off from home. Video sculptures, abstract photographs and a series of graphics will also be presented.

Artist and independent director Evgeny Granilshchikov: “I still haven’t realized what I don’t like more - watching films or making them. Now I’m thinking of giving it all up and opening a money-losing popcorn shop like Scarlett Johansson.”

Evgeny Granilshchikov born in 1985 in Moscow. In 2009 he graduated from the Institute of Journalism and Literary Creativity in Moscow, and in 2013 from the Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia. A. Rodchenko. Among the personal exhibitions: “Something will be lost” (Manege Central Exhibition Hall, Moscow, 2014), “Untitled (after defeats)” (Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, 2016). Participant of group exhibitions: Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2017) IV Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2014), Burning News: Recent Art from Russia (Hayward Gallery, London, 2014), Borderlands (GRAD Gallery , London, 2015), 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2015), “One inside the other. The art of new and old media in the era of high-speed Internet" (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2016). Winner of the Kandinsky Prize in the Young Artist category. Project of the Year (2013), Open Frame Award at the goEast Film Festival (Wiesbaden, 2016), finalist for the Innovation Award (2014, 2015).

Evgeny Granilshchikov: “This film is such an incredibly long performance”

At the Winzavod Center for Contemporary ArtThe anniversary cycle “Farewell to Eternal Youth” continues: recently, as part of it, an exhibition of video artist Evgeny Granilshchikov “The Last Song of the Evening” opened. The Blueprint asked the artist to select pieces of work featured in the exhibition and tell their stories.

Untitled ("Gravity")
2017

"Gravity" is a series of graphics that I painted in Paris this winter. It all started with me watching the video of the arrests on Bolotnaya Square on May 6 and sketching the poses of people at the moments when they were grabbed by the police. Therefore, the bodies look broken and deformed.

Untitled (“games”)
2017

In fact, when we started filming Games, we started with a rehearsal. I invited my friends to play chess with only white pieces. This was the starting point. It was necessary to look at how they would get out, negotiate and thereby change the rules of the game itself. After this rehearsal, I was going to do some text sketches and film it all again. I wanted them to improvise based on previous experience. As a result, I watched the rehearsal and decided to stop at this shooting.

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"Last Song of the Evening"
2017

About two years ago I wanted to make a film about a musician who lost his voice. Then a lot of time passed, the plot changed, and two more were added to my hero. I had script ideas, but I didn’t want to shoot exclusively feature films. That's why the idea of documenting the news came up. Constantly weave them into the story. This is why I say that the film “The Last Song of the Night” is such an incredibly long performance. And I don't remember anyone ever making a movie that way. It was risky. But by this point, a small part of the film already exists as a two-channel installation, and soon I will finish editing the full-length version for cinemas.

"Last Song of the Evening"
2017

About two years ago I wanted to make a film about a musician who lost his voice. Then a lot of time passed, the plot changed, and two more were added to my hero. I had screenwriting experience, but I didn’t want to shoot exclusively feature films. That's why the idea of documenting the news came up. Constantly weave them into the story. This is why I say that the film “The Last Song of the Night” is such an incredibly long performance. And I don't remember anyone ever making a movie that way. It was risky. But by this point, a small part of the film already exists as a two-channel installation, and soon I will finish editing the full-length version for cinemas.

UNTITLED (“WATCH”)
2012

Almost the entire installation (“The Last Song of the Evening”) is assembled from new works made over the past year. "Clock" is an exception. I made this video while still studying at the Rodchenko School, it seems, in the summer after my first year. In the video we see two clocks, one hanging on the wall, and the other I hold in my hands. The ones I hold in my hands don't work. I'm trying to synchronize the hands of my clock with the wall clock. There is simplicity and precision in this work. In general, there is something about her.

Exhibition curator: Anna Zaitseva.
Author of the series: Nikolai Palazhchenko.

The exhibition is a single installation in which each work in one way or another touches on the theme of love and mutual understanding against the backdrop of tension created by the news flow. The works will feature a lot of improvisation, random conversations and true stories - observed and later recreated. The heroes of Evgeny Granilshchikov are generation Y, to which the artist himself belongs, and which became the central theme of the entire cycle “Farewell to Eternal Youth.”

The key work of the exhibition is the two-channel film “The Last Song of the Evening”, originally conceived as an experimental series. The author himself defines the genre of the film as “documentation of a performance that lasted for a year and a half.” To implement this project, the artist and director invited his close friends. Every day the characters start by watching the news and discussing what is happening live.

Another film that viewers will see at the exhibition is “In the predawn hour our dreams become brighter”; it was filmed entirely on a mobile phone. The action takes place in Paris and is built around the daily life of two main characters, who, despite their happy Parisian everyday life, still feel cut off from home. Video sculptures, abstract photographs and a series of graphics will also be presented.

Artist and independent director Evgeny Granilshchikov:“I still haven’t figured out what I don’t like more: watching films or making them. Now I’m thinking of giving it all up and opening a money-losing popcorn shop like Scarlett Johansson.”

In 2017, the Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art, one of the first private art centers in Russia, turns ten years old. During this time, together with WINZAVOD, a generation of artists has grown up, who today can already lay claim to the title of new heroes of the modern Russian art scene. The main event of the anniversary was the cycle “Farewell to Eternal Youth.” Throughout the year, 12 large personal exhibitions will be organized by representatives of the new generation in contemporary Russian art, for whom the time has come for transformation - a transition from the status of “young” artists to the status of established ones. As part of the cycle, exhibitions have already opened - “Palazzo Koshelev” by Egor Koshelev, “City Sauna” by Urban Fauna Lab (in the Krasny Workshop until June 25). Exhibitions by Dmitry Venkov, Arseny Zhilyaev, the ZIP group, Polina Kanis, Taus Makhacheva, Irina Korina, Vladimir Logutov, Misha Most and Recycle are planned. Participants in the cycle are diverse in the areas in which they work. Their personal statements will demonstrate various processes in contemporary Russian art. Together with the artists of the cycle, viewers will look into the future of Russian art: who will become the hero of our time?

Evgeny Granilshchikov born in 1985 in Moscow. In 2009 he graduated from the Institute of Journalism and Literary Creativity in Moscow, and in 2013 from the Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia. A. Rodchenko. Among the personal exhibitions: “Something will be lost” (Manege Central Exhibition Hall, Moscow, 2014), “Untitled (after defeats)” (Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow, 2016). Participant of group exhibitions: Triennial of Russian Contemporary Art (Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Moscow, 2017) IV Moscow International Biennale for Young Art (2014), Burning News: Recent Art from Russia (Hayward Gallery, London, 2014), Borderlands (GRAD Gallery , London, 2015), 6th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art (2015), “One inside the other. The art of new and old media in the era of high-speed Internet" (Moscow Museum of Modern Art, 2016). Winner of the Kandinsky Prize in the Young Artist category. Project of the Year (2013), Open Frame Award at the goEast Film Festival (Wiesbaden, 2016), finalist for the Innovation Award (2014, 2015).

The new hero of the column about young artists is a graduate of the Institute of Journalism and Literary Creativity and the Igor Mukhin Workshop of the School of Photography and Multimedia named after. A. Rodchenko, laureate of the Kandinsky Prize in the Young Artist category

Where were you born and where did you study?

In 1985 in Moscow on June 23. It's almost the longest day of the year, so in a way I'm lucky. I studied in Kuntsevo and went to several art schools. In the tenth grade, I decided that after school I should enter an architectural institute. I spent two years drawing and preparing... But at the same time I attended a lot of things: various clubs, from boxing...

Have you been boxing?

Yes, can you imagine that a person of my build practices boxing? This lasted 2 years. Before that, I played hockey for 4 years, but I was often sick, and it became clear that nothing would work out with professional sports.

At MARCHI I went through all the stages except mathematics, which I really didn’t understand anything about. And then one of my friends, who also failed this subject, persuaded me to enroll in a rather strange place - the Lyceum of Animated Cinematography on Radio Street. Old school animation, drawing on tracing paper, Disney and that movie house that no longer exists.

These were two wonderful years at the Lyceum, just like Pushkin’s. But there I completely forgot how to draw. And in my second year I decided to take up music. Next to the lyceum, on the next street, there was Prokofiev School No. 1. At the end of the first year, I came there to take exams. And they told me something like this: “We have children studying here, and you are 17, but we can enroll you as if you were 15, and then you get into our free program.” And for five years I studied classical music, piano. There I began to seriously study composition, arrangement, instrumentation in the class of Sergei Udaltsov - he was a very difficult person, but we got along well... But after about two years I ran away... Because this required a serious choice. At this time I studied at the Institute of Literature and Journalism on Arbat. In my third year of study I graduated from Prokofiev's school. But to be honest, I was not allowed to take the final exam because I did not pass one subject: solfeggio, arranging or choir. My piano teacher was incredibly upset.

After which I had two years of light drinking at the literary institute. And there I made very close friends. We were regulars at Jean-Jacques, talking about literature... Such a cliche, future hipsters.

Fragment of a three-channel video projection “Positions”, 2013, 22’44 // Photo courtesy of the author

Did you want to write directly? Why did you go there?

No, I wanted to read. It was only during the first year that I thought that I wanted to write something, but that quickly passed. From the second year we have a new subject - the history of cinema. It was hosted by documentary director Tamara Grigorievna Dularidze. I really quickly fell in love with it all. And for the next four years I focused exclusively on cinema. That is, I worked almost like a film critic - at least three films a day. Tamara Grigorievna and I became close friends, and I often went to visit her. In Moscow, she lived in a one-room apartment, completely littered with books and antique furniture: instead of walls there were only shelves. Now she spends almost all her time in Tbilisi, and, unfortunately, we hardly see each other.

I graduated from the institute as a photojournalist. Of the photographers at that time, I was close to Ralph Eugene Meatyard, Francesca Woodman or Araki, and not reportage photography. Then I went broke for a year. But it was necessary to decide. Intuitively, I chose the Rodchenko school. That year, Igor Mukhin recruited the group. I went to him, and he completely led me astray. After the first year, I was in decline: I came to school and didn’t talk to anyone. I think a lot of people felt that way at first. During the first year, I became convinced that the language I used in photography was not working. I went to Prague for the summer and wrote the script for my first video there.

When I returned to my second year, I no longer studied photography. But at the same time he still remained in Mukhin’s group. Igor was always important to me, even though he couldn't give advice on videos. But from the second year I clearly understood what exactly I wanted to do.

Did you make any friends there?

Yes. There were very good relationships within our group from the very beginning. But if we talk specifically about friends, then for me it is . I think on the first day he came up and said: “You probably like movies?” And we immediately understood each other.

“Positions”, 2013, three-channel video projection, 22’44

Is the film “Positions” your graduation work?

Yes. At that moment, at the Rodchenko school, our pedagogical council seemed to have forgotten about all the formalities. They didn’t demand a photo project from me and they supported the first version of the “Positions” script. It turned out that no one taught me how to technically edit, film, or record sound. Then I simply set tasks for myself and tried to solve them consistently. I remember that at some point, when I decided that this should be a three-channel video, I consulted Alimpiev, and he explained something to me in words. I needed to go to the Savelovsky market, talk to some guys, buy a video card with three video outputs from us... At that time, it’s good that we at least knew how to turn on the camera.

Did you write the text for “Positions” yourself?

Yes, it largely consists of quotes. Then I watched a lot of political films, and some things got stuck and remained in my head. The language spoken by the characters was extremely important to the film, and I wanted this language to be somewhat archaic.

At the same time, this was an attempt to rehabilitate a certain rhetoric, but at the same time I wanted to raise the question of language as such. Why do the characters use vocabulary from the twenties or sixties? For me it was an open question.

When did it start for you, your interest in politics?

This happened when I entered the Rodchenko school, I became interested in political technologies, and this is connected with the language of art and media. Then I delved deeper into the Russian political situation. During this time, I read texts by Georges Agamben, Jacques Rancière, or situationist texts such as Raoul Vaneigem's The Revolution of Everyday Life. This is an amazingly poetic book. Political events, in general, serve as a reason for the emergence of new rhetoric, precisely one that is adequate to these events. Politics begins with the simple words you use, how you call things. Due to my literary education, I turned out to be sensitive to the word as such, its meanings, connotations. For example, I am interested in political debates. A work of art always reveals some other levels.

" Letter » , 2012, single-channel video, 06’26

Is your position that of an observer from the outside or an active insider, an interested person? Or does it not matter to you? Do you want to broadcast your position?

It's a question of how to be an artist and how to be an activist at the same time. The question is very complex and unsolvable. Actually, this is a game of position. It can never be completely resolved. And it’s not for nothing that the film’s characters remember Courbet, a figure who very uneasy combined an artist and a political activist. This is the inability to speak from the same position.

But there are artists or activist poets. Pavel Arsenyev, Kirill Medvedev?

Yes, the first one, Arsenyev, is really interesting to me, but perhaps his position is too simple. After all, everything is more complicated.

Is it easy for you? And Pussy Riot? War?

It may be simple, but it is difficult to talk about.

So, are you interested in a reflective, distanced look? This is the same Mukhin, he films demonstrations and rallies?

A position of maximum vulnerability is important to me. My personal vulnerability. I must constantly be torn apart by doubt from within. In our situation, it seems to me that this is the only honest position. For example, it is very difficult for me to defend my film. It’s true that “Positions” are attacked very often, even by close friends. People understand this film very differently. But for me it’s the simultaneity of everything, there are no exceptions, everything is included. I don’t understand people who see this film as simply ironic over the situation. For myself, I explain it this way: my heroes say all these words because I remember them too. And even though in some places it is pronounced seriously, in others it looks ironic.

But this turns out to be such a postmodernist position.

This is a difficult question, because this quotation is not here for its own sake. Postmodernism is not important to me; it interests me the least. This is a description of the realistic situation we find ourselves in. And we ourselves don’t know how to perceive what we see. That’s why we use templates, apply familiar grids and say that this is, for example, modernism.

Furgue (escape), 2013, audio installation, 20’20

At the same time, your form is postmodern, but your content is not. And such dissonance arises, it seems to me. And this counterpoint may be good.

Well, look, there is, for example, Virginia Woolf, who exists in her time. But sixty years pass and a certain artist appears who makes works about the collapsed modernist hopes, using the same modernist moves. He works with it as if it were history. This is about something completely different. I don’t think that I’m doing something postmodern, I’m thinking about various traumas, including postmodern ones.

At the same time, are you trying to overcome them? Then it turns out that the emergency room is located on the territory of the same postmodernism. This is what a hostage is like.

Well, yes - this is about the fact that even if we want to get out of postmodernism, sometimes we simply cannot.

At the same time, in your works there are such layers when the medium is decomposed into its own components: light separately, sound separately, picture separately. In “Positions” there is a very attractive picture, it magnetizes, in form it is almost Alimpiev. It’s like Godard’s “Socialism”: you can watch it without sound, then go to another room and listen to the sound separately. And it will all work. Do you have such a beautiful picture on purpose, aesthetic?

Yes, but I consciously used this visual language here. I wanted the characters to be contradictory, so that they spoke the language of another time, and at the same time looked like the boys and girls of today, so that they ate at McDonald's, danced in the club, but discussed Tretyakov in the kitchen, and so that all this was woven from what There are some hellish inconsistencies, because that’s how it is. My poetics is all about trauma, in the Lacanian-Freudian vein as well. I am such a neurotic - this, in my opinion, is a typical state of modernity. And I’m trying to convey this trauma, neuroticism, trauma of different levels, trauma from modernism, from postmodernism, trauma from being hit in the face on the street, from situations.

But it turned out too smoothly; the transitions from quote to quote are not so noticeable.

Yes, a person may not even know that there are quotes here at all. For me, the main thing is that these inconsistencies and anachronisms are visible.

" Interview » , 2012, single-channel video with sound, 1’23

Who made the music?

We found one composition from the group Motherfathers. We liked a lot of their work, and we contacted them and asked for one track for the film, it sounds towards the end, when the characters are in a nightclub. We still cooperate with the guys. Dmitry Peich (vocalist of Motherfathers) subsequently wrote a track for another video installation. Now Yasha Vetkin and I are shooting a full-length film, and I really hope that Dima will join the project again. The rest of the music was written by my friend, Mitriy Grankov, a young composer. He plays in the group “Table-Chair-Walls”, but sometimes does solo projects. When I was editing “Positions,” he had just recorded a small album. He had not seen the film. But it turned out to be very suitable music, the right tone for the film. That is, this is also a coincidence, we were lucky. I didn't know what music would be in the film. But on the other hand, our film didn’t even have a script at first. Or rather, there was a sketch. We started filming on it, but nothing worked. And it became clear that a different operating principle was needed. Before each night of shooting, I wrote one or two scenes.

How long did it take you to film it?

Eight months.

Where did you find these girls? Are these just your friends?

These are my very close friends.

What are you filming now?

Ultra-short videos. On different topics, they are like little plays. On average, they last about a second.

Untitled (dracaena), 2012, plant, clay pot, sprayer, container with water, instructions // Photo courtesy of the author

Rather, these are separate works: “Youth on the March” by Pedro Costa, “Syndromes and a Century” and short films by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, “Boy Meets Girl” and “Bad Blood” by Leo Carax, “Mommy and the Whore” by Eugene Estache, “Male-Female” Jean-Luc Godard, about six films by Hitchcock, “The Alphabet” by Gilles Deleuze, “Lectures on Proust” by Merab Mamardashvili, books by Noam Chomsky, Michel Foucault...

Of the artists of my generation, I am interested in Lesha Corsi, Evgeny Antufiev, Dmitry Filippov and Kirill Makarov.

From the older generation - Avdey Ter-Oganyan, Mukhin, Pivovarov.

And from literature - Miguel de Cervantes, Samuel Beckett. Now, unfortunately, I very rarely read fiction. I've been rereading Joyce's Ulysses for the last week. Because this text is related to the film I'm making.

Among the composers - Leonid Desyatnikov, indie, but I am also interested in pop music, for example, I listened to all the albums of Lana Del Rey. My latest discovery is Nina Carlson, a St. Petersburg singer.

What do you live on and work on?

Now I have returned to my parents temporarily. They support me, although they have nothing to do with art, and in some places they even like something. I also received a grant from Garage and so far I’m spending it on a film. Sometimes I shoot interiors or something else. Triumph has been helping a lot lately. Recently - the Kandinsky Prize.

Maybe I forgot to ask something else?

No, I guess. All.

Video fragments from the Moscow Diary project, 2013–2014 // Photo courtesy of Evgeny Granilshchikov

Fragment of the video “Sweet Cigarettes”, 2013 // Photo courtesy of the author

Fragment of the ultra-short video That Sounds Scary, 2013 // Photo courtesy of the author

Fragment of the video “Phobias”, 2014 // Photo courtesy of the author

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