GAKHN Displaced, Moscow 2021

interactive exhibition-laboratory

Concept: Nikita Sazonov
Scientific consultant: Anke Hennig
Design: Dmitrii Olgin, Vita Shakhnovich
Implementation, technical coordination: Center for Digital Humanities Research, National Research University Higher School of Economics
Code: Timofey Molchanov
Project participants: Alexandra Anikina, Oleg Baranov, Alexander Vetushinsky, Arseny Zhilyaev, Coincidental International, Anya Kravchenko, Dmitry Kralechkin, Vasily Kuznetsov, Reza Negarestani, Ekaterina Nikitina, Ivan Novikov, Dmitrii Olgin, Boris Orekhov, Roman Os(y)minkin, Nikolay Plotnikov, Working Group "Work More! Rest More!", Natalia Serkova, Mikhail Stepanov, Evgenia Suslova, Andrew Fischer, Anke Hennig, Vita Shakhnovich, Gustav Speth
Exhibition dates: March 13 - April 15, 2021

release text:
An interactive exhibition-laboratory, rediscovering early Soviet synthetic practices. At the opening, the authors of the project will talk about the structure of the experiment and its main components. Since the early 1920s, the State Academy of Artistic Sciences (GAKhN) has been working on the Encyclopedia of Artistic Terms, an object designed to bring together a variety of modes and methods of thought. Philosophy, theater, art theory, psychology, physics, and literary theory were to come together in a synthetic perspective. Because of the Academy's short existence, the Encyclopedia project did not take place, and the GAKhN developments a century later are only archival shards of modernist ruins. GAKhN is an attempt to restart the terminological experiment of GAKhN in conditions when the increasing complexity of contemporary problems requires the active development of hybrid methodologies and postdisciplinarity. Such a task requires actual terms tied to specific practices as well as a rethinking of the alphabetical encyclopedic format itself. For a month, 20 interactive booths will appear in Olivier Hall. Each is a hybrid (physical and digital) artifact that explores some term relevant to contemporary philosophy, theory, and art. Each booth reveals, in its own way, different questions, problems, and solutions related to the chosen term. What connections can be made between the terms so that the resulting synthetic drawing yields an Encyclopedia 2.0? This question can only be answered by visitors. Digital technology turns the exhibition into an ongoing research process to which anyone can contribute. Interaction with the stands creates connections between terms, a specific pattern, in no way defined by the boundaries of specific disciplines.