Sabotage

2023
Collaborative design-research laboratory
Installation: wallpaper, 2 graphic works (15×20 сm unframed, 21.5×26.7 cm framed), colour video, with sound, flag, plants
Dimensions variable

Sabotage is an unsettling environment exploiting the manipulative nature of media flows, hypertext aesthetics and artificially generated imagery to reflect on the incessant persistence of decentralised militarist propaganda. The installation brings together a number of elements, including a looped video piece, a wallpaper consisting of map-like glitched textures and metadata, a flag designed by a neural network, ink portraits of the dead bodies of Russian troops abandoned by the Russian military commanders in Ukraine, as well as the sounds of a grand piano in the process of tuning. The resulting setting reveals that distortion, fakes and mimicry constitute dominant features of aggressive media landscapes, which aim to suppress our awareness and shape our perceptions. In the course of the intervention the space was adorned with the flora typical of swamps and marshes.

Sabotage is a project of Office of Comparative Reality.

Artists: Danya Orlovsky (motion design), Boris Shershenkov (sound), Katya Sivers (concept, project lead, creative direction; graphic works) and those, who preferred to stay anonymous.

The work was displayed in the space of the Pushkin House Bar (London, 2023)

Office for Comparative Reality

2022
Design-research laboratory

Office for Comparative Reality (OCR) is a speculative collective organisation focusing on subversive political art. It was established by Katya Sivers shortly after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine with the aim of creating a safe platform for artists to amplify their voices against the war. OCR focuses on the question of manipulation of realities reflecting political upheavals and technological innovations connected to existing power structures. OCR operates as a design-research laboratory with a variety of formats, including exhibitions, publications and events based on radical collaborations.

Museum of One Painting. Three Bogatyrs

2021
Collaborative design-research laboratory
Installation: found objects; series of performances

We set out to explore how a visual representation of the entire country could be deciphered. Our investigation into Russian-language online marketplaces revealed that Viktor Vasnetsov’s oil painting, The Bogatyrs (1881–1898), holds the distinction of being the most widely reproduced piece of Russian art, spanning both industrial and artisanal production across the nation. This iconic painting’s influence permeates a multitude of everyday objects, each interpreting it in its own unique manner. We acquired a selection of these objects, prioritizing those that were most popular in terms of material, purpose, and production method, and subsequently returned them to the museum, thereby imbuing them with a renewed significance through a reverse process.

Our presentation featured a curated collection of exhibits devoted to Russia’s cherished artwork. The project showcased items crafted using diverse techniques, tailored for various age groups and genders. The assortment ranged from professional to amateur, vintage to modern, with the production method and the artist’s style influencing the format, composition, as well as landscape and portrait details of the figures.

The roles of the 78 bogatyrs collected were reimagined, offering diverse responses such as sex education, contemporary lamentations, a beer bar, a history of Russian athleticism, and lessons in Russian history. These responses took the form of performative excursions that challenged the patriarchal and authoritative imagery associated with Russia’s most popular painting.

Project Idea / Curated by: Katya Sivers, Maria Cheloyants

Participants (performers): Elizaveta Abyants, Maria Avdanina, Kirill Vasiliev, Pavel Vasiliev, Nigina Vakhidova, Anastasia Elizarieva, Renata Kafiatulina, Milena Malova, Ekaterina Mikhailova, Ekaterina Rubtsova, Lyubov Khimich, Anna Shitova

The laboratory was part of HSE Art and Design School Course on Design and Contemporary Art; the project was part of Hauntology of Post-Soviet Spaces exhibition at HSE Art Gallery (Moscow, 20 April – 6 June 2021)

The Wall

2019
Banner, Instax mini photographs
415×500 сm

A banner, featuring a printed rasterized photograph, was placed on the recently demolished wall of the gallery. The photograph, sourced from one of the artists’ archives, depicted a class newly inducted as young pioneers standing near the Kremlin wall. The image, clear when viewed from a distance, disintegrated into printed raster dots upon closer inspection. As the exhibition progressed, the installation evolved by incorporating snapshots of visitors. Initially symbolizing the Soviet era and serving as a tangible object, the wall within the artwork transformed, turning into a deceptive structure, more akin to mere decoration.

Artists: Katya Sivers, Maria Cheloyants

The work was displayed at the exhibition Lab 01. The Most Beautiful (Na Peschanoy Gallery, Moscow, 2019)

Lab 01. The Most Beautiful

2019
Collaborative design-research laboratory, exhibition

Professional and institutional frameworks are frequently regarded as manifestations of wider social and disciplinary distinctions. In this project, the laboratory served as an experimental space where practicing designers, all graduates and tutors from the same academy, were invited into the domain of contemporary art for the first time. They initiated their exploration with the The Most Beautiful Books of Germany collection from 2017–2018, viewing it as a complex hierarchical structure of meaning and visual solutions.

The project unfolded in two phases: a two-month research laboratory and a subsequent month-long exhibition featuring 18 works. The primary goal was not only to dissect the chosen book but also to seek alternative communicative and social patterns. This pursuit extended beyond the professional sphere, penetrating into personal fields, with the aim of discovering new opportunities for coexistence.

Project Idea / Curated by: Katya Sivers, Maria Cheloyants

Participants: Katya Antonova, Vlada Vishnevskaya, Nastya Grigiriadi, Mitya Devishvili, Masha Dobrolubova, Dasha Kazakova, Ksenia Kotlyarovskaya, Zhenya Kuznetsova, Mariam Nabieva, Yana Nasibullina, Katya Nikolaeva, Danya Orlovskiy, Anya Risukhina, Luba Sokolova, Anton Strunge, Lera Sushkova, Grisha Terno, Sasha Fedorina, Sveta Frolova, Yana Sharipova, Nastya Shentseva, Lisa Shipkova, Dasha Yurkina

In partnership with: Center for German Books in Moscow / Representative Office of Frankfurt Book Fair in Russia

The laboratory took place at NONSNS residence (Moscow, September – October 2019); the exhibition was opened to public at Na Peschanoy Gallery (Moscow, 9 November – 15 December 2019)

Seiche

2018–2021
Speculative film, graphic essay, interactive installation, website, research publication

Overlapping jurisdictions and supranational infrastructures generate an increasingly complex network topology. Seiche is a speculative proposal for a visual programming platform enabling the definition and management of techno-legal procedures of information exchange between the institutions that regulate such systems. The first iteration of the project was produced in a form of a documentary that defines the problems of the cross-border condition from logistical, governmental and identity perspectives. The proposal was applied and tested in the form of a narrative set in Khorgos, Kazakhstan, the cornerstone of China’s Belt and Road Initiative.

The following graphic essay develops the structural model while putting special emphasis on defining a language and theoretical framework, while a design-research project All Under Heaven: Sоvereignty and Infrastructure After Globalization explores how waves of globalization have shaped and reshaped political, social, and economic paradigms over the past century, stretching and bending the meaning of sovereignty.

Seiche project was initially conceived during the 2018 The New Normal program
at Strelka Institute for Media Architecture and Design in Moscow

Project team: Mikhail Anisimov, Tomás Clavijo, Yulia Gromova, Katya Sivers, Andrei Zhileikin
Program director: Benjamin H. Bratton

The project was presented as an interactive installation at Shenzhen Bi-City Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism (2019)

ShadowMemory

2017–2018
iPhone app with 9 urban narratives, website

ShadowMemory is a collaborative project in a form of a digital platform. It allows artists to develop new urban routes accessible via a specially designed app. Interactive location-based experience is augmented through a curated digital tour urging users to uncover hidden urban structures and connect spaces into experimental linear narratives. ShadowMemory relies on user participation and encourages them to steer away from preconditioned patterns. Instead, they are invited to follow artist guidance and to interact with the tangible reality of the city through subjective impressions, raw data and infrastructural systems of production, consumption and control.

Project Idea: Katya Sivers
Production: Grad, London
App Development: Red C, London
Curated by: Alisa Oleva, Katya Sivers, Elena Sudakova

London routes, 2018:
Animality by ZIP group (Krasnodar)
Atlas by Katia Reshetnikova (Moscow)
Backbone by Paul Coombs and Gabriel Mulvey (London, Geneva)
Fish-Finger Sandwich by Sarah Staton (London)
From Where I Stand by Rotem Volk (Tel Aviv)
Prepare to Synchronize by eeefff (Moscow, Minsk)
The Urban Howl by Timothy Maxymenko (Kyiv)

Yekaterinburg routes, 2017:
Blueprint by Demolition Project (Alisa Oleva and Debbie Kent, London)
Phantasmarium of Victor M. by Sergey Kasich and Victor Murzikov (Moscow, Yekaterinburg)

The project was presented at Art Night London (2018) and the 4th Industrial Ural Biennial (Yekaterinburg, 2017)

State Tretyakov Gallery.
Painting of the Second Half of the 20th Century

2014
Metal printing plate, spray paint, luminous lamp, melon, sticker
Dimensions variable

The metal typographic form used for printing the catalog of Paintings of the Second Half of the 20th Century from the Collection of the Tretyakov Gallery came to me through my graphic design practice. Here it replaces the traditional pictorial painting, while the light source and still life objects are represented by the found objects. A melon with a Mona Lisa sticker is nailed to the wall. The juice is running down the wall and filling the space with a fruit smell.

The work was displayed at the exhibition Taint (Grad, London, 2014)

Crispy Prawn Dim Sum Selection

2013
Wax head cast, luminous lamp, plastic bag, metal hook
Dimensions variable

A self-portrait, looking like both a decorative lamp and a household bag with daily purchases, is created from a flipped wax mold containing a fluorescent light bulb. The sculpture is positioned within a bag from Co-op, an affordable grocery chain in Britain.

The work was displayed at the exhibition In Two Parts and Degree Show (both Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, 2013)

Towards Victoria or Sloane Square

2013
Metal frame, lamps, paper, clothes, plastic hooks
210×130×20 сm

The empty space of a London bus shelter advertising block becomes a point of contact, a shared boundary between public and private. The schematically repeated volume of the shelter is filled with fluorescent lamps and fragments of unprinted paper roll. Personal garments and underwear hang on plastic hooks attached to the glass.

The work was displayed at the exhibition Taint (Grad, London, 2014) and Degree Show (Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, 2013)

Atlas of Dreams

2011
Photographs on transparent film, face-mounted to lightpaper, sound
Images: various dimensions; lightpaper: 400×600 mm
Music by Johan Landgren

Atlas of Dreams is a 'scholar's atlas' project in which a dream – usually unimaginable, vague and elusive – becomes an object of study, a script and an inspiration. Typewritten descriptions of dreams are provided by those wishing to participate in the project, first in Mariestad (Sweden), and then in Moscow (Russia). The texts serve as scripts for my videos and basis for music, created for the project. Particular video frames are printed on film and mounted on lightpaper together with the original texts.

The work was displayed at the exhibition From the Realm of Practical Knowledge (GMG Gallery, Moscow, 2011), a Special project of the Fourth Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art

Lamps II-I

2012
Luminous tubes, arduino
Dimensions variable

A randomly located pile of lamps and wires becomes a visual tool for identifying systems of control. 19 luminous lamps with open electronic ballast are connected to a motion sensor at the door of the space. The number of lighting up lamps relates directly to the number of viewers entering the room, thus a visual feedback of control mechanisms is created.

The work was displayed at Art and Technology Show (Random Gallery, Moscow, 2012)