Video program. Internal Memory—Not Enough Space? (2017)

Curator of the video program for the GARAGE Museum of Contemporary Art Pavilion at the Astana EXPO 2017.

The video program Internal Memory - Not Enough Space? is an attempt to create a visual journey to artistic thinking that reflects the sense of reality, history, traditions, and the concept of place. Video screening addresses the notion of memory in the context of the historically specific time we live. Memory is a key to personal, social, and cultural identity. Since the end of the '80s, the pioneers of actual contemporary art in Kazakhstan explored the question of self-identity as a consequence of the endured Soviet Era. In the search for artistic expression, video art became a widespread tool for the articulation of painful points of the time, often accompanied by the use of the aesthetic of national cultural codes. This video screening presents the mixture of the works made from 2005 till today shifting our focus from experiments and search to the era of digital information storage and accelerated media communication where the concept of local becomes universal. The selection presents 10 video works by 7 artists from different generations who are incorporating new approaches to the question of the past and the present in time and space.