Art Experiment: 32 Questions from Cage
December 22, 2014–January 11, 2015
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
Gorky Park
9 Krymsky Val
119049 Moscow
Russia
Hours: Monday–Thursday 11–21h,
Friday–Sunday 11–22h
T+7 495 645 05 20
Establishing new strategies in Russia for engaging with experimental art practices, each winter Garage Museum of Contemporary Art transforms its galleries into a laboratory for participation. Since it launched in 2010, Art Experiment—the flagship program of Garage Education—has attracted over 25,000 students, parents, local residents, and Moscow visitors, making it the largest socially engaged art initiative in the country.
With a different theme each year, Art Experiment is structured through three daily sessions during which visitors of all ages are invited to have hands-on experiences with artists, as well as innovating creative collaborations between peers. In response to demand, in 2013 the initiative expanded from a two-day, to a three-week exhibition and Garage piloted Russia’s first training sessions for mediators, facilitating closer interaction between staff and broad publics to better understand visitor’s interests. Now, each morning session is dedicated to children with special needs, groups from Moscow orphanages, and students, while evening events include professional concerts and art-inspired holiday parties, welcoming new audiences and Garage regulars alike.
Opening on December 22, the fifth annual Art Experiment is titled 32 questions from Cage. Using the queries from his 1958 lecture “Composition as Process” as a provocation, the exhibition highlights the spontaneity of music and the dialogues it gives rise to. Celebrating Cage’s interests in popularizing contemporary music, Water Walk—a composition he wrote for television and first broadcast in 1960 on “I’ve got a Secret”—will be staged in Moscow for the first time, performed by prodigy musician and composer Dmitry Vlasik, as well as music school pupils he has trained. New commissions include the Institution of Unstable Thoughts, founded in 1996 in Ukraine, who have developed a site-specific installation exploring the audiovisual aspect of music, as well as Playtronica, a Moscow-based collective, who will create an installation to test melody on a tightrope, as well as holding workshops on transforming any objectinto a musical instrument. Other artists also include Alexander Hnilitsky, SlackLabs studio, ::vtol::, Hello Computer, Baschet Soundsculpture Workshop, The Moscow Chamber Orchestra, MUSICA VIVA, and Moscow City Municipal music schools under the Moscow Department of Culture’s Office of Educational Programs support.
Reflecting the experimentation that underpins the entire project, this year Garage has also worked with recent architecture graduate Artem Slizunov who won a contest to design the Art Experiment experience. This follows a tradition the Museum established in 2012 to support the development of young architects in Moscow through stipends and competitive projects, including Garage’s annual summer pavilion.
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is a place for people, art, and ideas to create history. Through an extensive program of exhibitions, events, education, research, and publishing, the institution reflects on current developments in Russian and international culture, creating opportunities for wide public dialogue, as well as the production of new work and ideas in Moscow. At the center of all these activities is the Museum’s collection, which is the first public archive in the country related to the development of Russian contemporary art from the 1950s through the present.
Founded in 2008 by Dasha Zhukova, Garage is open to the public seven days a week. Currently based in a temporary pavilion in Gorky Park created specifically for Garage by architect Shigeru Ban, in June 2015 the Museum will move to its first permanent home—a groundbreaking renovation of the famous 1960s Vremena Goda (Seasons of the Year) restaurant in Gorky Park—designed by Rem Koolhaas and his studio, OMA.
Garage Museum of Contemporary Art is a non-profit project of The IRIS Foundation.
Holiday hours:
December 30 open until 21h
December 31 and January 1 closed
January 2–11 11–22h
