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Välkommen till en presentation och ett samtal med konstnären Mikhail Tolmachev. Genom projektet The Feat kommer han att diskutera sin konstnärliga praktik som engagerar sig i frågor om sanning och verklighet i relation till historiska händelser och manifestationer av systemiskt och legitimt våld. Han kommer att berätta om samtida ryska krigsmålares verk och hur skapandet av en militaristisk myt stöds av bildkonstverket. Inledning och moderering av Maria Lind och Magnus Ericson.

Mikhail Tolmachev arbetar med arkivhistoria, berättelser från vittnen, materiella bevis och med hjälp av mixed media, inklusive film, fotografi och installationer, för att avslöja maktstrukturer relaterade till framställning av sanning. Han är intresserad av konstens roll

The Feat, stillbild, Mikhail Tolmachev, 2021

som ett verktyg som å ena sidan undergräver denna verklighet, och å andra sidan blir ett instrument för propaganda. När krigsmålare skapar, agerar de inom ett symboliskt utrymme samtidigt som de refererar till verkliga händelser. Dessa konstverk skapar samtida heroiska myter som presenteras som verkliga händelser.

Läs mer om Mikhail Tolmachevs arbete nedan (på engelska). Maria Lind medverkar online.

The Feat: Fictions and realties är ett evenemang inom projektet The Prism of the Past: An exchange on critical cultural heritage.

English

The Feat: Fictions and realties

Date: Wednesday 25 January 2023
Time: 5.00 – 6.30 pm
Place: IASPIS/Konstnärsnämnden
Address: Maria Skolgata 83, Stockholm
Language: English
Free admission, no reservation needed

Welcome to a presentation and a conversation with artist Mikhail Tolmachev. Through the project The Feat he will discuss his artistic practice that engages with issues of truth and reality in relation to historical events and manifestations of systemic and legitimate violence. He will talk about the work of contemporary Russian battle painters and how the creation of a militaristic myth is supported by the work of visual art. Introduction and moderation by Maria Lind and Magnus Ericson.

Mikhail Tolmachev works with archival history, testimonies of witnesses, material evidence, using mixed media, including film, photography and installations to reveal the power structures related to production of truth. He is interested in the role of art as a tool that, on the one hand, undermines this reality, and on the other, becomes an instrument of propaganda. While creating, battle artists, act within symbolic space while referring to real events. These works of art create contemporary heroic myths that pass off as real events.

In his research based and often durational projects Mikhail Tolmachev focuses on the material forms that can reflect histories in fragments, imprints, echoes and other forms of re-mediations of experiences and events. In The Feat he is mixing re-enactment, documentary and essay forms in order to expose the ways in which fictions and realties coexist.

The focus of the project The Feat is a military operation that was a part of one of the first full-scale wars waged by Russia after the collapse of the USSR. In the wake of this war, Putin came to power. The subject of Mikhail Tolmachev research is the process of creating a diorama dedicated to this event, which is presented in the Airborne Forces Museum in Ryazan at the largest Airborne Academy in Russia. This project explores the tension between artistic and political reality of the diorama.

Maria Lind participates online.

The Feat: Fictions and realties is an event within the project The Prism of the Past: An exchange on critical cultural heritage.

Mikhail Tolmachev works with sound installations, videos, photographs, and spatial interventions. In his practice, he looks into the constantly evolving status of a document and politically mediated production of truth and reality. He collaborates with writers, historians, and artists to explore fractures of representation and the violent history of visibility. Recent shows include Dusseldorfphoto+ (2022), Luleå Biennale (2022), Ural Biennale (2021), Museum of Modern Art, Moscow (2020), State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow (2019). He lives and works in Leipzig and Berlin. Mikhail Tolmachev is currently doing a residency with Mint in Stockholm until the middle of February 2023.

The Prism of the Past: An exchange on critical cultural heritage is a project and platform for exchange between artistic practitioners, researchers, historians and curators within the fields of craft, architecture, design, art and cultural production at large. The purpose is to establish connections and to develop exchange of competence, experience and knowledge around “critical cultural heritage”. The project develops through a series of online and physical meetings that started in 2022, aiming at in various ways highlight and discuss examples of practice and theory. The Prism of the Past: An Exchange on Critical Cultural Heritage is initiated as a collaboration between Maria Lind, Cultural Counsellor at the Embassy of Sweden in Moscow and Magnus Ericson, Head of Applied Art at IASPIS.