public space performance (“action”, Ukrainian “акція”), 2015
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Participants: Ievgenii Kazak, Lisa Korniichuk, Taras Prognimak, Kateryna Pryymak, Mariia Tkachenko, Natalia Yurchushun and others.
Broadcasted on TV Channel “Odessa” as a part of “TV has attacked us all our lives, now we fight back. Now we make our own TV/Nam June Paik” project (documentation).
Tiananmen Square Pacman, 2015
video created with temporal Google Maps service, 2’47”
April Fools’ service from Google provides to play a classical arcade on map. However, it doesn’t pay any attention to the fact, that urban spaces are not only a place for users’ peaceful experience. Streets are the place for violence protests, battles, and finally, historical events. The video shows the Pacman situated on the North of Tiananmen Square and nearby, including Chang’an Avenue, where the Tank Man shot was made. Pacman represents protester with his struggle and defeat.
Tiananmen Square Pacman from Ievgenii Kazak on Vimeo.
‘Tiananmen Square Pacman’ aims to remind about Google’s support for Chinese Internet censorship. At the moment materials about Tiananmen Square protests are not available in the People’s Republic of China.
Phone Sex for Web Crawlers, 2015
audio record of search engine spam, voiced by Google Translate and sent via Skype, 2015, 22’26”
Phone Sex for Web Crawlers (English ed., full version) from Ievgenii Kazak on Vimeo.
Search engine spam (also known as spamdexing, search engine poisoning, Black-Hat SEO, search spam or web spam) is “the deliberate manipulation of search engine indexes”, states Wikipedia. These texts are designed to meet the requirements (or, better to say, desires) of web crawlers, robots created to index the Internet. This makes spamdexing similar to speeches of phone sex workers, obligated to satisfy their clients.
The material for the final work is a piece of found art – the real pornographic search engine spam found in the social network. As the search spam is based on the existing web search queries, it surprisingly contains not only usual pornographic tags, but also a variety of phrases concerning everyday life, or even political and philosophical problems.
Phone Sex for Web Crawlers is the form of modern personification, imaginary subjectivisation of objects of our everyday life in times of premonition of artificial intelligence
The original work is in Russian. Continue reading Phone Sex for Web Crawlers (2015)
From “Voodoo-TV” series, 2015
The installation consist of Soviet-era TV-sets connected to the aerials shaped like veves – the voodoo symbols designed to contact loas, the spirits mediating between humans and Supreme Creator Bondye. Aerials, placed under the ground in the coal mine replica of the pavilion #13 of Kyiv VDNKh, are not able to get any waves leaving the ritual with no answer.
This use of technics reminds us about the power of TV screen which propagandists can, among others, use to to turn audience into zombies. While noise is all to be receipt by aerials the fellings of forlornness and alienation created by mass media are emphasised.
Participants: Ievgenii Kazak, Nadiia Smirnova, Maria Strelchuk
GOGOLFEST-2015, Kyiv, Ukraine
‘TV-Magick’ series is both art and activism in the situation of post-revolution Ukraine. Shift from the street battles to foreign affairs leaved the citizens with no hope of direct impact on the process. This is similar to the situation of prehistoric societies, defenseless in front of nature. Turn to magic seems to be rational in this situation. If the aim is unattainable, you can try to manipulate with image of the aim.
Major works from the series are based on the record “Crimean speech” by Russian President Vladimir Putin. That speech was a point of no return that cynically determined all future events. For other works were used broadcasts from Russian TV.
Continue reading ‘TV-Magick’ series (2014-2016)
Genesis P-Orridge Kolkhoz
Whither Waters Run, 2014
performance in the public space (“action”, Ukrainian “акція”)
materials: 450 paper ships, made from electoral agitation
Куди вода / Whither Waters Run from Ievgenii Kazak on Vimeo.
The sence of action is the rafting down the Dnipro river of 450 paper ships – one for each peoples deputy, member of Ukrainian parliament. The ships were made from the agitation materials, distributed in Kyiv. Holded on November 2, the week after the elections, action signified the temporal nature of political programs. Created only for the election, they always go away after the election.
Place and time of the action (early in the cold morning far away from city center) disposed the participation of broad masses, preventing activistic and mass-media effects, so political message was addressed directly to certain audience and random witnesses.
‘Whither Waters Run’ – is a part of traditional ritual phrase, preventing the negative effects of nightmare. Here this is only the statement of the direction of political programs after the elections.
Now The Coca-Cola Company offers to write your name on the can in Ukraine as well. Although there is no abuse by corporation, but we remind about painfulness of nomination.
