5TH URAL INDUSTRIAL BIENNALE OF CONTEMPORARY ART
With a refreshing anarchist spirit, the diverse practice of Anna and Vitaly Cherepanov probes everyday details in order to create unusual connections between them. From youth culture to pop aesthetics, the artists often use urban space as ground for their artistic experiments. For example, in their long-term project Theater under Cameras, they stage playful activities in front of omnipresent surveillance cameras, with the cameras recording their actions. They are later able to retrieve these videos, since some of the camera recordings are publicly available. Their movements unexpectedly interrupt the ordinary urban landscape. What the viewer sees is not the city itself, but a performance carried out in front of the cameras in order to actively engage the viewer’s gaze in the subjects of urban life.
Simple Movements is part of Theater under Cameras. In the videos, shot in the city of Nizhny Tagil, several people, all wearing red, run, one after another, past a number of cameras; the resulting videos are then synchronized to show the running movement as if it were an endless flow. As surveillance cameras continuously impose seamless monitoring over urban life, the artists challenge the system with playfulness and humor, re-taking control of oppressive and authoritarian technologies through direct intervention.