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We're a team of eight artists, curators and critics with a broader network of art professionals on the post-soviet, post-communist and diasporic spaces. With our ability to grasp, to describe and to invert the sensable, we might be your best collaborator.

How to contact us

@transitorywhite
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Mission

 

TransitoryWhite is an online platform for the connectivity of intersected discourses of local, regional, and global perspectives on art, design and activism. TransitoryWhite is about contemporary art from the blind spots (“white spots”) from Central Asia, Caucasus and Eastern Europe.
 
Despite the territories heterogeneous cultural, historical and religious diversity, the respective countries share a fundamental experience of a realised utopia, which lasted over more than 70 years. In the turbulent time of the 20th century, the political events taking place were differing from those in Europe, which also resulted in an original set of cultural and aesthetic questions. The uniqueness of these questions was underlined by the particular term “Post-Soviet” which was coined to describe the political, economic and artistic transition from the communist regime to the democratic states. While we don’t deny that the initial generalisation was making sense, we claim for the new discussions and discourses for the art from these regions which are not tied by the restrains of its brand. We would love to show video art, bio art, art on the edge of science, communal projects, feminist initiatives, new media performances and much more on our platform and give the possibility for discovering the transnational connections and influences of the artists from these countries. Apart from that, we aim to translate and to publish the new and old texts written by the local art historians, art theoreticians and curators, which are usually expelled from the contemporary art discourse.
 
Crucial to our investigation of those regions is furthermore, the representation of artists and theoreticians from any ethnic, religious, sexual and even political minorities as an opposition to the accumulating national discourse. We’re dedicated to exploring any transnational networks as well as limits of connection within and on the borders.
 
TransitoryWhite is the White Noise of the post-post-Soviet, a constant disturbance, a random signal, cacophony, turbulence, restlessness, which - contrary to the musical White Noise - is not constant, but is in fluctuation and transition.

Contributors

Alex Ulko, art critic and art historian. Lives and works in Tashkent, Uzbekistan.

People

Irina Konyukhova

Ira Konyukhova is an artist, writer, curator, feminist activist and the founder of TransitoryWhite. In her practice, she explores the connection between female sexuality, pop-resilience, death as well as colonial technological practices. As an artist, her works have been presented on various international festivals and exhibitions, including DocLisboa, Athens Biennale, Teneriffa Espacio del Arte, Exground Film Festival e.t. Her latest article on the early 2000s Russian lesbian stars T.a.T.u. And their influence on queer politics has been recently published by Pop-Zeitschrift by University Siegen. Ira was a grantee of BS Projects Artist-in-Residence scholarship Programm and lives and works in Berlin.

Lene Vollhardt

Lene Vollhardt-Wongrowska is an artist, filmmaker, triple Gemini, and speculative pragmatist based in Berlin and London. Through various media, her work undermines the classical juxtaposition between conceptuality and corporeality. Fascinated by the cultural signification of the female body as a processing site for transfer of value and valuation, she conceives shapeshifting, liquid counter-processes in alliance with people across various backgrounds – philosophers, human rights activists, intuits, sex workers, economists, and so on.
Vollhardt's interest in the implied aesthetic of political negotiation and its proprietary tactics of performative gaslighting is reflected in her works. She explores this in transposition with the embodiment of herself as an environment and remote viewing the weather. She has exhibited and screened at many institutions: LOOP Barcelona, Vitra Museum Basel with BlessBerlin, Athens Digital Arts Festival, European Days of Culture Karlsruhe, and Toronto Arthouse Film Festival. She has received the scholarship from the German National Foundation and the Art Foundation Baden-Wuerttemberg, and her works have received the Nikolaj Kunsthal Fokus Award (DK) and Hong Kong Arthouse Award (HK).

Pavel Metelitsyn

Pavel Metelitsyn is a software engineer and developer focusing on interactive data presentation, user interfaces and web technologies. He is driven by the idea of making the information more accessible through interactivity and gamification. Working together with creative agencies he implemented interactive multimedia stations for Neues Historisches Museum, Frankfurt/Main, made a kiosk app for a permanent exhibition at Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, Frankfurt/Main. Besides that, he works with a wide range of clients from FinTech Startups to national research institutions, helping them to collect, process and present the business information. Pavel holds an M.Sc. in Mathematics.

Willi Reinecke

Willi Reinecke is a film director, writer, and researcher on Lev Vygotsky's Psychology of Art at the Institute for East European Studies (Freie Universität Berlin). He is teaching at Szondi-Institute for Comparative Literature and Institute for East European Studies. He worked as assistant director of the documentary film "Familienleben" which premiered at Berlinale 2018. The film was nominated for German Documentary Film Award and was awarded prizes at Saratov Sufferings Festival (RU) and Neisse Filmfestival (GER). He's currently working on documentary films for Institute of Contemporary Art Yerevan and Deutsche Gesellschaft e.V.

Sascia Reibel

Sascia Reibel is a graphic and product designer. Her focus lays on printed matter, especially books and posters, with a strong dedication for typography. She engages in projects within the field of culture, art, and education. She studies communication design at the University of Art and Design Karlsruhe and has also studied in the design master program of the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, China. Her work has been honoured with several awards, including «Most Beautiful Swiss Books», «Most Beautiful Books from all over the world», «Bronze Nail, ADC», as well as the «Badge of Typographic Excellence, TDC New York.

Thibaut de Ruyter

Thibaut de Ruyter is a French curator and critic who lives and works in Berlin since 2001. In the last ten years, he has organized exhibitions at Kunstmuseum Bochum, Museum Kunstpalais Düsseldorf, Museum of Applied Arts in Frankfurt, HMKV in Dortmund, EIGEN + ART Lab and CTM in Berlin, Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź and CRP / in Douchy-les -Mines. One of his latest projects is a travelling exhibition co-curated with Inke Arns for the Goethe-Institut: The Frontier that calls into question the dividing line between Asia and Europe in the former Soviet states. Since 2017 this exhibition has been exhibited in St Petersburg, Moscow, Tashkent, Almaty, Krasnoyarsk (u.A.) and will open in Erevan in May 2019. His areas of interest range from new media to spiritualism to "exhibitions that are not exhibitions". Most of his projects are related to everyday, pop or underground culture. He has been the German correspondent for the French magazine artpress since 2003.

Lioudmila Voropai

Lioudmila Voropai is a curator, art critic and media artist. She studied philosophy at the Russian State University for the Humanities (RGGU) in Moscow and New Media Art at the Academy of Media Arts (KHM) in Cologne. Her curatorial and artistic projects are mainly focused on issues related to institutional critique and fake as an artistic strategy. As an art critic, she contributes to XZ Moscow Art Magazine, Art Issue, Logos and other periodicals. She is also a translator and editor of the Russian translations of Jürgen Habermas (Legitimation Crisis), Slavoj Zizek (Parallax View), Giorgio Agamben (State of Exception), Michael Walzer (The Company of Critics) among others. Lioudmila Voropai is an adjunct professor for Media Theory and Philosophy at Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design.

Ina Hildebrandt

Ina Hildebrandt is an art historian and cultural journalist. Born in Kazakhstan, she grew up as a so-called Russian-German in the south of Germany. After spending years of total assimilation she developed a strong interest in her cultural roots. Several long travels and stays took her to Easter-Europe over Russia to Central-Asia. Thereby she started to focus more on those regions also as art historian and journalist. She lives and works in Berlin. 

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This document was last updated on March 10, 2019

12th July 2019

When there are no opputurnities, create your own Giardini

article

The first alternative art project from Azerbaijan in Venice
Asli Samadova

1st July 2019

Juggling Dinosaurs

article

The precariousness of motherhood in arts
Anna Kamay

24th June 2019

Interview with Elene Abashidze

interview

14th June 2019

Unfortunately, we cannot pay for your flight and accommodation

article

Thibaut de Ruyter

28th May 2019

Ich liebe dich!

article

Antonina Stebur

17th May 2019

Interview with Anna Vahrami

interview

23rd April 2019

Artist Portrait: Anastasia Akhvlediani

portrait

13th April 2019

Artist Portrait: Alisa Berger

article

Thibaut de Ruyter

21st March 2019

Faig Ahmed

interview

Interview geführt von Ira Konyukhova und Pavel Metelitsyn

18th March 2019

There Is Sex After Soviet Union!

article

Irina Konyukhova

11th March 2019

Interview mit Samvel Saghatelian

interview

Geführt von Ira Konyukhova

8th March 2019

Artist Portrait: Salome Dumbadze

portrait

4th March 2019

Interview mit Chinara Majidova

interview

Geführt von Ira Konyukhova

26th February 2019

East Wind - Art in the Former Soviet Republics

article

Thibaut de Ruyter
Flight by Roman Stańczak, Polish pavilion
Photo by Pavel Metelitsyn
Lc. 15: 11-32 by Alexander Sokurov, Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai, Russian pavilion
Photo by Pavel Metelitsyn
May You Live In Interesting Times, main exhibition
Photo by Pavel Metelitsyn
✕
More: Biennale Venice International exclusions angola kazakhstan ukraine poland russia equality

Unfortunately, we cannot pay for your flight and accommodation

Thibaut de Ruyter

14th June 2019

Flight by Roman Stańczak, Polish pavilion
Photo by Pavel Metelitsyn

Exclusions, polemics, peculiarities – the 58th Venice Biennale reminds us that the art world, like the new multipolar world order, is unequal and that the right to be creative in some countries has yet to become a given.

 

In Venice not all countries are equal. There are, of course, those who have a nice, more or less modern pavilion inside the Giardini. People queue and meet there to drink an espresso. The Germans (the improbable Natascha Süder Happelmann) face the French (Laure Prouvost) watched sideways by the English (Cathy Wilkes). And, according to a sometimes unclear process, the artist, their project, their curator are chosen a year in advance. All this costs a lot of money, but there is always a private sponsor (a brand of chocolate for the Germans!) to save the day and, ultimately, the show goes on. Then there are the others ...

 

First, those to be found in and around the Arsenal. Countries that rent by the square metre space to exhibit their very best. Then all those dispersed throughout the city, using a palace here or there, with the support of a lot of VIP cocktail parties trying their best to attract attention. It is worth remembering that, in 2013, it was Angola that won the Golden Lion for the best pavilion, while the country occupied a palace beside the Accademia, and that many professionals, already en route for the airport, had to admit that they had not seen it.

 

This year Kazakhstan has been preparing its big return to the biennial. Though it was present with a Central Asian pavilion from 2005 to 2011, the country has been nowhere to be found for some time (in any case, not since the unofficial pavilion of 2015, accompanied in part by Paul Ardenne). All those who know the creative dynamism of this region were delighted to find Gaisha Madanova, Bakhyt Bubikanova, Saodat Ismailova and Danil Usmanov, under the direction of Nadim Samman. But in the early days of March 2019, the axe fell: the Kazakh state will not finance the operation whereas, a few months before, it had given an agreement in principle. And Venice suddenly reveals the major dysfunctions that prevent an entire generation of artists from having the visibility it deserves, while reminding us that being creative, in some countries, is a courageous, impossible commitment.

 

Lc. 15: 11-32 by Alexander Sokurov, Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai, Russian pavilion
Photo by Pavel Metelitsyn

One of the most spectacular (but brief) initiatives is this year from Ukraine. The collective Open Group is organizing the flight over the Serenissima during the opening of an Antonov An-225, one of the largest freighters ever built (88 metres wingspan). The collective invited all Ukrainian artists wishing to take part to bring documentation of their works on the plane, making participation in the Biennale “open” to all. A good part of their project is now to obtain low altitude overflight authorizations while finding an idea for the Arsenal because the biennale rules are a little old-fashioned: you have to physically occupy a space for the duration of the event if you want to be officially part of the competition. But if the weather is good, the plane should, for a while, bring shade to the Giardini. No more, no less.

 

May You Live In Interesting Times, main exhibition
Photo by Pavel Metelitsyn

By a strange coincidence, Poland is also presenting a plane in its Giardini pavilion: a work by Roman Stańczak sketched in the 1990s and entitled Flight. This time, the flying object is in pieces, dismantled, transformed and recomposed: first and foremost, a sculpture. Above all, it is a luxurious private jet, and the interior of the Polish pavilion will be turned into a hangar for this object symbolic of the disparities between rich and poor around the world. But the deconstructed jet can also be seen as a reminder of the Smolensk accident, in which Polish President Lech Kaczyński lost his life in 2010. This affair triggered a diplomatic crisis with Russia and gave rise to a number of conspiracy theories.

 

Meanwhile, Russia, close to Germany and France, is not really at the forefront of contemporary art and has decided to showcase the Hermitage Museum and its masterpieces of past times. The country is inviting Alexander Sokurov to produce a film with an obscure but significant title, Lc. 15: 11-32, in reference to a verse from Luke’s Gospel (commissioner: Mikhail Piotrovsky). Finally, this year for the first time, Pakistan (Naiza Khan) will be present, and also Madagascar (Joel Andrianomearisoa), as well as Ghana (in a temporary pavilion designed by star architect David Adjaye at the Arsenal), Algeria. Others will remain absent or be satisfied with a nice overflight. Really, truly, in Venice, not everyone starts on an equal footing.

 

 

Translation: Chloé Baker

This article was first published in Art Press Nr. 466 under the title "Everyone is in Venice!"

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