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Our search for ways to communicate with Soviet culture and later with the cultures of other countries. Our lectures are based on our work with the cultural heritage of the USSR, Germany, Great Britain, United States and Japan and also on our personal experience living in the USSR and traveling in other countries.
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Select Lectures Harvard University, MA; Princeton University, NJ; Columbia University, New York; School of Visual Arts, New York; NYU; University of South California, Berkeley; Goldsmith University, London ; Tokyo University, Japan… to see more
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This lecture includes our work with the cultural heritage of the USSR: the Moscow subway, the Exhibition of Economic Achievements, the Stalin skyscrapers and the mythology of that time. We've done a number of exhibitions on this theme as well as performances and interactions such as: - «Exam» -to explore the specific freedom of socialist choice; - An Excursion in the Museum of Lenin, which was, held by Lenin himself - a tendency of Soviet people to rely on primary sources only; A number of performances in Moscow subway station «Revolution Square»: - «Privatization» of the objects of «Art for the People»; - «Subbotnik»-dedicated to the disappearing traditions of volunteer patriotic work in Russia; -The people's love of «Art for the People»-an attempt to re-evaluate the attitude towards the works of art of the Socialist Epoch; - The Underground Wedding- union of a girl from our time with a man of the 30's; - The Underground Beauty Contest, Miss 38- a chance for girls of the 30's to take part in beauty contests which are so popular now in Russia.
Digital images and professional TV films will be shown: 1. «Subbotnik»-art film, Russian TV. 2. «Museum Metropolitan of Cherkashin»-this film includes, besides our performances, a documentary film highlighting the celebration of holidays in the Red Square, construction of the Moscow Metro under Stalin's initiative in the 30's and the best workers who posed for the life-size bronze statues of the «Ploschad Revolutsii».
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This lecture includes several major periods of artistic work and life of Valera & Natasha Cherkashin from 1962 to 2008.
1. 1960's to 1980's. Self posing and first art happenings in Kharkov, Ukraine. 2. 1980 - 1990. Beginning of the artistic work with photography and developing personal style. 3. 1990 - 1995. Beginning of Perestroika and the end of the Soviet epoch. Work with the cultural heritage of the USSR: the Moscow subway, the Exhibition of Economic Achievements, the Stalin skyscrapers and the mythology of that time. (exhibitions, installations, art happenings in Moscow Underground). 4. 1999-2000. Work with the cultural heritage of Europe. "Good-bye Favorite European Portraits: hello Euro" - an underwater exhibition in atrium pool of The World Bank Headquarters, Washington, DC. 5. Since 2005 work on the project "Global Underground". Digital art works and video art about subways of the World.
Digital images and video art will be shown.
We need a lap top and VCR projector for our presentations.
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This lecture includes the story about our first and unexpected trip to the United States in 1994 and later to Great Britain and Germany in 1995-1996. These trips were most conducive to developing our creative ideas. We'll talk about our first trip to «Liberty», about the way we expressed our nostalgia for the USA in Great Britain and also about the long journey our art works took under water from the shores of the Pacific Ocean, through Miami Beach and Great Britain to Hitler's Olympic Swimming pool in Berlin, where the theme «World Atlantis» was generated and developed. An artistic solution in Japan on the issue of Northern Territories; "Rapprochement of Japan and Russia", Hokkaido. In Niagara Falls solving the problem of "Wonders of the World". "Supremacist Meditation" - Mongolia.
The lecture will be illustrated by digital images and video Films: 1. "The Gift to the Pacific Ocean», 1994. 2. "The Trip to the Statue of Liberty», 1994. 3. "German Atlantis», the underwater exhibition in the Olympia Stadium, Berlin, Deutsche Welle International TV, 1996.
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This lecture is dedicated to the stormy period of the beginning of "perestroika" and beginning of underground movement at 1984-1990's. At that period, first guardedly, in flats, than more and more actively and semi-officially underground writers and poets were able to read their poems and novels to public. Often that events were combined with unofficial art exhibitions or Jazz concerts. Than they took places at art spaces or musical clubs.
The Cherkashins were actively involved in that process, they participated in many events, made friends and were acquainted with many participants and besides, took a lot of pictures. Now they have a big photo archive of that period.
This lecture is based on photo images from the archive of 1984-1990's and besides on art works, installations and art happenings made by the Cherkashins at that period.
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