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Yanka Smetanina

 artist  |  researcher  | curator 

Texts

«Silence is silver, the word is gold». No, the word is not despicable metal, and not ore. The word is stone. Heavy, weighty, heavy, or light, porous. Warm, warmed by the sun, rough, rough. Or cold, sharp, faceted, sparkling. You can throw words. You can write a book. You can build a house from stones, or you can break a window in this house. For me, stones are words that form texts, they are almost like living beings. They are filled with meaning and have their own face. It is no coincidence that, probably, while I was preparing this installation, I discovered that there were almost no stones left in the city, sometimes you can find somewhere lie fragments of asphalt, pieces of road surface or bricks. Plain and devoid of history. «Internal organs», 2011, Factory, Moscow, Russia, 4th Moscow biennale of modern arts. 2015, Russisch-österreichisches Kulturforum.

«Internal organs», 2011, Factory, Moscow, Russia, 4th Moscow biennale of modern arts. 2015, Russisch-österreichisches Kulturforum.

During all my life in Moscow, and living here for a long time I (probably not only me) have had to forge my registration. The situation is very simple. By nature, I'm pretty much the same law-abiding citizen, but to persuade the landlords, relatives and friends to register me for a month, three, well, six months, much easier and more realistic than a year. At the same time, a health policy for my child give only if I have registration is for one year and not less. So I take my pen in my hand. The project is a lined up photographs with macro photos of forged dates from registrations. The photos are lined up in chronological order, so you can trace the evolution of the forgeries and they kind of represent a numerical time line. While in the past the dates were inscribed manually and had to be forged by hand as well, the perfection of the technology now makes it possible to perfect the forgeries. Near the end is the last date of the present time, followed by several blank sheets of the same shape, as a symbol of the fact that this forgery will continue in the future, until the imperfect laws of our country ensure that forgeries are not resorted to.

When the number of places I had lived in Moscow ceased to stick in my mind, I decided to mark them on a map and at some point I found myself almost at the starting point. "That's it, the end," I thought at first, but then I gathered my strength and moved on to the next round. Ouroboros, a snake biting its tail, a symbol of my endless circling around Moscow, a symbol of the whole migration which couldn't be stopped, however much no matter how much one would like it. MIGRATIO POTENTIA EST

Line of life

Words-hustle

Migratio potentia est

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