What is a future but a stretch of the present
“Thinking Hands, Touching Each Other”
The 6th Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art
Yekaterinburg, Russia, 2021
In this two part public installation, the iconic constructivist Main Post Office in the city of Yekaterinburg - previously named as “House of Communications”, by architects Konstantin Solomonov and Veniamin Sokolov completed in 1934 - welcomes the visitors and the public with the text “Во все завтра зпт в которые мы предпочитаем не верить тчк” (To all the futures comma we choose not to believe in stop).
While the material used for the text, sequins made of black squares, is a reference to Malevich’s prototypical painting “Black Square” (1915), the adaptation of telegraph punctuation in the text refers to the origins of long distance written communication style from the past century as well as the history of the building as the main telegraph station for of Sverdlovsk.
At first glance the sentence seems as a nostalgic statement about failed possibilities. However one can see the act of believing also as a destructive act, one that sets the course for accelerating the effect of the entropic force on the object of belief, bringing it rapidly to its end. Through the act of disbelief, the futures become not states of failure but potential destinations to be arrived at.
The second part of the work consists of an installation inside the Post Office, a pavilion built with colored PVC stripes, consisting a desk, a chair, a frame and a post box labeled “2121”. This is a room for contemplation and writing and the visitor is invited to write a letter that will be delivered to the preferred address by the Russian Post in 100 years, in 2121. Taking its cue from Soviet Time Capsules, many of which were unearthed on the centenary of the October Revolution in 2017, the work aims to develop the idea by removing the “open to the public” aspect of time capsules and containing it as a service offered by the Russian Post with a delivery address specified by the person writing the letter. The letters will be collected from the Post Box in the installation and will be kept in a museum archive for 100 years, then to be given back to the Post Office for delivery in 2121. Those that are delivered will remain in the private use of the addressee. Only the returning envelopes that could not be delivered will be sent back to the museum for research and exhibiting purposes for the consideration of the museum staff.
By removing the public access of the letters the work remains as a service confining its scope to a private connection of individuals with the addressee, be it other individuals, companies, or institutions. As the text outside aims to reverse the nostalgic relationship between future and belief, this service also creates another turn by allowing a personal communication in the future by replacing the public with private.
