Katya Ev
(ekaterina vasilyeva)

View of the installation for the live performance Iceberg-18010813. Blue Room, unknown house, Moscow (Ru) (inside and outside)

 

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Time of the performance: 24/7

Duration of the performance: 6 days (January 2018)

Location: unknown residential house, central area of Moscow (basement)

Performance installation: one single bed with white linens, nightstand, desk, chair, blue neon light

List of objects in the space: two sleeping pils (Melatonin 2 mg), glass of water, sleep mask, computer, access to the darkweb and instruction for its use on The HiddenWiki

Communication & access to the performance: via an ambiguous announcement on the local eBay-like website (www.avito.ru), no direct access (no opening, no visit hours)

​Conditions for the artist: publicizes the announcement, remains available 24/7 for six days to communicate with potential visitors via text, absent from the space

Conditions for the public: If someone expresses interest in the announcement, they agree on a time via text message. The only information they receive is the address. Upon arriving at the door, they are sent a code and an instruction ("-1, first door on your left"). The door is slightly ajar, and no one is present in the space—no explanations are given. The visitor then receives another text stating, "Your time is unlimited; you can lock the door from inside. There is no video surveillance, and your visit is strictly anonymous. When you leave, please send me a text and close the door behind you."

Risks for the artist: criminal case for or enabling public access to web anonymizers, in violation of a newly passed law in Russia (2018)​

Desired but unaccomplished condition for the public: equivalent to 0.1 BTC (bitcoin) made available for each visitor

Duration of visits: between 30 min and 7 hours

Participants: 31

 

 

"Hence, there is a real factor of risk inherent in much of her work, which renders it vulnerable for unexpected occurrences. Such as Iceberg -18010813. Blue Room, for example, where strangers were invited to a secret location and were given the opportunity to use the dark web, spend the night, and engage in activities that could not be subject to any kind of surveillance. What is fascinating here, as in many of Ev’s works, is that the transgression takes place in the space of the invisible – one can only imagine what went on inside that ‘safe room’, because no one knows except those who made use of it individually. It will forever remain a secret to the artist as well as the rest of us. Again it is a case of a situation which is highly provocative and risky but without shouting out loud and parading its politicality." Katerina Gregos, 2020 more >>

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"You can become a guest of the blue room, and in this case your anonymity is guaranteed. Nobody will welcome you. The door will be open, and behind it you can find a kind of a shelter [..] Take off the blinders [...]  You can open your inner vision to all fields of available information, or enclose yourself in a kind of fugitif and restful oblivion.​Take a sleeping pill and sleep or make a journey on the darknet, that’s the choice proposed to you once you enter in this isolated deaf and soothing capsule. Your time is unlimited. Recent laws that restrict web anonymizers and the access to the darknet [Russia, 2018] caused a larger social debate concerning censorship, control and anonymity. In this contexte the journey Iceberg-18010813 makes you face an ethical choice between the open knowledge and a passif gaze, between informing or defending yourself  in the society of post-truth". Ivan Isaev, 2018

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Yet, what art hardly ever does, though, is to leave the viewer alone with themselves. The publicity of a work of art is almost never questioned. If art is not preoccupied with questions of form and its own history, then it necessarily imagines itself to be public. Existing in the social field and as a platform for socially important knowledge or experience. To exist in the social field today means, above all, to be visible. An attempt to make the experience of art private, personal, and removed from the public field would probably look radical. Iceberg. Blue Room is provocative precisely because of its attempt to escape the panoptic logic of the metropolis, of visibility as such. To dare and provoke is to invite the viewer to share in the experience of anonymity. In this case, the technologies of escapism are the Tor vpn-browser or sleeping pills. Olga Deryugina, 2018 more >>

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