SHINING PROSTHESES. Vladislav Efimov &
Aristarkh Chernyshov. TV-gallery. September 16 - October 10, 1998
http://www.tvgallery.ru/en/entity.asp?e_id=192
In the 80s, first in the West and then in our country,
exhibitions and museums filled with dissected, virtualized and therefore
extremely unhappy bodies. It seems that this bacchanalia withstands an elevated
balance of the Heavenly and the Earthly, which was discovered by the artists of
Renaissance. However, in its harmony one can feel a stinking smell of a
dissecting room, as it leans on the possibility to examine a human body in its
material aspects. To get a harmonious man, it was necessary to dissect a
body-monad-vessel Creator’s idea cast into. Thus, David of Michelangelo is a
straight forefather of Frankenstein and Terminator.
Having developed in the 20th century, body industry laid special stress on mass
production of various prostheses, from silicone bosoms and false teeth to
artificial kidneys. In this situation art itself became a prosthesis of
philosophy, aesthetics and ethics, that necessary and sufficient set of thought
supports and crutches of European consciousness, which turned to be almost
unclaimed by the end of the 20th century.
However, Aristarkh Chernyshov and Vladislav Efimov are not inclined to give
simple (i.e. tragic) answers to the questions put by the time. It would be more
sensible and practical to present all these shocking things as clown acts, a
sort of “stories from the crypt”. As in a classical horror film, in Shining
Prostheses these artificial parts of the body begin living their own life and
can perfectly manage without unnecessary biological additions in the form of the
organs possessing genetic memory. (It is not difficult to guess that prostheses
lack this kind of memory.) On the upper surface of the two monitors there are
rotating keys, like in winding toys. Plastic prostheses are twitching on the
screens. A human and biological aspect does not present at all in this
installation, only a fleshless viewer is involved in this frightening game with
artificial bodies.
However, these cheerful guys engaged in dissecting dummies, who are secretly
lobbied by the firms producing artificial mankind and creating artificial
intellect, have got something else in their minds. Being against all warm and
awkward things, they want to make their production human. And the artists hired
by corporations, perform by their order a buffoonery of prostheses - there is a
box with four buttons in the other part of the installation. The box is
connected with the screen by cable, and a few accountants wearing black trousers
and white shirts, are dancing to the accompaniment of barbarian music. Just
press the button, and crazy clerks will catch a saw and get to saw their head or
leg. There is nothing to be afraid of, there is no blood, no suffering, only
plastic passions.
Put by prostheses for a rainy day - this is the only thing a grandmother has got
her own. There is this stupid physicality, this damned spirituality.