The world is going through a time of changes concerning the ways of life, its rhythm and form. We are faced with having to comply with a set of rules that have become part of our everyday life - both offline and online. YouTubers, bloggers and TikTokers create thousands of tutorials (lessons) ranging from how to wash your hands to how to hammer in a nail correctly. Because of the pandemic, a large number of rules were created where visual art plays a central role. Designers create graphics and pictures that tell and show how to behave within society. Everyone calls for keeping a "distance", self-isolating or respecting curfews, and these are just some of the new rules which surround us. According to forecasts compiled by the World Health Organisation (WHO), the pandemic will not be over soon.
Public spaces have been subdivided, providing each individual a safe space in the radius of 1,5m. After one year of pandemic measures sketched out boundaries on the ground seem to be unnecessary. The division of space has been internalised.
Art based on guidance for action first appeared in the 1920s. Marcel Duchamp wrote instructions for the creation of ready-mades, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy gave instructions for graphic designers to replicate his works, Yoko Ono wrote instructions for creating art and living works. Within the framework of "Do it" by Hans Ulrich Obrist, for 27 years, instructions have been created by artists around the world and implemented in museum spaces.
Artists were encouraged to enter the online space and take part in an unregulated exhibition that comprises of text, photo, graphics on the Internet. Those art instructions/scripts can be recreated by any reader/viewer, in any unexpected place. Artists give viewers an opportunity to interpret the artist’s work by their own imagination or through its creation within the framework of existing possibilities. This creates a favourable atmosphere for the multiplicity of interpretations of the work, taking into account the viewer’s location and access to materials.
Credits: Charlotte Dietrich, Jana Rapp, Nellya Dzhamanbaeva
Project: Nellya Dzhamanbaeva (Capacity Building Foundation) - curator; Florian Coppenrath and Charlotte Dietrich (Novastan.org)
Web-design: Errata Designs
English translations: Molly Arnold
Web-design: Errata Designs
English translations: Molly Arnold
