Destined To Be Happy
02 December — 28 February 2017
Accompanying multi-channel sound installation is produced by Sergey Kasich.
Destined To Be Happy
25 April — 24 June 2017
A site-specific installation by Irina Korina
Curated by Elena Sudakova
Music by Sergey Kasich
Photographs by Natalia Tarasova
Destined to be Happy, a site-specific immersive environment created by the Moscow-based artist Irina Korina, explores an existential borderline between myth and reality, fact and fiction, theatre and life. Deprived of specific storyline the installation is a game of associations and narratives ranging from Russian fairy-tales to global technology of the future.
Korina’s intervention starts with relocating the usual entrance to the gallery making the viewer enter the space through the fire exit. The frustration of not being aware of one’s surroundings fosters the abstract uneasiness of the space operating in a situation which defies clear definition.
Using everyday mass-produced disposable materials Korina creates personal emotionally charged spaces filled with uncertain expectations and contradictory meanings. Confronted with the temporary environment punctuated by barren pine trees and inhabited by six mascot-like characters, the viewer is offered no explanation as to whether he is entering a motionless post-war zone, an abandoned construction site or a dysfunctional place of residence. The characters embody the appeal of emotional placeholders but provide little, if any, degree of comfort. Neither dead nor alive, in a state of in-between as heroes in ancient mythologies, they represent commodified versions of global phenomena such as Love, Water, Fire, and Rainbow. Their very existence in the space is one of uncertainty and absurdity. Looped soundtrack of noises and sounds that usually go unnoticed immerse the viewer in the black and white cinematic nature of this obscure reality. Destined to be happy but doomed with metaphysical anxiety and agitation, the heroes’ identity has split, suiting the generation where emojis or impassive texts are acceptable substitutes for emotional expression.
Juxtaposing concepts of global and local, epic and colloquial, physical and virtual the artist presents her continuous anthropological research into the paradoxes of human existence. In her works Korina addresses urgent issues of collective memory, cultural and social history and challenges our traditional perceptions of everyday routine.
Spatial electroacoustic piece composed exclusively for GRAD’s Destined to be Happy by the Moscow-based sound artist Sergey Kasich consists of six separate audio channels positioned in the space next to each character. Abstract, critical or ironical, noises are mixed and morphed into each another where the sound of fire becomes the sound of computer keyboard and then transforms into the sound of broken bones.
