ILMIRA BOLOTYAN

The exhibition will consist of the representations of young artists’ diaries. Each artist finds a suitable form of keeping notes made for “personal use”. The format of the exhibition - a sort of a special department in a library with a restricted access (like Soviet special departments where they kept the issues that were considered potentially threatening to people’s ideological views). Each object will be catalogued. “Psycho” project is a library-exhibition where personal diaries written by our contemporaries are exposed anonymously next to the technological era diaries (video and online diaries) and artistic diaries. Addressing this form of expression in an epoch when any social network account becomes a diary will allow us to separate personal texts from public ones, profound ones and the ones that are usually hidden - from superficial and utilitarian. Keeping the diary is a process for yourself, about yourself or through yourself, it’s always unfinished, always a draft, you can always go back to your diary to rewrite, complete or destroy it.

Notes made “for personal use”, objects or just some material evidence represent the facts, and often not the external facts, but the facts of inner life (from dreams to torments, from fixations of fantasies to active imagination). Many times the line between the diary and the art object is blurred and that transition is exactly what we would like to demonstrate in “Psycho”. The documentation of identity becomes the document of our epoch. Identity and exclusiveness of the diary transform it into a unique object of utter interest not only for researchers of collectors, but for anyone from the audience who would like to experience the continuity of either their own or someone else’s “self”.

In this “imaginary” (existing only during the exhibition) library the diaries will be presented anonymously but with the description of professions, occupations, age of authors - professional (made by writers, journalists, philologists) and “unprofessional”, including “naive” authors. The library-exhibition will become a real challenge for the visitor, who will have to step deep inside the private life of strangers instead of taking a quick glance at some artworks. Unlike the usual exhibition, the library format requires some long procedures and effort from the visitor who wants to get into someone else’s soul: in order to receive the chosen diary a visitor has to go through a series of proceedings (catalogue search, filling out the form, managing the diary, remaining silent, and also - taking the shoes off and putting the white gloves on - as the place they are situated in is sacred and the diaries they touch - are intimate,
sacred). At the same time the objects regain their exclusiveness: every visitor gets a diary for his personal, exclusive use for a desired period of time (there’s only one limit - the exhibition working hours).

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Ilmira Bolotyan

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