OF PATTERNS, ARCHIVES, AND RESISTANCE

The world is one big archive, which consists of sub-archives. They are either constantly being added to or reorganized into new archives.

"we live among archives, we live within a collection. In fact, virtually all the objects we engage with are described, characterized, or somehow modeled"

In other words, the emergence of conceptual art in the Soviet Union can be seen as a form of resistance to ideological art, which is the official art of the time. Olga Shmagina writes about the same in her thesis The Work Of Irina Nakhova In The Context Of Late Moscow Conceptualism.

Since it is believed that conceptualism in non-conformist Soviet culture have originated and flourished in the capital, it later became known as Moscow Conceptualism, a name adopted after the publication in 1979 of an article published by Boris Groys under the title "Moscow Romantic Conceptualism". Notable among the most famous representatives of Moscow Conceptualism was Ilya Kabakov. "One of the cross-cutting themes in Kabakov's art was emptiness, doors opening into white, a blank sheet at the end of albums about ten characters, white paintings.

"Moscow conceptualist art served as not only a form of protest but also a means of escape from artistic and personal constraints characteristic of the period" (9)

In the USSR, conceptualism emerged around the late 1960s and held the status of "unofficial" art. This is precisely why such art could only be exhibited in unorthodox places, such as communal flats, studios, attics of residential buildings, etc. One could say that the artistic community became hermetically sealed. Artists simultaneously found themselves performing several roles: they produced art, consumed it, and criticized it. "Art was directed inwards, with themes for artistic exploration revolving around issues of more interest to the artists concerned". (8)

Working on my archive and structuring it, I consistently revisited the definitions of conceptualism and aimed to reinterpret them. It is widely acknowledged that the primary distinction of conceptualism from the other 20th-century art movements lies in the dominance of the idea over form and material. Conceptual art objects can take on many forms, including readymades, documentation such as photographs, video materials, tables, diagrams, and text. Another approach often used in conceptualism is placing an object in an unconventional for it context to create a new meaning or perspective.

Another example of a productive form of knowledge organization are the works of Batia Suter, a contemporary Swiss-Dutch artist known for her innovative approach to image-making and her exploration of visual archives. Her practice involves collecting, arranging, and manipulating existing images from various sources to create new and often surreal visual narratives

Valentin Dyakonov in his short text for Anna Titova’s exhibition Exchange Point explains that artist’s engagement with archives is a relatively new trend, notably observed in art history through works like Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas. The use of archival elements has allowed artists to delve into “the archaeology of knowledge” and historical image mediation using a critical narrative. In this way, the archive resembles a collage, both highlighting the composite nature of visuals influenced by Frankenstein's approach. (5)

In ancient Greek mythology, Mnemosyne is the goddess personifying memory. Mnemosyne Atlas is dedicated to the theme of memory and its reconstruction. Warburg assumes that memory generally chooses the instantaneous image rather than narrative as its mediator. The Mnemosyne Atlas itself, on the other hand, is a history of the symbolic expressions of image memory. (4)

In recent years, there has been a new understanding of knowledge organization thanks to Didi Huberman's work on the productivity of Aby Warburg's Mnemosyne Atlas. The atlas stands out for its non-linear spatial organization, its varied ways of navigating and interpreting the connections between objects, its ability to work with groups of images, and its associative montage to combine heterogeneous elements in the same space.

Today, one can discuss how the concept of the archive and archival practices have significantly expanded and transformed over the past decades.

sympathizing

grafting

recollecting

transforming

reassembling

mobilizing

reenacting

spinning threads

repairing, 

allegorizing,

commoning

reentangling

parallelizing

ghosting

metabolizing

shapeshifting

transposing

suspending

displacing

retemporalizing

Archive or Memory Map

Whereas the traditional notion of archiving is to be understood “as the inward movement of collecting things: finding bits and pieces, bringing them together, guarding them in a safe and stable space”, in my case archiving means “to actually use and consume things, to keep them in, or bring them into circulation, and throw them forth, into a shared and distributed process that operates based on diffusion, not consolidation, not memory, and towards creation, not conservation”. (7) In other words, my archive is a living organism that is in constant motion.

In my work, the quilt not only serves as a physical object but also acts as a container for the archive I am presenting. At this point, I would describe my project as a landscape archive, because the quilt functions as a tangible space to preserve memories, carefully documented events, and artworks, recorded, collected, and created to resemble again and again how different forms of resistance were and still are important tools for changing the status quo.

Quilting activism today comes in different forms. Some programs teach quilting skills in exchange for economic support. Quilters often create quilts for those in need or donate them to raise funds for community programs. Books like Katherine Bell's Quilting for Peace offer quilters a range of charitable causes to support. (6)

Another more recent example is the AIDS Memorial Quilt. In the 1980s and 1990s, the AIDS Memorial Quilt emerged as a powerful symbol of remembrance, activism, and solidarity in the face of the AIDS crisis. Panels of the quilt were created by friends, families, and communities to memorialize loved ones lost to the disease. It served as a visual representation of the human toll of AIDS and a call for awareness, compassion, and action. (5)

In the 1960s and 1970s, during the Civil Rights Movement in the United States a significant example of quilting as a form of solidarity and resistance within the African-American community was The Freedom Quilting Bee. It was a cooperative quilting project established in 1966 by a group of African-American women in the rural community of Alberta, Alabama. The Freedom Quilting Bee aimed to create economic self-sufficiency and financial independence for African-American women in the region.

For example, during the Women's Suffrage Movement in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, quilts were used to convey messages and advocate for women's right to vote. Suffrage banners and slogans were often incorporated into quilt designs, symbolizing unity, perseverance, and the fight for equality. (3)

I am interested in what role the quilting played in social and political movements, as a tool for activism, resistance, and ultimately as an art practice.

In his essay, The Smooth And The Striated, written in 1987 Deleuze describes the practice of creating a patchwork quilt as a mode of organization characterized by the intermingling of heterogeneous elements. It involves the coming together of diverse parts to create a unified whole and signifies a form of connectivity that resists rigid hierarchies and fixed structures. It is a flexible and adaptable system that allows for multiplicity and variation.

Perhaps, it is precisely due to this lack of diversity that the realization that a vast number of people were covered with the "same blanket" and spent their time in “similar interiors” evokes some special emotions in me.

By the mid-80s when I was born, my family did not have a tradition of sewing. I'm not sure why; perhaps it was because we lived in the capital of the USSR, and traditional crafts were disappearing rapidly in the big cities. Moreover, the influence of Western fashion instilled a taste for modern things in people, leading them to get rid of anything old that reminded them of the Soviet Union. Nevertheless, I do remember that children's blankets often were quilted or made from a particular type of fabric called "baika", a type of mass-produced fabric.

The history of the origin of the quilting is very rich. Quilting practice was common among different cultures and peoples. The formation of the tradition of sewing items of clothing from leftover scraps of fabric began as early as the Middle Ages. Traditional Russian quilting often involved intricate embroidery and textile artistry, with a focus on creating functional pieces like bed covers, tablecloths, and clothing. These works showcased a blend of various techniques, patterns, and designs, reflecting regional aesthetics and local symbolism.

“Patchwork, in conformity with migration, whose degree of affinity with nomadism it shares, is not only named after trajectories but "represents" trajectories, becoming inseparable from speed or movement in an open space.” 

Deleuze, Gilles; Guattari, Felix. 14.1440: The Smooth And The Striated, A. Thousand Plateaus. London: 1987

The Quilt

My collection, which I call an archive, encapsulates different forms of resistance. In some cases, I become a passive observer, in some cases an investigative detective, and sometimes a witness to my own life.

Part of my archive is documentation of the Umbrella Revolution in Hong Kong in 2014. The resistance movement did not achieve its goals either, but it was a special experience for me, not only because of the scale of the protests but also because of the organization and relationships inside the movement. I took part in the protests in Moscow before, but it was nothing like what I got to see in Hong Kong. 

Here I would like to elaborate a little bit on the form of collective resistance in politics. The authors of the book Inventing the Future Nick Srnicek and Alex Williams believe that despite the popularity of the theme of resistance in various fields, it is often associated with nostalgia.

Resistance works on different scales and acts of resistance may take individual and collective forms. Resistance can have also multiple goals and directions and it would be a mistake to dismiss the complexity of such acts within the social order. 

Resistance has many other forms besides physical and material, such as symbolic behavior. Further on in the section about patchwork quilts, I give examples of this kind of resistance. These include Women’s Suffrage Movement (3) which used quilting techniques to leave messages and support women with Suffrage banners and slogans, and The AIDS Memorial Quilt in Washington, D.C. made in memory of people with AIDS. As much as resistance can manifest itself by speaking up, it can as well in certain contexts manifest itself through silence.

The topic of resistance is very broad. It “has received increasing attention in disciplines such as anthropology, cultural studies, geography, political science, and women's studies”. (1) In their article “Conceptualizing Resistance” Hollander and Einwohner write that although there are many different phenomena that are described as resistance, “there is little consensus on the definition of resistance.” (2) When trying to outline its main characteristics, they conclude that at the center of these disagreements on definitions lay such categories as recognition and intent.

The word "resistance" has its origins in the Latin language. It can be traced back to the Latin verb "resistere," which is a combination of "re-" (meaning "against") and "sistere" (meaning "to stand"). "Resistere" essentially means "to stand against" or "to oppose." It originally referred to the act of opposing or withstanding something, often in a physical sense. Over time, the concept of resistance has expanded beyond the physical realm to encompass various contexts, such as social, political, and more.

In my research I explore the various symbolic and historical layers of places and events from the past and the present. These traces of the events and places have been revised and reorganized into an archive. The origin of certain archival materials is not authentic, yet it is presented as authentic. The work aims to identify forms of resistance by combining multiple visual elements such as images, graphics, sculptures, videos, and texts into one archive.

Tracing Resistance