Series
by Anna
Frants and Cyland MediaArtLab
Materials: Multimedia Installation
Size: Variable
New York, 2003-2015
Made
in Ancient Greece (2003-2015) is a multimedia installation that
constitutes one of the brightest and longstanding projects of the
artist. First exhibited in its entirety at the Museum Center
of
Russian State Humanitarian University in 2015, the installation
consists of several works inspired by the antiquity. Upon
ceramic
vessels, whose shape reminds us of the vases from Ancient Greece, there
is a projection of video stories from various epochs: running
athletes, frames from a family archive, scenes from a modern city
life… The selection of projected videos is conditioned by
nostalgic intentions of the author, and each work is a certain journey
through the imaginary time represented by classical forms, historical
images and creative associations. At the same time, art turns
out
to be even more remote, as it were, from the immediacy of a real event
by means of time and space and alienated because of the reflection of
life through art. The art still follows that life, but at a
certain distance. Known
and unknown, "before" and "after", the juxtaposition of big and small -
this is what structures the works of this series. The project
is
both a study and a reflection upon formal and spiritual meanings of the
contemporary artistic culture. Storm in a Tea Glass, the last
work of the series, follows the same logic, but it suddenly changes
outer and inner arrangements of the meanings: from the bottom
of
a tenfold-magnified ordinary glass (in a podstakannik) from the recent
reality of travel in the train cars of a no-longer-existing country,
there is an upcoming storm out of Greek tragedies and emerging
silhouettes of the ancient Parcae.
by Anna Frants
Multimedia Installation
Size: 150 x 70 x 150 cm
2003
by Anna Frants
Multimedia Installation
Size: 150 x 70 x 150 cm
2008
“Made
in Ancient Greece, 1928” is second piece from series of freestanding
video sculptures that introduces unlikely, from the conservative point
of view, but perfect marriage of traditional art form and moving
images/ Hollywood style that transformed later to style of Soviet
cinema of Stalin era.
Ridiculing
snobbishness of our conventional thinking, sculpture plays on
principles of our vision, time that long term memory takes to pulls out
cliches, and perfect proportions of the Greek pottery.
Footage
was shot in 1928-1936 by young cameraman Vyacheslav Alekseevich Burgov
who later became legend of Russian sound technology.
“Made
in Ancient Greece” is a
freestanding video sculpture that introduces unlikely, from the
conservative point of view, but perfect marriage of traditional art
form and moving images.
Ridiculing
snobbishness of our conventional thinking, sculpture plays on
principles of our vision, time that long term memory takes to pulls out
cliches, and perfect proportions of the Greek pottery.
by
Anna
Frants
Multimedia Installation
from
the Series “Made in Ancient Greece” Size: 250 x 70 x 170 cm New
York 2009
We are used to
seeing the depiction of running or jumping athletes on the Greek vases.
Five ancient amphorae in this installation have the same subject,
except that, instead of the familiar red or black figures, we see on
them videos based on Muybridge’s photographs “Human Figures in Motion”
taken only about a century ago. This work of the 21st century could be
called “post-post-modern” in that it proves that everything old (or
very-very old) is new again.
by
Anna
Frants
Multimedia Installation
from
the Series “Made in Ancient Greece” Size: 250 x 250 cm New
York 2013-2015
Photo:
Galya Kovalyova
At the
Ca ‘Foscari
University of Venice, 2013
BLUEST OF THE SEAS
by
Anna
Frants
Multimedia Installation 5 mini
projectors, players, video, 5 old glass vessels
Cyland MediaArtLab, 2016
Project “Bluest of the Seas”
begins with the 90-year-old Signora sharing a story from her past with
her granddaughter.
Be it bathing in the noon sun
or filled with the chirping of cicadas, the Italian town of Maranola,
which is rising up from the warm sea, is always resplendent. For its
inhabitants, the seascape became some kind of a "Magic Lantern"
(Laterna Magica) - a futuristic video with sounds and smells. It was
also the means of sustenance in hard times. During the Second World
War, women from the village used vessels made of thick green glass to
bring seawater to the village, walking for 5 kilometers with 30-liter
bottles on their heads. Seawater was then boiled down and the salt
obtained from this process was transported through the mountains to the
places where it could be exchanged for other basic necessities.
