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In 2017, Sid Iandovka & Anya Tsyrlina presented the work Yet Untitled 1993–2017 in the exhibition “Silicon is a Grey Crystal” at the Haus der elektronischen Künste in Basel, Switzerland. This piece consisted of a screening of their film phenomenon within a virtual reality (VR) environment—a medium the artists are increasingly interested in because of its capacity to immerse viewers and to generate imagery as source material for future works. Here we’ve included the artists’ text from the exhibition, as well as documentation of the interior VR perspective, the film phenomenon in its entirety, and accompanying stills. 
–Herb Shellenberger


Sid Iandovka & Anya Tsyrlina

Yet Untitled 1993–2017

Analog video transferred to HD. Presented as VR/Loop 
“Silicon Is a Grey Crystal”
Haus der elektronischen Künste, Basel, Switzerland, 2017
Curated by Boris Magrini

Proust wrote that memories are virtual in the sense that they are “real without being actual, ideal without being abstract.”

We invited viewers to encounter this analog video, presented “as is” on a distant screen in a wasteland of 360-degree VR space (with the awkward and uncomfortable virtual reality set being an important part of the experience).

The installation was born out of several attempts over the years to work with the surviving material from the videotapes of schwimmen, our teenage experimental music collective from Siberia, active in the early ’90s. It felt absurd to re-edit this material from the vantage point of the present, establishing a coherent diegetic space of a “documentary” and attempting the theoretical deconstruction of culture that inherently resists such attempts.

We used VR as a means of transmission for these minor and marginal practices, and forms of life “outside” of any discursive formation, and also to highlight the gaps between means and contexts. The “pre-modern” protagonists and makers of the original analog video join the contemporary spectator in the act of looking, negotiating what is there to be seen and how to look at it—only to realize why the present makes the past seem so urgent.

–Sid Iandovka & Anya Tsyrlina








phenomenon

schwimmen


Next up:  a minor piece of damage by Sid Iandovka




Founded in 2020, Three Fold is an independent quarterly based in Detroit that presents exploratory points of view on arts, culture, and society in addition to original works in various media, including visual art, literature, film and the performing arts. We solicit and commission contributions from artists, writers, and activists around the world. Three Fold is a publication of Trinosophes Projects, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization located in the historic Eastern Market neighborhood in downtown Detroit. Click here to check out Three Fold’s events page and view a schedule of the publication’s on-site activities.

Three Fold recognizes, supports, and advocates for the sovereignty of Michigan’s twelve federally-recognized Indian nations, for historic Indigenous communities in Michigan, for Indigenous individuals and communities who live here now, and for those who were forcibly removed from their Homelands. We operate on occupied territories called Waawiiyaataanong, named by the Anishinaabeg and including the Three Fires Confederacy of Ojibwe (Chippewa), Odawa (Ottawa), and Bodewatomi (Potawatomi) peoples. We hold to commit to Indigenous communities in Waawiiyaataanong, their elders, both past and present, and future generations.