17 December 2020, 18.00-21.00 KYIV. Kooperativ. 
Presentation of a virtual project
ARTIST IS ABSENT/ NVAIR 2020
NVAIR 2020 - International online exchange program for art residencies.
The program was founded by the NGO Congress of Cultural Activists on the basis of the Nazari Voitovich Art Residence, which has been working since 2017 and is physically located in the Ternopil region.
The aim of the program is to support young artists through international residency projects and artist exchanges with partner organizations in Germany and Slovakia.
This year, due to the pandemic, physical programs were postponed to next year, but in collaboration with Schafhof - European Center for Art Upper Bavaria, we decided to try the online format and got a successful collaboration of Ukrainian and German artists.
Artist is absent - a collaboration of artists with artificial intelligence and virtual reality.
Program curator Lucy Nychai
The presentation was made possible by the institutional support of the UCF
We all worked in different cities - Poltava, Cherkasy, Kyiv and Munich 
The only task for us was to communicate, to be ambassadors of our own locations and to develop some algorithm of comfortable cooperation.
The theme - a general framework for the project - was an inverse message, a hint at the performance of Marina Abramovich "Artist is present" - in our case - “Artist is absent”.
ARTISTS
Participants of the International exchange program of residences NVAIR 2020 (Ukraine-Germany)
Johny Linder
Munich, Germany

www.johnnylinder.de

Artist based in Germany.

Works mainly with analogue photographic materials.

Constanze Budcke
Munich, Germany

Student at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich. Lives and works in Munich and

Lviv.

Artist is absent - collaboration of artists with artificial intelligence and virtual reality.

The creative processes began with a game of co-authorship involving a random selection program to move from complete control of the authors to the intervention of artificial intelligence, which already questioned authorship and rather provoked the collective creative consciousness. Perhaps this is closest to imitating the processes of collaboration that occur in physical programs with the close interaction of artists.
In the process, it was determined that the main idea for working within the project should be to find and study the processes of creation, which can interfere with outside activity and reflection on these processes.
Each artist had their own, and quite different, themes with which they worked before. These are the interaction of material and form, the transformation of the visual and the impact of time, conflicts and environmental disasters, practices with digital tools and interest in artificial intelligence. All this, intersecting in the process, turned into a project space in Mozilla Hubs.
The central hall was designed by Vartan Markaryan according to the curator's plan in cooperation with all participants of the program. This is a virtual model of our real program.
In the middle of 4 empty chairs is an image from the real central workshop of the Residence. An additional advantage in the virtual space is the difficult mobility, only regular users can feel comfortable there. There are 4 corridors in the central gallery, which lead to isolated halls with projects of individual artists. In general, the room is a virtual image of the real situation in quarantine as a whole.
The meaning of such a framework was to conduct the program without being present in the designated location, because it is an INTEGRAL component of our programs. It is also a new experience for Nazar Voitovich Art Residence, as the presence of artists was the main value for the location, namely the intervention in the local context, research and coexistence with the community.
We did not have a holistic vision of the program, we only had confidence in mutual interest. The tools for the organization were ZOOM, Google Drive and Telegram. The role of the curator was reduced to facilitating the process. Each project participant became a co-creator of the algorithm of cooperation, decisions on timing and deadline, the choice of location for the presentation of the project.
Lucy Nychai
Curator
Often work at the residence is a study of the place. But under quarantine, we are restricted in our movements. Realizing this, we first decided to try to be each other's "eyes". It was to be an experiment in transforming the words of one artist into images created by another artist. At the same time, we wanted to test how big the error of converting one information medium to another is. Over time, we decided that it could be not just words, but any materials (photos, videos, sounds, text), and the theme of our work will be "Art without an artist." At first, this theme appeared in the sense of the impossibility of physically visiting the residence, but later we came to the question of the possibility of reducing the artist's influence on the work. I wondered if modern technology could make art for an artist, or if it was just another new tool instead of a brush and canvas.
Bohdan Svyrydov
Artist, participant of the program
Presentation program

We will share our own completely new experience of how in quarantine we survived and learned to create in virtual reality in the maximum possible connection at a distance. During the presentation, you will be able to fully immerse yourself thanks to VR glasses in the mini world created by the residents of the program.

18:00-19:00
Vernissage. Presentation by curator Lucy Nychai online residence ideas. Instruction on the use of VR glasses and a map of the exhibition
19:00-20:00
The Artists Talks from the authors of the exhibition in the format of the ZOOM conference. 
20:00 - 21:00
Communication and walks through the exhibition in VR glasses
Organizers and partners
NGO Congress of Cultural Activists
cultural.activists@gmail.com

Lucy Nychai
Curator NVAIR program
liudmyla.nychai@gmail.com
Tech support Pangram

Video content FEELM Production

Place of presentation
Kiev
Street Sichovykh Striltsiv 23A

Kooperativ HUB Amphitheater

4th floor

The presentation was supported



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