Towards the Other

Peter and Paul Fortress, Neva Curtain Wall

“Towards the Other” video art project, organized by The Netherlands Institute in St. Petersburg and the Creative Association of Curators, focuses on the issues of the migration in the modern world. Migratory aesthetic has a great influence on the modern society: culture of every big city is a synthesis of traditions, habits and languages. Today Europe faces the problem of the reflection of the migratory culture as a social and aesthetic phenomenon in contemporary art. The exhibition in Peter and Paul Fortress consists of two projects by Mieke Bal — “Migratory Stories” and “Nothing is Missing” — and the project by the Russian platform “Chto delat?” Museum Songspiel: The Netherlands 20XX. These projects deal with the problems of migration and migratory culture, but treat it in different aspects.

Videos by Dutch video artist and cultural theorist Mieke Bal are divided into two groups: “Migratory Stories” and “Nothing is Missing ”. “Migratory Stories” are dedicated to the lives of migrants fr om different countries. The idea of this series is to show changes in social, cultural and political life of the countries with large immigration flow, where old traditions of hospitality are being superseded by the desire to protect borders. The series “Nothing is Missing” includes eight stories of women from different countries about their children who have left homeland in search of a better life.

“Museum Songspiel. The Netherlands 20XX” by the Russian “Chto Delat?/What is to be Done?” artworkgroup tells the story of the deportees that seek to claim asylum in a contemporary art museum. This is video recorded and produced performance, wh ere the action, commented by a chorus referring to the ancient Greek tragedy, shows how the undesirables are being ignored by the modern democracies.