Curator of the project: Gleb Glonti
Curator of the exhibition: Peter Kirn
Curator of the public program: Anna Titovets

Exhibition architectural design and project design — Bureau Logic

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art and Kotä present 11 artists from Switzerland, Germany, Argentina, and Russia who explore the present moment through the language of sound and technological art. The exhibition is located on five floors of the MMOMA Education Center. The project will be complemented by an extensive in-person and online public program, which will cover topics such as new media art, eco-empathy, non-institutional initiatives, and other issues.

EMA Expo is an ongoing project to explore media art, sound art, audio-visual and digital art. In 2021, the platform brings together curators from Russia and Europe. The museum becomes an arena for information and manifested dynamic engagement — the sublimation of the digital world into the physical. Sculpture, digital media, sound, and bio-art are embodied in MMOMA’s space, as virtual states of being become object in tangible form.

The exhibition focuses on «superfluidity» — artists reframing electronic media in the midst of crisis and change, as human and technology merge in fragile and unpredictable ways. Artists can recede into the background and embrace their own mutable post-human state, taking on new forms, virtual presence, and reimagined selves. If perceived time slows, technologies in the hands of creative invention can accelerate it — allowing artists to evolve faster than the catastrophes they face. Electronic media art has already passed through phases of self-aggrandizing novelty, self-referential irony, and even retromania. But now these media fuse with the cultural language, a vehicle to impact change in the larger society. The new shapes are liquid, not flat; connected, not isolating.

Boris Shershenkov’s research examines the emergence of the first forms of metabiological or technobiological life. The viewer will see samples of electroflora collected in various districts of St. Petersburg, and will be able to hear the electromagnetic manifestations of their vital activity via radio transmission.

Sarah Kuhlman explores various aspects of bias as an insurmountable phenomenon that distorts perception of information and imbalances collective knowledge.

Imperfect Simulations by Anna Titovets Intektra investigates the concept of time in today’s digital world, with a related inquiry into Threat Simulation Theory. That work by Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo suggests that dreams, rather than being an accidental by-product of evolution, might have originated as a way to simulate real dangers. Revonsuo imagines nightmares as psychological training for the sleeping mind, providing essential experience.

Byrke Lou explores the history of lore describing the Milky Way galaxy in the night sky, and reflects on the ability to distinguish fact from fiction. The artist’s input at the MMOMA Education Centre will expand on her research into the topic of the galaxy as a human object. Her objects are produced through a casting process, glass objects recalling hot liquid poured into water; the exhibition at MMOMA traces an ongoing multi-city project that will culminate in printed matter output.

The installation Local Authority by the Aebersold x Handberg group describes the city as a living organism in which various processes take place between the government and the townspeople. First conceived as a site-specific installation for the Langenthal, Switzerland Stadschreiber (city records office), it is an abstracted play of civic participation and authority, reproduced in shifting movements of water, light, and acoustics.

Lucas Gutierrez views the process of waiting and narcissism as a constantly evolving form of human existence in space and time. In an assembly of transmedia pieces, we see his various takes on liquid, post-digital selfhood, as if degraded artifacts received from the near future in totems and video fragments, his process pushing late industrial processes to their failure point.

In the work of Sergei Kostyrko, computer vision algorithms generate data by observing living beings, the output of which controls an algorithmic musical composition.

Group! Mediengruppe Bitnik is examining the relationship of intelligent personal assistants — the brain of a smart home — with its direct owner and how a person can rely on these semi-autonomous devices.

The work of Roman Golovko is based on the coincidence of four notes and their Latin alphabet designations, which forms the word C A G E, drawing upon the multiple meanings of that word (as cell, and as in the composer). The chord from Do-La-Sol-Mi creates a massive sound canvas in which the word C-A-G-E sounds and a situation of collective artistic communication arise.

In his work, Mikhail Myasoedov reflects on how media art technologies can be used to relax and switch a person’s attention from everyday routine experience.

As a part of the exhibition, there will be a project of the Goethe-Institut «Data Ctrl Center», which aims at popularizing media literacy and protecting personal data on the Internet. The project includes an online and offline exhibition designed and prepared by Tactical Tech (Berlin) and Kunsht (Kiev).

One of the goals of the project is to create a shared environment between Russia and Europe that stimulates the development of mutual art, scientific and technological research in the field of sound and technological art. The exhibition will feature a series of offline and online meetings, as well as discussions with invited curators, artists, and experts on topics such as the potential of activism and social change through new media art, eco-empathy, artistic media art strategies and the environment, alternative non-institutional initiatives, and other questions.

EMA Expo 2021 continues a long-term cooperation between MMOMA and Kotä. In 2016, MMOMA supported the first EMA Expo festival and hosted a public program event. Later, in 2018, the Kotä became one of the first partners of the newly opened MMOMA Education Center serving as a venue for the public program of the second EMA Expo festival. Throughout the year the Center gathered various experts to discuss such issues as the experimental music scene, sound ecology, sound creation technologies, etc.

Artists of the project
Aebersold x Handberg, !Mediengruppe Bitnik, Roman Golovko, Lucas Gutierrez, Sergey Kostyrko, Sara Culmann, Byrke Lou, Mikhail Myasoedov, Anna Titovets Intektra, Boris Shershenkov.

International partner
Goethe Institut

Supported by
Pro Helvetia Moscow

Visual solutions Panasonic
Sound solutions Yamaha Music Russia
Multimedia partner IMS
Technical production Mediatact

About curators

Gleb Glonti
Curator and General Producer of Kotä and EMA Expo.

Peter Kirn
Independent curator and artist who has collaborated with CTM, MUTEK, SÓNAR+D, and others, and created platforms for interdisciplinary exchange for artists (including various workshops and hacklabs).

Anna Titovets
Media artist, digital and new media curator. Founder and program director of Plums Fest, a festival of audiovisual experiments and media art, former curator of Pixels Fest (Yekaterinburg), invited curator of the Ars Electronica festival (Austria, Linz), co-curator of the Polytech festival of science, art, and technology and many other festivals, educational programs, and exhibitions in Russia and Europe. Currently, she is working as a curator and creative director on the new Museum of Cryptography.

About Kotä

Kotä is a company developing projects in the field of art, also a music imprint, and a sound research laboratory.

Since 2011, Kotä has been developing innovative projects in the field of sound, composition, and digital art, organizing exhibitions, educational programs, and workshops and music events in various cities of Russia and Europe.

Kotä is the curatorial and organizational partner of EMA Expo. The EMA Expo program is dedicated year after year to the modern interdisciplinary dialogue of the arts and current topics of the social agenda.

Visual solutions

Sound solutions

Multimedia partner

Technical production

International partner

Supported by

Exhibition architectural design and project design

Media partner

Radio partner

City media guide

Artistic media partner