Overview

The System of Coordinates project foregrounds the issue of transparent borders separating reality and art. In other words, its ultimate focus is on what turns real events registered by photo and video cameras into an art event, at what moment this record can pretend to have the status of the Work of Contemporary Art. What confirms or does not confirm the status of the author and the aesthetic nature of the work.

Several projects are realised simultaneously in Oleg Kulik’s studio (video recording of models in a special “aquarium” by the cameramen located under and around it, a photographic session involving several photographers, an interview with Kulik, the discussion of the project with models, the Blue Noses Rap involving models, and so on). The situation when this happening is being totally recorded by video and photo cameras, together with a TV interview, rehearsals and the discussion of the results resembles an endless production process where any process lacks a frame and any fragment pretends to have the status of a complete artwork which, as a whole, looks like a video document without any pretence of this status.

The musical background (improvisations of a male singer and a female accordion player) of different fragments of recordings is not the only thing to go with the action developing within various spaces of the studio. The relations of all the figurants of this recording are 'informal' on principle: it is difficult to distinguish the author, the personages and the spectators among them. Most of the participants caught in each other’s lens become models for each other. Besides that, there is a preliminary agreement concerning the experimental quality of the project as a whole and of the multi-level selection of its material.