Artists: Agency of Singular Investigations in conversation with Annette Südbeck

Secession Podcast: Artists is a series of conversations featuring artists exhibiting at the Secession. This episode is a conversation between the Agency of Singular Investigations (Anna Titova and Stanislav Shuripa) and the curator Annette Südbeck. It was recorded on December 15, 2023 in the context of the exhibition:

Agency of Singular Investigations
On New Thinking And Other Forgotten Dreams
1.12.2023 – 25.2.2024

Anna Titova and Stanislav Shuripa founded Agency of Singular Investigations (ASI) in 2014 to take a stand on the dramatic changes in Russia’s political reality and cultural atmosphere and to respond to the advent of the postfactual age by thinking about alternative ways of harnessing images and means of communication for the construction of identities and worldviews.

At the Secession, ASI present the new installation On New Thinking and Other Forgotten Dreams. It is the first part of their wide-ranging research project The Park of Mind Revolutions, which investigates the history of subjectivity and the forms and functions of Russia’s self-image in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Organized as a dialogue between the worker Grigoriy Zamzin and a pickle about the meaning of Russia’s most recent history, the installation comprises four sculptures, a sprawling wall diagram, and a blue carpet. Taking inspiration from the interwar literature of magical realism, the artists employ carefully selected fantastic elements, irrational events, and metaphors to frame a critical perspective on the complexity of their country’s historical evolution. Playing with hybrid dimensions of reality and collisions between historical forces, they expose the energies that shape the psychological, technological, and social system. More

Dr. Annette Südbeck is managing director and curator at the Secession. She studied Fine Arts, German Studies and Arts in Braunschweig.

The Dorotheum is the exclusive sponsor of the Secession Podcast.

Jingle: Hui Ye with an excerpt from Combat of dreams for string quartet and audio feed (2016, Christine Lavant Quartett) by Alexander J. Eberhard

Editing Director: Annette Südbeck and ASI
Editor: Paul Macheck

Programmed by the board of the Secession
Produced by Christian Lübbert