Monday June 22 – July 26, 2020
Erik Moskowitz & Amanda Trager
Two Russians in the Free World
Viewable beginning Monday June 22 at 7pm
Microscope is pleased to present the debut of the web-based episodic work Two Russians in the Free World (2013-2020) by Erik Moskowitz and Amanda Trager as the second iteration of Platform, a section of our website dedicated to net-based works which launched late last year.
This 66-minute, thirteen episode video is the final form of the project that began as a 30-minute single-channel work in 2013 and expanded into a multi-channel video installation including sculptural elements, which was first exhibited at Participant Inc in 2014.
The new web format deconstructs the linearity of the original concept even further. The story — which the artists describe as an allegorical melodrama about a nearly-doomed love affair between two Russian men exploring utopian connections among artistic inspiration, love, and the market place — appears now in 13 episodes viewed in any order chosen by the viewer and each accompanied by an original text.
The webisodic project has also expanded into a collaboration with 13 writers — Nicholas Elliott, Matthew Sharpe, Kaegan Sparks, Jordan Lord, Matthew Weinstein, Felix Bernstein, Roee Rosen, Arseny Zhilyaev, oni lem, Tatiana Istomina, Andrew McNeely, Keith Sanborn, Corina L. Apostol, Maija Timonen, and Zhenya Merkulova — who were commissioned in 2018 to write a text to be paired with a particular episode, expanding the ways the piece can be entered and experienced.
“The project, which we began in 2012, originated in our desire to express antipathy towards an art world increasingly dominated by hyper-capitalism (zombie formalism, off-shore warehousing of artworks bought off of Instagram, etc.). We started by creating a conversation between two semi-fictional characters; a billionaire and a former artist (both Russian) who reject art and the art world. It was largely made from interviews, one real, the other scripted. The performers were people close to us — in the case of the billionaire, a friend of Amanda’s from early childhood.
…Watching TWO RUSSIANS again very recently, we were surprised to find resonance with life-under-quarantine, where the familiar becomes overly familiar and therefore newly strange. A play where, absurdly, one cannot stop planning for a future before realizing, again and again, that that future doesn’t exist, and perhaps never did…. Additionally, the accessibility is not just structural or generally metaphorical. Unanswered questions regarding Russia’s alleged interference in the U.S. Presidential election bring unsettling resonance to the work’s ruminations on the substance of open societies and individual free will.” — EM & AT
Two Russians in the Free World, as in their other works, includes original soundtracks incorporating the spoken dialogue into melodic lines and an investigation of human voice that contradicts the expectations dictated by the images and their visual clues on screen.
In addition to Moskowitz and Trager, the cast includes Sasha Jampolsky, Joshua Mack, Robert Janitz, Jessie Stead, Irina Kachanovskaya, Maynard Monrow, Batya Zamir, Adelberto Pacheco, Peggy Ahwesh, Hugo Hottinger, Gabriel Hottinger, Ron Warren, Hasan Foster, Jordan Lord, Zhenya Merkulova, Alexandra Redgrave, Sophie Reiff, Klaus Kempenaars, Philippe Vysotski.
Platform is a section on our website dedicated to the online experience of single works not only in digital and net based art, but also in film, video, and sound, which are available online for limited time at microscopegallery.com/platform
Two Russians in the Free World was made with support from Wave Farm’s Media Arts Assistance Fund.
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Erik Moskowitz and Amanda Trager work in film, video, and installation. Their works are often derived from collective storytelling and grounded in extensive interview processes, while the tone is set by original music, ventriloquism, and atypical temporalities. Moskowitz and Trager’s collaborative partnership began in 2006. Their work has since been exhibited and screened internationally at venues that include Centre Pompidou, Jeu de Paume (Paris); IFFR (Rotterdam); The Showroom (London); Reina Sofia, (Madrid); Haus der Kulturen der Welt (Berlin); The Mexicali Biennial (Armory Center for the Arts, Pasadena, and Mexicali); 303 Gallery and Participant Inc., NYC. Art residencies include Montalvo Arts Center and Headlands Center for the Arts, both in California. They are recipients of numerous grants and awards including the Media Arts Assistance Fund, Wave Farm (NYSCA) and the Short Film Grand Prize, IndieLisboa (Portugal). The duo lives and works between Los Angeles, CA and Brooklyn, New York.
