08. 06, 1996
Kiev, mountain Sñhekavica.
(Start of motion of Fictitious Gallery Expedition as "departure" to free parallel space.)
On one of the hills of Kiev, namely, on the Schukavitsa, on Olegovskaya street, where art studios used to be located, a big boat with 'Fiction Gallery Exhibition' on the side appeared. In the boat were seated, bound for an interspatial voyage, imitations of those taking part in the project, mannequins made 'in the image and likeness', a sort of bodiless copies of the participants. Both the boat and the mannequins are a visual metaphor of the very substance of the FGE, of its 'floating' being, i.e. with no root or any other fixed communication with the reality, ever in pursuit of self-identification, of reassertion of its own life in any social and cultural situations and dimensions. Decoration with ancient-like columns provided a feast of imagination using prototypes from myths, something like the lost Atlantis, Odyssey or the hunt for the Golden Fleece by the Argonauts. Perhaps, the mythology is appropriate here as the initial state of the cultural memory, harmonious, not divided by various discourses and not overloaded with structures of signs. Though, ancient myths were squeezed out by the FGE own myths, a video about sacraments of creating the 'second bodies' of the artists. As a newsreel chronicle the taking of plaster masks of the artists for the mannequins-to-be was shown. Exactly the 'birth' was the leitmotif of all the things happening that day. The 'birth' of a substantially anthropological gallery-work, unlike an artifact-work as instead of a certain fixed shape it has duration in time and space, similar to human life. Therefore the boat 'sailing off' is not to be considered a separate entity or act, but rather the point of departure for the FGE to find fulfillment of itself.
