Artist: Marina Razheva
Date: 2001
Location: Written in Yekaterinburg; can be performed in any enclosed room
Type: Text-based action / instruction
Materials: An enclosed room, the people present, a small ventilation window (fortochka)
Dimensions / Duration: Variable
Work Description
The work consists of a text proposing an action: breathe in an enclosed room until the air is used up, then open a small ventilation window. The instruction turns an ordinary physical action into a possible artistic gesture, connecting creativity, aesthetic change and ethical responsibility.
Concept
The text approaches creativity as an addition to reality, moving from the rearrangement of objects to the alteration of the space itself. Opening a small window becomes a metaphor for a creative act that changes the conditions of an established environment.
Aesthetic change is compared to fresh air entering a closed room: initially disruptive, then ordinary and necessary, eventually unnoticed. The question of whether such an intervention is ethical remains dependent on the situation.
The proposed action gives the metaphor a physical dimension. Breathing changes the composition of the air; opening the window allows an exchange between the enclosed space and the outside.
Realization and Publication
The text was submitted as written instructions to the Third International Symposium Sputnik: Active Reflection Technology and published in Sputnik. Technology of Active Reflection, a co-operative book of poetry, vol. 2 (Kemerovo, 2001), pp. 37–38.
The artist did not attend the symposium. She believes that participants may have carried out the action repeatedly during the event, but no documentation of such an execution is known. The action is therefore documented as a proposed scenario, not as a confirmed performance.
Source Images
Fig. 1. the book cover
Fig. 2. Title page.
Fig. 3. page 37
Fig. 4. page 38