Method – Marina Razheva

Revealed Realism

Revealed Realism is a method of working with existing reality through close attention, research, and minimal intervention.

It begins with an encounter with a place, an object, a landscape, or a structure. Rather than imposing a predetermined meaning or form, the method investigates what is already there and what it may reveal through material evidence, fragments, absences, structures, movement, duration, and direct experience.

The method brings together different ways of reading a situation. Research establishes what can be known through evidence, while artistic practice tests what may become active through direct encounter and intervention. The two continually affect one another: evidence can constrain, redirect, or complicate artistic action, while artistic action can make another aspect of the evidence or situation newly active.

Interventions may be physical, temporary, textual, sonic, or embodied. They do not aim to transform an existing reality into something else, but to create conditions in which something already present can enter a new relation or become newly active.

Revealed Realism was developed collaboratively by artist Marina Razheva and researcher Dmitry Razhev through R².

The Approach

Revealing the existing — Allowing something already present, but not yet fully apparent or active, to enter the field of attention and action.

Attentive observation — Giving time to surfaces, structures, materials, atmosphere, movement, and subtle changes.

Research and evidence — Reading historical, archaeological, material, and contextual evidence alongside direct experience.

Minimal intervention — Introducing a limited action that tests a situation without replacing it.

Embodied encounter — Working through movement, presence, touch, sound, duration, and repeated return.

Design of Remembrance is a method of working with memory through collected traces, images, and objects.

It begins with the small things that remain from an experience: notes, tickets, wrappers, photographs, sketches, receipts, fragments, and other personal artifacts. Seemingly ordinary, these traces can carry the atmosphere and details of a journey or event long after it has passed.

The practice brings these fragments together through drawing, writing, collecting, arranging, and making. Their arrangement becomes a way of looking back at an experience while also discovering connections that were not visible at the time.

Design of Remembrance turns memories into tangible forms — travel books, postcards, collages, mnemonic objects, and other personal records.

The Approach

Collecting traces — Gathering small objects, images, notes, and fragments connected to an experience.
Mnemonic keys — Using words, images, objects, and personal signs that can reactivate a particular memory.
Drawing and writing — Recording details, impressions, and associations by hand.
Composition — Arranging visual and textual fragments to discover relationships and create a coherent form.
Making — Transforming collected material into books, postcards, collages, objects, and other tangible forms.

The method has also been explored through workshops, inviting participants to work with their own collected materials and create personal structures of memory.