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einaidea and Loop Barcelona renew their collaboration for another year through an exhibition and several talks with artists within the framework of the 22nd edition of Loop Festival, which in 2024 takes the general title of A Subtle Shake.
Between 13 November and 5 January, at Barcelona's Museu de la Música, einaidea and Loop present Muted Explosions, an exhibition of the work of Ukrainian artists and filmmakers Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk. The exhibition presents three film works: Explosions Near a Museum (2023), Dedicated To The Youth Of The World II (2019) and Dedicated To The Youth Of The World III (2023), which are be on view from 13 November until 5 January, 2025. Dedicated To The Youth Of The World II and III document, at two critical moments —2019 and 2023— the legendary Сxema rave in Kyiv. In the earliest version of the piece, the youth of Kyiv appeared reclaiming the city in a ritual that was both intimate and massive, occurring in a context of pre-war harassment, after the Russian annexation of Crimea. In the second version, the artists recreate the party focusing on members of the community who have replaced the previous participants of the rave, after a prolonged pandemic and in the middle of war, as an act of survival in the face of the daily aggression of the occupying Russian forces. On the other hand, Explosions Near a Museum documents the empty spaces of the Kherson Museum, which was stripped of its funds by Russian troops in October 2022, and to which artists have access during a day of bombings on the city.
On 16 November, in collaboration with Casa Seat, einaidea and Loop present a conversation and screening of the work of American artist and filmmaker John Menick. The presentation allows us to explore this artist's recent research and gives continuity to some of his projects, such as Autoextinction (2023) and the essay The Self-Driving Image (2020). The presentation is followed by a conversation between the artist, the researcher and architect Blanca Pujals and Manuel Cirauqui, director of einaidea.
Finally, on 17 November, in collaboration with Hangar, einaidea and Loop offer a commented screening of the work of Metahaven, an artistic collective based in Amsterdam whose practice intertwines information technologies, geopolitics, fiction and philosophical reflection. At the event, Metahaven will present and contextualize their practice and some of their most recent films, coinciding with the premiere of their work The Feeling Sonnets (Transitional Object) (2024) at Loop Fair by the Tick Tac platform, Antwerp.
Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk have been collaborating on the edge of visual art and film since 2016. They graduated as cinematographers from the Institute of Screen Arts in kyiv, Ukraine. Focusing on the role of the extra, their works explore surreptitious elements of imperialist mythologies. They were awarded the PinchukArtCentre Award (2020) and the VISIO Young Talent Acquisition Award (Lo Schermo dell'Arte, Florence, 2021). His short film Explosions Near the Museum won the National Competition at the 15th Wiz-Art LIFF, Lviv. The duo also participated in the Future Generation Art Prize 2021, Baltic Triennial 14, Gothenburg Biennial and Kyiv Biennial, in the group exhibitions at Haus der Kunst, Castello di Rivoli, Albertinum and others. Their video works are part of the collections of Fondazione In Between Art Film, Kunstmuseum Liechtenstein, Kontakt, TBA21, Frac Bretagne, Museum of Contemporary Art Kiasma and Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp. Their most recent installation was presented at Dare to Dream, a collateral event of the 60th Biennale di Venezia 2024. Yarema Malashchuk and Roman Khimei are members of Teatro Prykarpattian, an art group that recently established the Theater of Hopes and Expectations project that was presented at the Ukrainian Pavillion during the Biennale Architettura di Venezia 2023. They also co-curated the group exhibition 'On the Periphery of the War' at Kyiv Biennial in 2023.
John Menick (1976) is an artist and writer whose practice engages with the moving image, digital media, sound, and drawing, questioning issues that are transversal to technology and contemporary visual cultures. From his writings on self-moving images and future road movies, to speculative non-fiction film works on space exploration, AI and psychoanalysis, Menick is a referential figure in recent essay-film making and critical art-driven literature. Menick's visual art and films have been exhibited and screened at the International Film Festival, Rotterdam; Palais de Tokyo, Paris; CCA Wattis, San Francisco; and Artists Space, New York. Menick’s essays and stories have appeared in frieze, The Believer, Mousse Magazine, BOMB, Spike Art Quarterly, Art in America, and Witte de With Review, among other publications. In addition, he has participated in some of the landmark surveys and biennials of the past two decades, such as MoMA PS1’s Greater New York (2001), dOCUMENTA (13) (2012), and Architecture Effects at the Guggenheim Bilbao (2018). Menick has been awarded grants from the Jerome Foundation and the New York Foundation for the Arts, and received several commissions, including from Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers and Kadist Foundation in France. Menick currently lives in New York City where he is professor of film at the Cooper Union.
Metahaven is a research and design studio founded by Vinca Kruk and Daniel van der Velden based in Amsterdam. Metahaven's work—both commissioned and self-directed—reflects political and social issues in collaboratively produced graphic design objects and media. In addition to international presentation of design and research projects, Metahaven has written and edited numerous publications such as Uncorporate Identity, a design anthology for our dystopian age, Can Jokes Bring Down Governments and a forthcoming book Black Transparency. The studio was awarded the CoBRA Art Prize 2013. Select exhibitions include ‘Islands in the Cloud’, MoMA PS1, New York; Gwangju Design Biennale 2011, Gwangju, Korea; ‘Graphic Design: Now in Production’, Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, and Manifesta 8, Murcia, Spain.
Header image: Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk, Dedicated To The Youth Of The World II, 2019 (video still), courtesy of the artists.