Context. Diana Vishneva and Aksenov Family Foundation jointly with the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts present film Imprint in Motion
Imprint in Motion is a cross-media project fusing the fine arts, contemporary dance, music and filmmaking. The project focuses on a human body in great variety of visual forms, whereas the space of a classical art museum serves as the venue for this artistic experiment.
Victoria Kondrashova, Director of the Aksenov Family Foundation, recollects how the idea of creating Imprint in Motion was conceived, and discusses how the conceptual tasks of the foundation have been realized through this production.
Before the coronavirus pandemic, we met Konstantin Selinevich, one of the directors of the Context. Diana Vishneva contemporary choreography festival, at one of the Hermitage events. We discussed how different kinds of arts enter the affined disciplines thereby expanding the audiences for each of them.
Working with our partners in Vienna, we often see a certain picture: the visual arts community is completely divorced from the music, theater and dance — and this is a problem for all large growing communities. In Russia, these communities are not so large, but the trend still persists, and it was important and interesting to discuss this issue with colleagues from the affined discipline.
It turned out that Context. Diana Vishneva, just like the Aksenov Family Foundation, is interested in these issues. We see that on the example of visual art (viennacontemporary) and in the research format, they — on the example of their dance festival. At that time, our conversation was in general terms and did not imply anything specific.
Then the lockdown struck and everyone began to urgently search for their online niche. Being at the final stage of our research of contemporary academic music industry, we realized that it was high time to launch the project "Russian Music 2.0". It did not require anybody to be present in person — the foundation made it possible for the composers to write music in isolation, creating a transparent system of arts commission. In parallel, we continued to experiment with formats for expanding the audience of the Pushkin Museum: we explored possible options for remote presentation of cultural projects and their promotion among new audiences with the participation of opinion leaders from various industries.
Having produced the Russian Music 2.0 project and having completely new musical content literally on our hands, we realized that in order to distribute such a complex theme, we need to return to the idea of creating a cross-disciplinary product. We discussed this with Context. Diana Vishneva, who also retained a desire to create a cross-media project, and agreed with the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts to continue our collaboration.
Our joint goal was to study new promotion channels through the facilitation of public access to new names in music and dance, the selection of which is based not on someone's individual taste, but on extensive international expert opinion.
Our global challenge was to highlight those professional names that have become prominent in their own disciplines, but remain completely unknown to others. In order to put the “product” created by the emergent choreographers and musicians into an integral piece of art, we jointly decided to invite a film director, since cinema is the most accessible genre in terms of distribution.
Generally speaking, the strategic task of our foundation is to search for new forms of production of cultural projects, where such terms as "business model" do not sound eerie. Roughly said, cultural projects need to learn how to build sustainable models of interaction with financial institutions that can help cultural projects focus on both artistic and economic results, without opposing them to each other.
Our mission is to experiment with creative products of the highest level without lowering the bar for their artistic quality. We want to create a discursive platform, where cultural institutions will look for ways to collaborate with financial bodies, thereby creating long-term forms of cooperation that are strategically beneficial to all.
Another important task of the foundation is to expand the audience of cultural products — primarily on the account of its new and young segments. This strategy will be put into practice while distributing Imprint in Motion: in addition to its distribution in cinemas, the film will later be available to a mass audience on online platforms. In addition, we plan to repackage some of the content for its further promotion on social networks and to produce independent materials within our special multimedia project "Steps".
