Tag Archives: lena lapschina

Those Were The Days: an AR-enhanced media installation

You see a display cabinet containing stranded goods, sand and eelgrass, the remains of a photograph, and a triptych painting on antique panels. Somebody has told you that the panels might be coated with short films, visible only through the lens of a smartphone. You hold your smartphone over the scenery, and things begin to move, and you can hear voices. Soon you’ll be lost in thought.

“Those Were The Days” is a brand new, augmented reality enhanced media installation. Exhibition views from Mdina Biennale 2020 on Malta.

A little alien


Kunsthalle Krems is displaying my triptych “Alien”. It is marker pen on corrugated five-layer cardboard, and I’ve done it in 2011. One can see a cogitating Yuri Gagarin, a robotic lunar vehicle attempting to turn the iconic 1969 moonboot footprints into dust, and apparently a conversation between a landlady and her alien guest.

While it is clear that the three panels’ common topic is alienness, the artist leaves it up to the viewer to decide whether she is reporting historical events or science fiction.

“Alien” is part of the group show “Ticket to the Moon” (curator: Andreas Hoffer).

Fly Me To The Moon! Bring Me To The Stars!

When Kunsthaus Zürich invited me to be in a heavenly exhibit called “Fly Me To The Moon”, I sat back, listened to sound from outer space – and remembered a photo series I’ve produced once upon a time at the various Star Cities. The following weeks I tried to recap that very moment when people for the first time left the Earth behind and set off towards the Stars. Scientists – from Galilei to Tsiolkovsky – came to my mind, and formulae, and pictures from cosmic voyages.

The result of this endeavour is “Bring Me To The Stars”. Eight photographs, with annotations in the margins, elucidatory or lunatic, a fusion of dreams and reality.

Kunsthaus Zürich, 4 April – 30 June [de] [en] [fr]. Curated by Cathérine Hug. Museum der Moderne, Salzburg, 20 July – 3 November 2019.

Am besten gefiel mir immer der Gravitationsunterricht

“Am besten gefiel mir immer der Gravitationsunterricht” is a forty meter long story on the walls of the Arlberg 1800 Resort, a deluxe hideaway in the Alps.

The guests who immerse into this mural – in English, its title would read something like “My favourite subject in school and ever since has been gravitation” – will find themselves in a world composed of gravitation-based experiences and authentic Sankt Christoph scenery.

Commissioned by Familie Werner.

The Innocent: a series of sculptures in public space

It’s a piece of architecture. It’s a sculpture. It’s a place where people gather, and talk and party, and even wait for the next bus. It’s highly sophisticated infrastructure for a multimodal transportation system. It’s “The Innocent”.

I’ve created this sculpture series for the State of Carinthia (design competition, 1st prize). First installations – in villages, towns and cities, and, importantly, on the verges of common country roads – might arrive as early as 2019, and there’s a good chance that a special edition in honour of Peter Handke will make it into the wild!

New batch of “17 Seconds Art” arrived!

For my solo show at Vykhod, the center for media art in Petrozavodsk, Karelia, I produced a new batch of “17 Sekunden Kunst” video pizzazz. These boxes were served fresh to attenders of the private view, who had the choice between “Making friends”, “Once around the block”, “Bowing takes practice”, “Artist in residence” (my trilogy on crazy artists in weird residencies), and more.

I’m adding here the curator’s statement on this series [original title: “17 Sekunden Kunst”], written by Paolo Bianchi on the occasion of the premiere of these films at Linz09:

When dizzying changes regularly put the vulnerability of people and citizens to the test, Lena Lapschina’s work is precisely in this gap between surprise and imposition. For years she has been taking video material at international venues of art.

Lena Lapschina creates short videos from her material, which she gives an aesthetic form under the title “17 Seconds Art”. By this exact limitation in time, the films produce the effect of decoupling from reality. Through the radical sequencing, the recordings on the other side achieve a compaction, which becomes a curious and impressive image microcosmos of the social environment. The shots seem like a witty puzzle game that oscillates in content and thematically from absurd to banal. This humor does not present itself supercilious and does not have better knowledge. It appears in the gap between the sensible and the senseless.

Lena Lapschina has chosen the short time span of 17 seconds, as it is worth it to stay tuned.

Drive-by muralism: The viewer becomes the producer

When FDR, the biennial art project of the State of Upper Austria, commissioned me to do a series of six murals themed “Uninvited Guests” along Marchtrenk, I carefully shopped for benevolent walls. So I got this grainy-textured, worn-out façade at a crossroads in the very center of the town, which would become shelter for a work of particularly ephemeral character. Lit by the cars’ headlights by night, the scene depicted in the mural became vivid: For a fleeting moment, drivers could see a group of people, burdened with their personal effects, hiking across the village. Only a split second later, and they had already disappeared into the dark again. Technique: tape.