Cuddle Porn (2020)
Installation
Paranoia TV Headquarters
24.9.–18.10
Paranoia TV Headquarters
Herrengasse 26, 8010 Graz ♿
Credits
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’20
World news to make your head spin, the same old alternative facts from home, viral memes gone global and intimate nighttime messages: this is what makes up the fragmented and contradictory world of a Muscovite today, both lonely and über-connected, hyper- and metapoliticized and apolitical all at once. That is the attitude to which Igor Samolet gives form in his installation at the Paranoia TV Headquarters, casting himself as its self-effacing hero. He becomes a passive activist, a club-hopping, all-night-partying version of the famously indolent literary hero Oblomov. Being connected represents a myriad of possibilities for experimenting, but it also means being fully under state-corporate control, or getting one’s head smashed by a wheel of headlines. Samolet’s world is both merciless and friendly, like all social media. It invites visitors to spend some time there, to dwell in random quotes, to nostalgically look at “cuddle porn” images from back when hugs were still allowed, or just to sit around and charge their cell phones.
Bio
Igor Samolet (1984, Kotlas, Russia) is a contemporary artist who works with photography and sculpture. His work investigates the trash aesthetics of contemporary youth culture and comments on the repressive conditions in contemporary Russia. He lives in Moscow.
Credits
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’20