Author: agent Paranyushkin

The Humping Pact @ Mousonturm | 05/2013

The Humping Pact. Live performance by Dmitry Paranyushkin and Diego Agulló. Presented at Mousonturm theater in Frankfurt in May 2013.     In this performance, we were exploring the connection between the spectacle, space, technology, and the body. Most theater performances rely on stage design, lights, and sound, creating an atmosphere to carry the audience into an imaginary world. We investigate the processes of setting up a stage for a performance and preparing a space for a happening, revealing its meditative and ceremonial nature as well as a bond and sensuality that emerge in a collective work. The process of setting up a space is akin to creating a new form of life. Bodies form into shapes, shapes create patterns, a language emerges. The inevitable end of this construction and its simulated nature make it futile from the very beginning, but it is this very futility that makes sense through the traces it leaves...

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OK Performance @ Kunsthalle Charlottenborg | 03/2013

In March 2013, I was invited to present the OK Performance at Kunsthalle Charlottenborg in Copenhagen, Denmark. OK Performance was born from my practice of exploring polysingularity of meaning in language that emerges from repetition. In this performance, I repeat "OK" for 20 minutes changing the voice, the intent, the context, the circumstances. While it is common knowledge that repetition helps to remember things, it can also be used to disassociate signifiers from signified. As a result, there is a space opening up for multiple interpretations, which is particularly interesting to explore in a performative context. Suddenly, a simple "OK" can be perceived as an expectation or a proposal. This reveals the hidden potential of language and communication that exists at every moment of time if only we take a longer moment to pause and question our perception of reality.  ...

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Bodymind Operating System

This idea came to me right after a 10-day Vipassana retreat in Spring of 2013. I was switching off internal dialogue but realized that there are always multiple sensations in the body, relations between different parts and areas, so that even when you don't talk to yourself, there are still patterns that define your movement and feelings from inside. Then I tried to imagine, what it would be like to consider this as an operating system. The habits, beliefs, various other patterns are the software. The body is the hardware. Once we apply this principle, we can simply rewrite code, get some algorithms also from open-source, reprogram ourselves, and try out various movements and behaviors. The operating system runs in the body and in the mind, these are just distinctions that let us see how much physical movement is present in every moment of time. EightOS is a realization of this idea....

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Polysingularity Letters @ Kunstfabrik | 10/2012

In October 2012, I presented my new book Polysingularity, volume 3, at the Kunstfabrik Am Flutgraben in Berlin. This book was part of a fictional collection of research works on the concept of polysingularity that I was developing since 2010. The book features texts and artworks created between 2009 and 2012. Each work is an exploration of polysingularity methodology in the context of a certain practice. The most interesting part of the research to me, at the time, was the ability of the human mind to interpret the same phenomenon in multiple ways, to conceive of the different causes that may lead to the same event, or to imagine several different perspectives on the same situation. So I was interested in creating works and texts that could make sense in a variety of different ways and that could be placed in completely different contexts. Their relational nature revealed something very crucial about...

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Collective Action Lecture @ Re:Publica | 05/2012

In May 2012, I gave a presentation on collective action and information epidemics at Re:Publica conference in Berlin. In the year prior to that, Russia saw a rise in opposition movements that self-organized on the internet using various platforms. Using my background in network science, I studied these online communities to extract some of the principles for self-organization that are typical for an uprising. To me, the most interesting part was how much correlation there is between the structure of the network and the collective choreography it can perform, both in the physical space during a demonstration and in the virtual space for self-organization and maintenance. It turned out that communities that are tightly knit are better mobilised but at the expense of a shorter lifespan. They are also more susceptible to infiltration as there are no backup centers of powers. So there is a certain balance to be found when...

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The Humping Pact @ Oberhausener Kurzfilmtagen | 04/2012

The Humping Pact was a project that we created together with Diego Agulló during our residency at PACT Zollverein choreography center in Essen, Germany. In April 2012, we presented a short film derived from the project at Oberhausen short film festival. This project was exploring the relation between desolate landscapes, urban revitalisation, and masculine sexuality. In February 2011, during the residency, we discovered the beautiful Zollverein coalmines, which were abandoned since years and yet still carried the old potential within. We decided to see what happens if we shift our residency right into this desolate industrial landscape, attempting to revitalize it with an act of simulated stimulation towards the environment. As a result, a series of videos were born, which were first presented at Zollverein and, later, at Oberhausener short film festival. ...

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Polysingularity

Polysingularity is a concept that I developed in 2011 to describe a certain quality of perception and action that felt intuitively natural to me. As I started unfolding the threads of this idea, it materialized into a practice and a methodology, which I have since been using both in my life and in my work. At its core, polysingularity is a state where multiple solutions are possible but only one is actualized at every moment of time. "This can be like this, but it can also be like that and like that. However, I choose to insist on this being like this for this moment in time. Then, it might change, but for now, it's going to stay as it is." Aesthetically, polysingularity is about finding beauty in multiplicity and in patterns that emerge from repetition. It is also about finding beauty in morphing patterns and the combination of differences that emerge...

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