Go to the FFTN Bend

1.

a letter on space

FFTN (fifteen) was a 5 square meter independent gallery that used to operate in St. Petersburg from 2016 to 2021. According to an urban legend, this gallery, curated by Irina Aksenova and Ilya Grishaev, was named after the maximum number of people that could fit inside it at the same time.

When I started active exhibition work in 2021, I had to part ways with this space, which was important for petersburg and myself personally.

Moving into the Garage studios in March, I was shocked by a funny coincidence or perhaps a cosmic joke of sorts: the [rest area] of Studio 39, which was offered to me, was so similar in its dimensions and configuration to the fftn that did not happen to me, that it could be mistaken for a duplicate.

On the other hand, having arrived in Moscow immediately after the exodus of any close friends from this city for reasons known but not named, I found this space to have become my prison. Tall and narrow windows together with the way my studio felt out of place in the building’s overall ecosystem only exacerbated this feeling of confinement. Quickly I realized that I’d like to use the tiny room to display a video from my last-year project Fly Round, featuring a moth imprisoned in a castle — my entrenched alter-ego.

*

the mouse-tail episode is completely born of a pun 'tail / tale' 

2.

a letter on poetry

“Go to the fftn Bend” is an altered quote from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s conversation with the Mouse.

'You had got to the fifth bend, I think? ' — Alice says absently and out of place, having been counting the bends of the Mouse’s tail instead of listening to its tale.

Due to completely unrelated reasons, in March of this year I have found myself captivated by the poem about a mouse’s tail — or, rather, the poem about an execution that is shaped like a mouse’s tail. Enchanted at first by the rhythmic calligram, I went on to move from translation to translation, which have revealed to me the beauty of endless misunderstandings that Alice experiences specifically on the level of language.

Small puns end up resulting in divergences of understanding so massive that characters find themselves in entirely different realities. It’s hard to tell who is caught in these (mouse-or-moth?) traps to a greater extent: Alice, who gets tripped up by every pun, or me — who’s spent the last month reading three small paragraphs and ended up finding a new bend each time.

The small, endlessly repeated poem about unpunished power and violence has created a loop in my head. “Go to the fifteenth bend” may be seen as an instruction given to a fantasy character who seeks to escape a pixel realm and break their own loop. Or, in the other words, undo the spell placed upon themselves.

P. S.

the sound for the project is kindly provided by my friend Anton Shchegolev / ply tone

Alina Kugush
28th of March, 2023

* The Mouse’s Tale

poem by Lewis Carroll

'Mine is a long and a sad tale! ' said the Mouse, turning to Alice, and sighing.
'It is a long tail, certainly, ' said Alice, looking down with wonder at the Mouse’s tail; 'but why do you call it sad? ' And she kept on puzzling about it while the Mouse was speaking, so that her idea of the tale was something like this: —

                                         ‘Fury said to a mouse,
                                                That he met in the house                                               
                                                    “Let us both go to law: 
                                                         I will prosecute 
                                               YOU.  —Come, I’ll 
                                        take no denial;
                            We must have
                            a trial: For        
                              really this
                               morning I’ve
                                     nothing to do.”     
                                        Said the mouse     
                                               to the cur, “Such
                                                    a trial, dear Sir,
                                                     With no jury
                                                  or judge, would
                                                     be wasting
                                      our breath.”
                              “I’ll be judge,        
                           I’ll be jury”
                       Said cunning
                       old Fury:
                       “I’ll try the
                      whole
                        cause,
                             and
                              condemn
                                    you  to
                                              death.»‘

'You are not attending! ' said the Mouse to Alice severely.
'What are you thinking of? ' 'I beg your pardon, ' said Alice very humbly: 

'You had got to the fifth bend, I think? ' 

'I had not! ' cried the Mouse, sharply and very angrily. 

'A knot! ' said Alice, always ready to make herself useful, and looking anxiously about her. 

'Oh, do let me help to undo it! ' 'I shall do nothing of the sort, ' said the Mouse, getting up and walking away. 'You insult me by talking such nonsense! '

фото: Егор Слизяк
© Музей современного искусства «Гараж»

Go to the fftn bend

Third.place, St. Petersburg

June 16 — September 30, 2023

video installation

as part of the group project “I always knew we’d meet”
curator Alexey Maslyaev

The character, the artist’s alter ego, moves from bend to bend, trying either to catch time by the tail, or to go through all fifteen bends in order to remove from itself the spell of imprisonment. Doomed to endless repetition, the pixel moth makes haste to a meeting to which it is not destined to arrive on time.