DAGNINI
ATTENTION CHOIR
(Russia, Moscow)
As part of the Art Prospect Festival, an ensemble micro-tour under the direction of Dagnini will come to the Ivan Gaza House of Culture. The name, Attention choir, is based on a pun: the phrase sounds similar to the set phrase ‘attention whore’ (a person who tries to attract attention to themselves through any means necessary)*.
Each of the 12 choir members is a ‘replicant’ of Dagnini, created as a performance that she repeated time after time in reality. The multiplied entity is therefore not a carbon copy, but a collection of separate characters with their own imprecise movements and other details. Looking closely, one may, for example, spot a member who has clearly had a bit to drink.
Attention choir’s performance is more akin to a series of reactions to an unpredictable musical narrative and sudden appearance of the star’s show on stage, rather than a musical number or dance show; to some degree it acts like a choir in an ancient theatre, a conduit and means of communication between the audience and the fictional world before them.
The series of video personas is a collage of ‘treasures’ buried somewhere deep in the subconscious. Everything from the musical opening credits of Santa Barbara to the odious Soviet Palace of Culture and school assembly hall, artsy street kids and the theme tune of Hollywood’s Wizard of Oz, a movie centered around an endless search and a promised land slipping away.
*Translator’s note: the word ‘choir’ in Russian—pronounced ‘khor’—may be the source of this pun.
Dagnini was born in Leningrad, and is now based in Moscow. She practices performance art and creates objects, installations, paintings and graphics. ‘Glitches’, both in the digital space and the real world, are the artist’s main topic of exploration. A breakdown of order, of the normal flow of daily life, is a necessary condition for the creation of her works.
The artist is currently represented by Fragment Gallery in Moscow. In 2020 Dagnini became the recipient of the Innovation 2020 state contemporary art award, in the New Generation category.