Custom Made

By Olga Kisseleva and Barbara Formis

Olga Kisseleva's series, Custom Made (1998-2013), explores a wide range of concepts about interactivity and participation in a contemporary global culture. From her early interactive web work How are you? (1998) to her intervention in ecology in Biopresence (2013), she has considered what the world would be like if we

• Language: English
• Publisher: KT press
• Release date: Feb 7, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992693428

Book preview

Custom Made

Olga Kisseleva

Essay by Barbara Formis

KT press, 2014

This project is supported by the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, New York

KT press publishes books and n.paradoxa: international feminist art journal to promote understanding of women artists and their work

Custom Made

Olga Kisseleva

Essay by Barbara Formis

Notice of Rights

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information on getting permission for reprints and excerpts, contact [e-mail]. The right of Olga Kisseleva to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyrights, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

Copyright © 2013 by Olga Kisseleva

© Essay by Barbara Formis

Translation by Oliver Feltham

ISSN: 978-0-9926934-2-8

Publisher: KT press, 38 Bellot Street, London, SE10 0AQ, UK

Website: http://www.ktpress.co.uk

Ebook series editor: Katy Deepwell

To report errors, please email: [e-mail]

Every effort was made to contact all copyright holders, if there are any errors or omissions to the captions or credits, please inform the publishers of the oversight.

The publisher has no responsibility for the persistance or accuracy of the URLs for any external or third party internet websites referred to in this book and does not guarentee that any content on such websites is or will remain accurate or appropriate.

Front cover image: Olga Kisseleva looking at Custom Made: Made to Measure

1. Theory of Art: Contemporary art  2. British art: 21st century 3. Feminist theory 4. Electronic Arts

I. Kisseleva, Olga. II. title.  

Acknowledgements

Olga Kisseleva would like to thank all museums, galleries, patrons, curators, colleagues and collaborators who helped her to make the project possible at different stages:

ARC (Paris, France), ARKA gallery (Vladivostok, Russia), BesArt (Lisbonne, Portugal), CAPC (Bordeaux, France), CCC Garage (Moscow, Russia), Centre Georges Pompidou (Paris, France), Centre Photographique Ile-de-France (Paris, France), Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci (Prato, Italy), Château des Adhermar, Centre d'art contemporain (Montelimar, France), CNEAI (Chatou, France), Contemporary Art Centre Abbaye de Maubuisson (Paris, France), Contemporary art centre DEPO (Istanbul, Turkey), Contemporary Art Centre Le Quartier (Quimper, France), Ekaterina Foundation (Moscow, Russia), Fondation Cartier pour l’Art Contemporain (Paris, France), Fondation LVMH (Paris, France), Fonds d'Art Contemporain de la Ville de Paris (France), FRAC Aquitaine (Bordeaux, France), FRAC Languedoc-Roussillon (Montpellier, France), Fundación Joan Miró (Barcelona, Spain), Getty Institute (Los Angeles, CA, USA), Jozsa gallery (Brussels, Belgium), KIASMA Contemporary Art Museum (Helsinki, Finland), La Casa Ensendida (Madrid, Spain), La Criée (Rennes, France), Laboratoria ART&SCIENCE space (Moscow, Russia), Le Consortium (Dijon, France), Le Plateau - FRAC Ile de France (Paris, France), Louvre Museum (Paris, France), Louvre Lens (Lens, France), Ludwig Museum (Budapest, Hungary), Media Art Museum (Karlsruhe, Germany), MOCAK (Krakow, Poland), MOMA (New York, NY, USA), MOMA (St Etienne, France), Moscow Museum of Modern Art MMOMA (Moscow, Russia), Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia (Madrid, Spain), NCCA National Centre for Contemporary Art (Moscou, Russia), Neues Museum (Weimar, Germany), Palais de Tokyo (Paris, France), Pecci Museum of contemporary art (Milan, Italy), Postmasters Gallery (New York, USA), Rabouan-Moussion gallery (Paris, France), Saraï-Medialab (New Delhi, Inde), Shanghai Art Museum (Shanghai, China), SJMOMA (San Jose, USA), The National Marc Chagal Museum (Nice, France), The National Picasso Museum (Vallauris, France), The State Russian Museum (St Petersburg, Russia), w139 (Amsterdam, Pays-Bas), ZKM (Karlsruhe, Germany)…

and

Alisa Prudnikova, Alexander Borovsky, Alexandra Fau, Ali Akay, Alice Cazaux, Agnes Foiret, Ami Barak, Bernard Arnault, Bernard Blistène, Bernard Guelton, Caroline Bourgeois, Caroline Col, Caroline Moussion, Catherine Jozsa, Cedric Lienart, Chloé Pirson, Christian Debize, Christine Van Assche, Christophe Boutin, Christophe Kihm, Claire Staebler, Danièle Yvergniaux, Daria Parkhomenko, Dimitri Ozerkov, Ekaterina Degot, Ekaterina Iragui, Elena Sorokina, Elga Wimmer, Elisabeth Lebovici, François Taillade, Frederic Bouglé, Frederic Maufras, Geraldine Gomez, Guy Martini, Helene Kelmachter, Helene Lallier, Hervé Mikaeloff, Irina Gorlova, Jacqueline Moussion, Jacques Ranc, Jelena Vezic, Joseph Backstein, Julien Toulze, Julio Velasco, Laurence Hazout-Dreyfus, Lev Manovich, Lorand Hegyi, Manou Farine, Marc Hourdequin, Maria-Anna Potocka, Marie-Laure Bernadac, Marion Laval-Jeantet, Mathieu Marguerin, Media Raqs Collective, Mélanie Scarciglia, Mikhail Mindlin, Nadine Gomez, Natasa Petresin-Bachelez, Nathalie Giraudeau, Olesya Turkina, Larys Frogier, Olga Shishko, Peter Weibel, Pierre-Yves Le Pogam, Raphaële Jeune, Richard Conte, Richard Neyroud, Sam Dukan, Stephen Kovats, Stephen Wright, Steve Dietz, Sylvain Reynal, Vera Glazkova, Veronique Godé, Viktor Misiano, Xavier Douroux, Yann Toma, Zinaida Starodubtseva, Polina Dubchinskaya…

A special thanks to Barbara Formis for her text in this ebook and to Oliver Feltham for his translation of it.

Contents

Copyright

Acknowledgements

Custom Made: Why? And How? by Olga Kisseleva

The art of making a difference by Barbara Formis

Works by Olga Kisseleva

How Are You?

Self-Portrait

Clairvoyant

Doors

(an)other point of view

Troll Mirror

Powerbike

DG Cabin

Fitness Art Centre

(In)visible

Conquistadors

CrossWorlds

Vice Box

Time Value

It’s Time

Custom Made: Made to Measure

Perfume Organ

Bio-presence

Notes

About Olga Kisseleva and Barbara Formis

Custom Made: Why and how?

Olga Kisseleva

The concept of custom made is symptomatic of how we live in the contemporary world. Custom made is central to how we adapt the products of mass production and new technologies to our individuality in today's consumer culture. Curiously, this shift to a custom made world for each individual (and our acknowledgement of heterogenity) is accompanied by the same rhythms within globalization and its most criticised feature, its homogenization of life. 

Le Corbusier designed his Ideal City according to the body proportions of future inhabitants but in reality this gave birth to countless HLM housing estates which look and feel the same. The people’s car was invented to correspond more beneficially to the needs of each citizen but cars, as the main method of human transport, have led to the transformation of towns and entire countries, changing them into vast networks of highways equipped with service stations and one stop shops which look and feel the same. They produced the homogeneity in which in every town, on every transport network, one can find the same multitude of individual products: all with the illusion that they are custom made for each type of traveller. From consumer types, to personalised touch telephones reception, contemporary marketing forces us to direct ourselves as quickly as possible towards the product that appears designed and tailored personally for us. Now the internet, thanks to cookies and bots, we can't get away from this kind of individualised marketing pressure tailored to our individual needs and searches for products and information. However, as a measuring tool, the real individual as a unique living breathing entity is on their way to extinction in this world of individualization, in the midst of homogenisation. 

With web2, nanotechnology and genetic manipulation, the customized has become uncontrollable, and it is combined with the risk of large scale uniformity. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World predicted a (dystopian) utopia in which changes in society and human behaviour occurred as a result of scientific advancement and technological progress. The promise of scientific progress – and of Communism – was a new kind of future where individual needs would be met. However, in order to reconstruct the world, endlessly customised by potentially better consumer products, we will soon leave behind even the most incredible Huxleyian prognosis of what the future will bring. The ability of politics and science to control these changes is in question as are the limits of scientific progress in terms of what they bring to us. We are more conscious of the major risks to our planet and our peoples, and these risks themselves are capable of provoking tremors in the contemporary planet’s natural resources; through the dangers posed by use of nuclear energy and proliferation; the acceleration of global warming, of urbanisation and globalization, and in the public risks for health through synthetic biology and in releasing nanotechnologies. It seems that today the question of the limits imposed by free market choice for the individual is becoming clearer in spite of the individuality promoted by contemporary marketing rhetoric. Do we have the right to adapt our environment according to our desire for comfort? Where is the line between the legitimate and the superfluous, between improvement and destruction? 

Artists –