Memento metro is a five-year illegal art project in the Moscow metro; it includes street photography, video, street art and a performance. The name "Memento metro" is an allusion to the catch phrase "Memento mori". Literally "Remember that it is the metro".
INSIGHT
People in the metro go to work every day, their behavior is habitual, recognizable, but unique. Seeing a special charm in it, I just wanted to save the best, sincere moments of the subway and restore them later.
CREATIVE IDEAS AND THE CHALLENGE
To take a photo in the subway and later return the printed photos to the place where they were taken; to remember the unique moment of the past, which occurred in a specific place in the subway and which will never happen again.
PHOTOS
Square, black and white photographs without digital retouching, taken on the iPhone camera in the subway for 5 years.
The best pictures are printed in the size of 15x15 cm and are pasted on black foam board pieces, size 30x30 cm. That way I put them up in metro carriages, at stations and subway crossings.
THE PERFORMANCE
As a performance "Memento metro" is a public, uncoordinated action in front of ordinary metro passengers, based on exhibiting photographs right at those places where they were taken.
THE IDENTITY
Restrained, minimalistic and thought-provoking style for the uncoordinated gallery in the metro (black and white photos),
for the video, exhibitions, design of the book and design of the project on the crowd-hosting platform Planeta.ru and other media.
for the video, exhibitions, design of the book and design of the project on the crowd-hosting platform Planeta.ru and other media.
Monochrome photographs, grayscale and the Courier New font are in the heart of the identity.
VIDEO
The performance was recorded on a GoPro video camera attached to the chest. Out of the sufficient footage I edited a video with The Three Corners of The Earth - The Fire Shall Devour Us as a musical background.
EXHIBITIONS
Gallery Memento metro was in the Center for Contemporary Art "Winzavod". Three walls were allocated to the exposition of black-and-white photographs divided into several themes. The fourth wall was for a Memento metro video and a narrative performance video in the first person from the GoPro camera.
THE BOOK
The book contains the history of the project in Russian and English and there are more than 100 project photos as well.
Designed according to the project's identity.
Format: square 25x25 cm, 160 pages.
Cover: hard, fabric, in embossed print.
PROJECT OUTCOME
One Facebook post that went viral.
Russian and foreign publications gave publicity to the project.
Over 130 thousand video views on Vimeo. The project is covered by seven Russian TV channels.
Successful fundraising at crowdfanding:580 thousand rubles for publishing the book.
Two exhibitions in the cultural centers of Russia - Winzavod Contemporary Art Center, Design Factory "Flacon".
