International contemporary artists have created the first interactive location-based mobile app and are now inviting the wider community to take a trip with them and their art on London’s South Bank.

Launching as part of Art Night Open 2018, ShadowMemory is a unique art project which showcases urban London in a subversive light, digitally through an app which allows the user to view the capital from the eyes and perceptions of the artists.

Seven contemporary artists with a diverse collection of digital cross-cultural narratives have contributed to the ShadowMemory app which will lead users through a network of each of their pathways along the South Bank, only steps away from the main Art Night Trail.

This exhibition entices the users in to the urban unknown as they immerse themselves in each of the artists’ visions along the routes. Each of the seven pieces of art and each narrative is an entirely different experience showcasing the variety and individuality of each creator. The user will experience stories, games, performances and more along the banks of the river Thames.

The artists and art collectives are themselves as diverse as their artworks. They include Paul Coombs (London, UK) and Gabriel Mulvey (Geneva, Switzerland); Sarah Staton (London, UK); eeefff (Moscow, Russia & Minsk, Belarus); Timothy Maxymenko (Kiev, Ukraine); Rotem Volk (Tel Aviv, Israel); Katia Reshetnikova (Moscow, Russia); and ZIP group (Krasnodar, Russia).

This digital project is a new initiative of GRAD, previously known to many as Gallery for Russian and Eastern European Arts and Design committed to promoting the culture of the region at the highest standard . Over the last few years GRAD has presented over twenty curatorial projects partnering with the Science Museum, the Courtauld Institute of Art, Van Abbe Museum in Eindhoven, State Russian Archive of Literature and Arts and St. Petersburg Museum of Theatre and Music, to name a few. Now GRAD is expanding and reaching out to international artists, individuals and communities from different continents and cultures with a focus on interdisciplinary approach, new media and technology.

Elena Sudakova is the Director & Principal Curator of GRAD: “ShadowMemory transforms the way we navigate the cities through the eyes of others and filled with meaningful artistic content.
“It is also a new experimental media for the artists as they are able to present their artwork within the urban environment through the content which appears on a smartphone.
“It creates new relationships between the artists, participants and different areas of the city, enhancing the sense of belonging in the community,” enthused Sudakova, who is also the ShadowMemory co-curator alongside Katya Sivers.

“ShadowMemory bridges virtual and physical reality to help us experience urban environments in different and unexpected ways. It simultaneously acts as a multidisciplinary art exhibition, a tour, a game and an immersive experience which we hope will offer people a new route, a new way if you will, of how they see London,” added Sivers.

Whilst the art is sure to bend the mind, the app is simple to download from 2 July. Once downloading the app prior to or on Art Night 2018, choose one of the seven routes and head to the first location. The unity of art and digital will then be the guide.

Ends

Notes for editors:
For Press information please contact:
Anthony Burr
anthony@burrmedia.co.uk
Tel: +44 (0)7766 459 469

More information on the creators of ShadowMemory:
ROUTE # 1. BACKBONE
by Gabriel Mulvey & Paul Coombs

Beginning with a cruise around Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens and finishing up on a bench outside a sex club in Fitzrovia, Backbone explores what it is to be queer in London, past, present and possible future.

Mulvey and Coombs will escort you through a history of anti-gay legislation, protest on poppers, slapstick cruising, chemsex, HIV and a flirtation between a pigeon and a squid.

Live Event, 7th July: For one night only, and in celebration of Pride, Gabriel Mulvey and Paul Coombs will perform live re-imaginings of their twelve-act geolocated video work Backbone. Joing them under the arches at 8pm and again at midnight.

Location and time: New Spring Garden Walk, (Arch 75), Vauxhall, London, SE1 7TL, 8pm and 12am. Performances last 15 minutes.

ROUTE # 2. PREPARE TO SYNCHRONIZE
by eeefff (Nicolay Spesivtsev & Dzina Zhuk)

Have you ever wondered what happens inside the cable channels and false ceilings of a Nine Elms skyscraper when we are not there? Or examined your feelings for an automatic door? In a city dominated by intelligent systems and smart technology eeefff invite you to discover the invisible forces that drive them, experiencing the inhuman drama unfolding in ways we mortals can finally grasp. Moscow and Minsk based eeefff’s route is a training program, preparing you for connection with these sophisticated computations, invisible to the eye and operating at speeds hundreds of times faster than human ones. Prepare to synchronize.
Live Event, 7th July: (NEEDS ADDING)
Location and Time: (NEEDS ADDING)

ROUTE # 3. THE URBAN HOWL
by Timothy Maxymenko
A walk with Timothy Maxymenko certainly won’t be boring. Or quiet. This Ukrainian intermedia artist, one half of Mutro Art Group, is known for creating experimental sound performances. The Urban Howl is an audio walk, inviting you to explore the city as an imperfect mechanism, to find its leaks and hear its groaning. You will also be co-creator, mixing your own soundtrack as you go, gathering electric noise from air vents, drains and electrical boxes along the river bank. At the end, you can download your finished masterpiece.

Live Event, 7th July: Come play with and be played to by the city and its sounds. Make a mixtape sampling air vents and electricity boxes; be serenaded by sample drains and cooling units. Come join.
Location: The back door of Chariots Roman Spa, entrance from Goding St, SE11 5AW
Time: 6pm – 8pm

ROUTE # 4. ATLAS
by Katia Reshetnikova
In a city where hurrying is the norm, Moscow based Katia Reshetnikova invites you to slow right down. The artist’s voice will guide you through small actions, games, and explorations of the body’s inner movements. Her intention is to make you feel the sublime in the everyday and create a shift in your perception to reveal the unseen. As with Reshetnikova’s other work, Atlas spans the intersection of performance, dance, and audio. Over this short walk, you will discover a whole new Southbank hidden in plain sight and end feeling more focused and grounded.

Live Event, 7th July: Join Katia Reshetnikova’s cool collective playground between 6-8pm to explore the slower, more invisible processes of the human sensorium through a series of simple sensitive scores.
Location: Battersea Park, SW11 4BE, as you enter the park from the bridge, on the left uphill there is a green space. 51.482645, -0.150379, https://vimeo.com/235884678?ref=em-share
Time: 6pm – 8pm

ROUTE # 5. THE FISH FINGER SANDWICH – THE HUNGRY PERSON’S GUIDE TO FOOD, DRINK & ART
by Sarah Staton

London’s layered psychogeography provides a full larder of resource for this artist’s guide to this Art Night locale. Merging memory, deep roots and connections to this area with ideas for micro-exhibitions, Sarah Staton focuses her attention on Lower Marsh. You’ll discover a series of temporary installations awaiting you within the best independent cafes, bars, and restaurants in the area. Through the heady mix of immersive technology and real space investigation, you’ll find both art and nourishment within this enjoyable program - a reveal of material culture, bonhomie, and unexpected pleasures to be unearthed across the SE1 postcode.

Live Event, 7th July: Sarah Staton will be holding drop-in sessions at the Anchor and Hope between 8-9pm, or from 10pm onwards at Banh Bao Bros, the sites of her most recent installations. Swing by to say hi.
Locations and Times: Anchor and Hope, SE1 8LP, 8pm – 9pm, Bao Bros, SE1 7NN, 10pm onwards.

ROUTE # 6. FROM WHERE I STAND
by Rotem Volk
Water, water, everywhere. This unassuming liquid is not just essential to our survival, our connection and longing for it is complex and emotional. Tel Aviv based performance artist Rotem Volk will take you on an immersive walk along the Thames, exploring the different relationships people around the world have with water sources, through personal experiences, memories and stories. Each stop reveals different water sources located at extraordinary sites around the globe, carefully collected by the artist. All originate from the same point of view- From Where I Stand.

Live Event, 7th July: You are invited to the lowest place on earth, to meet one-on-one with the artist Rotem Volk. Using salt and water to transport you from the benches of Southbank to the Dead Sea, this small intervention sells a fantasy.
Location: The benches between Westminster and Lambeth Bridge.
Time: 6pm – 8pm

ROUTE # 7. ANIMALITY
by ZIP group
The ever-inventive ZIP group is successfully putting Krasnodar, Russia on the art map. Animality, as you might expect, is all about London, but not perhaps as you know it. You will follow a character, a combination of several creatures; dog, artist, and policeman. According to ZIP, a bit of each of these characters is in us all: Self-control and the internal sensor (policeman), absolute freedom and instinct (dog), open-mindedness and globality (artist). On the way you will be challenged with different perspectives and choices of how to behave, perhaps illuminating unexpected things about yourself along the way.

Live Events, 7th July: Check your logic and chat, playing chess near Bishop’s Park. Join the championship – the UCLMD or Underground Chess League (after Marcel Duchamp).
You can get a free portrait of your four-legged friends near The London Eye: bring your dog and we will draw it.

Protosport in the sports playground – of new and forgotten exercises.
Locations: 41 Royal St, bench outside Archbishop’s Park, SE1 7LW
Archbishop’s park sportsground, SE1 7LE
Embankment, near London Eye, SE1 7BF
Times: 6 – 8pm

More information on GRAD:

Since opening its first base in 2013 at London’s Fitzrovia Grad has operated as a Kunsthalle, a platform and a forum for debate while researching, curating, commissioning and producing over a hundred critically-acclaimed projects. Equally known for its historical shows and contemporary exhibitions exploring urgent social realities Grad instigates intellectual enquiry and builds connections between artists, individuals and communities from different continents and cultures.

Grad challenges cultural bias and preconceptions and champions an experimental interdisciplinary approach with a focus on new media and technologies.
Grad's team is based in London and Moscow, but works and thinks internationally.