Madame l’Ambassadeur welcomes “Embassy of Microterritories” to Zürich!
The diplomat suitcase is the materialized micro-diplomacy of Natalia Peredvigina and Kirill Agafonov. The black and silver suitcase, model “Diplomat”, a Soviet cult object of the eighties, manufactured in a production plant on the territory of today’s Ukraine, sleeps factory-new and unused in a warehouse for 40 years and finally turns up in 2022 on a Russian buying exchange on the Internet, is discovered and acquired by Kirill Agafonov and finds its true purpose as the diplomatic pouch of “Embassy of Microterritories”.
The suitcase opens, Natalia Peredvigina’s handmade filigree objects made of found materials, plant parts and waste are again territories of the imagination and provide the entry point for the conversations. The individual is in an exchange that conditions the other, much like orbiting planets that repel or orbit each other, yet never touch. In bilateral conversations, Natalia Peredvigina and Kirill Agafonov question their counterparts about their personal territories and inner compass. In a time of irritation, upheaval, disorientation and depression, any certainty is thrown off balance.
Natalia Peredvigina and Kirill Agafonov were guests of the message salon embassy in the summer of 2019 and presented the exhibition “Erde der Langstrasse” under the name “Gorod Ustinov” in the art space Die Diele. The joint ten-year project “Gorod Ustinov” has been disbanded in the current year of war by the two artists, and is disintegrating into its micro-territories. The crisis is latent and threatening, it permeates all spheres of life, artistic, private, social and political:
«In the face of a crisis at the level of big diplomacy we work at the level of interpersonal microdiplomacy. We are opening an embassy of our own and close microterritories, interacting with new microterritories of people and places we met. We propose during the meeting/exhibition to share: what does support your life and constitute the symbolic land on which you base permanently or at the moment?»
Natalia Peredvigina and Kirill Agafonov rebel against apathy and resignation. “Embassy of Microterritories” invites to “microdiplomacy”, to bilateral negotiations and interviews in the office, artworks, conversations, networks are created. The office of “Embassy of Microterritories” is currently located in the 25hours Hotel Langstrasse and is open daily: Monday to Friday, 3–5pm, Saturday and Sunday, noon to 4pm.
message salon embassy publishes a fanzine with Natalia Peredvigina and Kirill Agafonov during their stay, both publications will be presented on Saturday 10 September in the context of an extra session “Microdiplomacy” and in the presence of “Diplomat” in the rooms of message salon embassy at Köchlistrasse.
With the kind support of Stadt Zürich Kultur and 25hours Hotel Langstrasse Zürich