Another room / Server room
Installation: printed fabric, video, mixed media
Created for the group exhibition “No Time” at Shchusev State Museum of Architecture
The work is based on an archival letter from A. Batanov, deputy director of the Museum of Russian Architecture, to the head of Housing and Utilities Office №11, requesting the removal of boilers from the former boiler room in the basement of the Apothecary Prikaz (Pharmaceutical Department). This document serves as evidence of how architecture is constantly rewritten from within, adapting to the needs of time.
The Laboratory gave twenty-one participants access to the museum's digital catalogue and asked each to choose a document or an object from it and make a work in dialogue with what they found. I chose an archival letter from A. Batanov, deputy director of the Museum of Russian Architecture, to the head of Housing and Utilities Office No. 11, requesting the removal of boilers from the former boiler room in the basement of the Apothecary Prikaz. The document is evidence of how architecture is constantly rewritten from within, adapting to the needs of its time.
Today, when museum curators carefully preserve even empty filing cabinets as part of history, it’s hard to imagine dismantling historical elements. But what if the meter-thick walls of the Apothecary Prikaz are now just a shell? What if behind the 17th-century brickwork, another reality has long existed—endless server rooms containing terabytes of digitized memory?
Through a tear in the fabric imitating brickwork, a view opens onto a server room—a space that could exist within the massive walls and columns. The installation invites viewers to glimpse into the museum’s future, where historic architecture becomes merely an outer shell for new forms of memory storage.
Credits
Shown in Time is Nothing (Времени нет), the first exhibition of the MUAR × TSEKH Laboratory, Apothecary Prikaz, Shchusev Museum of Architecture, Moscow, 22 July to 5 October 2025
Laboratory curators: Natalia Mastalerzh (NOWADAYS office), Yulia Staborovskaya-Ardabievskaya (Saga), Lola Khrunova and Varvara Aleshina (Shchusev Museum of Architecture)
