The exhibition explores the split screen as a way of presenting visual material. Landmark twentieth-century projects show how artists and designers divided images across one or more screens, and how these techniques shaped the informational and emotional impact of today’s digital images.
The project was developed with support from the Vladimir Potanin Foundation and the Institute of Design and Spatial Arts at Kazan Federal University.
Curator: Anastasia Maksimova
Design: Kirill Blagodatskikh
Opening hours: 12:00–20:00 on weekdays and 11:00–20:00 at weekends. Curator-led tours take place on Fridays at 15:00.
Entrance is with exhibition tickets.
About the exhibition:
“Split Screens: Between Technology and Art” examines the development of the technique during the twentieth century. It brings together lesser-known examples from art, film, theatre, architecture and design.
Early experiments in graphic design and film are represented by Alexander Rodchenko and Dziga Vertov. Josef Svoboda demonstrates the use of split screens in theatre; August Lanin, the fragmentation of surfaces in architecture and design; and Rostislav Rostislavov, multi-projector displays for exhibitions. A film by Yuri Norstein illustrates a rare use of the technique in animation. Light-music artists also combined several projections on a single screen, including Bulat Galeev at Prometheus Student Engineering Bureau and Sergei Zorin in his Optical Theatres.
Before digital tools, combining several images on one plane was technically demanding. It could be achieved with several projectors aimed at one screen, several projectors and several screens, or a single projector using an image divided in advance.
The exhibition grew out of research into a method that is now commonplace. Young designers studied archival documents, publications, photographs and videos from the “Bulat Galeev–Prometheus” Foundation for the Support of Audiovisual and Technological Art. They then created models based on historic projects; several invite direct interaction.
