The Discipline Machine
is a site-specific installation of paintings, sculptures and works on fabric inspired by the 1920 essay by Kazimir Malevich “God is not cast down.” Its sources are varied, with subjects ranging from the media images of recent street protests in Russia, to the history of geometric abstraction in painting; the use of the Cartesian coordinate system in science; and the Soviet practice of group exercise in public spaces. Connecting such disparate practices is the idea of discipline, or more precisely – the underlying structures of regulation, categorization, and control forming the foundations of modern society, culture, and knowledge. Consisting of fabric pieces with silkscreen and embroidery, figurative paintings, abstract mixed-media compositions and wood and fabric sculptures, the installation is a network of loosely associated image and text fragments whose meaning is located in the gaps between different visual and linguistic forms.