Last week I went to the DAU exhibition which I would describe as an immersion in the personal memories of USSR of an eccentric artist.
The process to enter the exhibition is in itself interesting because not only I needed to buy a ticket, but I also needed to answer couples of questions (around 20) in order to get my visa, which would give me access for a certain number of hours on a particular day. I bought my 24hours visa for Thursday at 3 pm, and it was specified that in order to get your visa it was essential to come 30 minutes before the time indicated on it. The information kiosk installed in the middle of the Place du Chatelet, for the exhibition, is full of old lamps, large desk, and in front of it, people talk to visitors to help them to find their way, and in front of the door, a security guy looks everywhere.
On Friday I came back, and I had a problem with my visa time, so I went to ask if I could change it a way or another. A young lady, who was whispering seemed puzzled and called her superior to see what they could do. In the end, they came back from the kiosk with my new shiny visa with the new time on it; the experience could start.
I went, on advice on the young lady to the Theatre du Chatelet. All the windows were covered in a blurry plastic obstructing the view and giving an effect of broken glass. At the entrance, two security guys were controlling everyone bag, ID and visa. AWhat I experience here, through the over control of my ID and visa, increases the feeling of entering a different world, where the rules are different, a closed world. Furthermore, in the USSR, it was particularly challenging to travel outside the Soviet Union. In the exhibition different type of visa offers different opportunities for travelling within the exhibition:
– type 1 gives you access to 6hours of the exhibition and no possibility to come back in if you go out
– type 2 offers 24hours access with the possibility of going out and in as many time as you like
– type 3 gave unlimited access for the all time of the exhibition. Having controlled opportunities to go out and in, being control by time, and having a different level of visa, definitely recreate an atmosphere of coercion were not everything is possible.
- Written a few days after I visited the exhibition