V–A–C Sreda online magazine continues its three-month programme dedicated to the earth and its different meanings, associations, and interpretations in culture, art, folklore, and science. In this issue, we publish Influence of Scope, a video work by artist Zhenya Gavrilov and curator Zhenya Chaika, who are also the authors of the Influence Scope installation that is currently on display as part of the Similarity Index exhibition at GES-2 House of Culture.

The Influence Scope installation traces the evolution of ideas about the earth from prehistoric times to a possible future in which humankind is absent. The work is constructed as a universe of many suns, frozen as they set. Their light not only makes the elements visible, but reveals how they should be seen. The broken line of a graph is incorporated into the projection, it is the observed itself that prompts the results of observation.

In the Influence of Scope video work, the projector is taken out into nature, and its light directed outward towards material reality. The device through which the sought after influence gap was discovered begins to play a deciding role. Slipping out of human control, it chooses what and how to see. The illusion that it is possible to influence a calibrated narrative is countered by the projector and the reverie of its direct observation.

One might think that the transition from the Influence Scope installation to the Influence of Scope video work would allow us to complete the system created within the exhibition, to find that missing fragment of the world—it turns out, however, that all worlds are already complete, that there are many gaps between them, and there is, in fact, no “outside.”

There is only what we do not have time to see before we leave the room.

The authors would like to thank Vitaly Kolesnik for his help in the process of filming.