Olga Shishko on Media Art, Archives, and AI

Olga Shishko, Chief Art Curator of CIFRA platform and director of MediaArtLab, discusses her career in media art, archiving, and the impact of AI. Born from a classical art history background at Moscow State University, she co-founded MediaArtLab with Alexei Isaev in the 1990s, seeing video as a tool for liberation in post-Soviet Eastern Europe. She curated major shows including 'The Golden Age of the Russian Avant-Garde' at the Manege in Moscow with Peter Greenaway and Saskia Boddeke, and Bill Viola's 'Journey of the Soul' at the Pushkin Museum with Kira Perov. She also organized 'There Is a Beginning in the End. The Secret Tintoretto Fraternity' in Venice's San Fantin church with Marina Loshak. Shishko emphasizes that preserving media art means ensuring its reactivation, not embalming it. She sees archives as democratic, polyphonic spaces, and views AI as both a natural extension of media art and a radical shift, particularly in questioning trust and truth through mockumentary and fake documents. She advocates for a trans-historical approach, inspired by Aby Warburg, and remains driven by curiosity, engaging with young artists and her 10-year-old nephew in Berlin.