Artistic projects - Konstantin Grouss

Selected Projects & Context 2003-2023

ARTISTIC PROJECTS. 2003-2023
Curiosity about life in all its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.
In recent years, I have been focusing on ways of conveying information and the boundaries between different media. This applies to both my artistic and curatorial practice, to which I devote equal time and attention

Extended Moment, new visual art series


Current visual work continues at grouss.art.
UV print on aluminium Dibond with crystal. 
54 × 75 cm. Unique. 2025

Sculpture

Dance in dynamic statics
Sculpture is a logical continuation of the dance, the opportunity to give it existence in another time and dimension. In my concept of working with a static form, the kinetic component is important, giving a feeling of variability and relation to the current moment
Kinetic sculpture
Ars Hortus exhibition
The Botanic Gardens of Moscow State University "THE APOTHECARIES' GARDEN"

2018
Kinetic sculpture
"Horizontal" project, 6th Moscow biennale of contemporary art
Guslitsa art estate
2015

Video

Dance on the plane: video, movie, documentation
The video reveals the possibilities of dance that are not available in live performance or sculpture. Projection onto a plane or several planes, focus on details, compositional moves and features of drama fundamentally distinguish video from action on stage. Although very often it complements perfectly.
Video, dance. 4'43"
Batur volcano, Kintamani, Bali
2023
Video.
Contemporary music, contemporary dance
2020
Video
Moscow - Berlin
2020
Video, music, poetry, dance
duration 4'33"
May 2020
Video.

Music
Philippe Hurel
2019-2025
Multimedia performance
Contemporary dance, poetry, video
Marina Tsvetaeva museum
30 min.
2015
Video
Moscow - Basel
2007-2011
Almost empty space
Video
Series of video, in which space is of secondary importance to time
Video, dance
Series of video, base on common idea, filmed in different places
Video
SPACE programme residency
Dublin, 2008
Quest for Silence project
Moscow, 2014

<at>BODY<dot>MOVE

series of multimedia dance performances
One of the formulas I work with today is the one I explore in the series of works <at> BODY <dot> MOVE.

Briefly it can be described as follows:
< Unit of information → impulse → movement → unit of information >

Dance can be described as a sequence of forms on the visible side, and a flow of energy and information on the reverse, invisible side. In that flow the body takes one form after another, following the impulse that initiates the movement. That sequence is the dance. Much of the everyday information we take in from news feeds has almost no effect on us and passes as background. Placing the body into that flow as an instrument, we transform the information into a form new to it, stripping it of its former meaning and giving it a new turn of development. That new form in turn becomes an inspiring impulse for a new turn — musical, visual and so on.

What interests me is the transformation, the passage from one medium into another, the step-by-step analysis and structuring of daily information. Translated into dance, information appears in a new format — the format of physical energy, carrying information on a different level of perception.

In an era when the digital environment had begun to shift from a tool into an immersive habitat, the project reconsidered the conventions of choreography. The body appeared as an autonomous author and processor — a biological node within a distributed network of information flows.


Interactive dance composition.
Interpretation of daily life information in movement

Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
NavigArte festival /Pisa, Italy/
State Theatre of Nations (New Stage)
2014-2018
Interactive dance composition.

"Room Room Room" dance project,
5-th Moscow biennale of contemporary art,
"Code of Epoch / Zeitgeist" contemporary art festival at
The All-Russian Museum of Applied and Folk Art
2013
For fifteen years John Cage's music was the ground under this work. It arrived in September 2004 through the pianist Alexei Lubimov, who had performed Cage in Moscow since 1969, through the years when doing so was forbidden. He was building his concert programmes as conceptual projects, and he invited a dance company into one of them.

What followed was not a commission but a working relationship: eight projects, seventeen documented showings, four countries. The music set the terms — duration fixed by a score, silence as structure rather than pause, chance as a compositional method — and the choreography was made inside them.

Theatre performances and actions

A theatre performance is an action on many levels, a whole complex of ideas united by one main line. This is its fundamental difference from a performance (action) - a conceptual staging, where a single line is viewed from different angles and does not need to be intertwined with others.
Contemporary dance /
contemporary music performance
Scriabin Memorial Museum
2019
Video based on the contemporary dance performance
“Guslitsa” creative castle
2019
contemporary dance performance
at extension.art - 3 festival at Art-Residence /Moscow/

www.art-residence.ru
2012
Choreography, dance, video — Konstantin Grouss
Composer — Bryce Dessner
Music — Studio for New Music quartet, led by Stanislav Malyshev
Rachmaninov Hall, Moscow State Conservatory

2018
Dance performance, consisting of 7 Russian dance companies works united into one piece
Moscow
2018
Video film / Multimedia performance
Marina Tsvetaeva museum
2015
Contemporary dance
"No translations" festival
2011
Contemporary dance
"No translations - 1" festival
2010
Multimedia performance
Contemporary dance, poetry, video, painting
Open Stage Project
Moscow
2009
Performances, actions, video 2004-2008
This video is compiled from excerpts from several choreographic and video works, actions from 2004 to 2008. "Philosophy of Walls", "Phases of the Moon", "Mask for body", "Cage for air", "Bacchanalia in the Garden of Stones", "21st Floor". The video is mirrored in such a way that the excerpts united as a single whole, combining a period of work of several years. Concept, choreography, video - Konstantin Grouss
Contemporary dance piece for 4 dancers and painter.
"Action hall"
Moscow
2008
Contemporary dance piece for 5 dancers.
State Theatre of Nations
2005
Contemporary dance performance.
Meyerhold Theatre Centre Moscow
2003-2004
Contemporary dance and music theatre
Theatre "School of dramatic art by Anatoly Vasiliev"
St Gallen music festival, Austria
2004-2006
Performance-action
The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts
Festival "December nights – XXVI, Masks - From Myth to Carnival"
Moscow
2006
Cage for Air
Contemporary dance drama for 3 dancers, piano solo and voice (John Cage music).
Krasnoyarsk musical theatre
2008
Curiosity about life in all its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.
Philosophy of process
Konstantin Grouss. Method & Rules
Philosophy of process
Statement No. 0. On beginning ...▷
"By synthesising Eastern and Western ways of thinking, I strive to combine powerful expression with inner stillness in my work. Whilst developing in various directions, I retain my starting point as a place of tranquillity, to which I can always return in order to move forward… perhaps in a different direction."


Philosophy of process
Statement No. 1. On the main thing ...▷
"All you need is Love"
Philosophy of process
Statement No. 2. On method ...▷
"Art is service — giving open access to your point of view on the world, and to your way of looking, to anyone who wants it.

My method is dance. Dance allows the potencial to achive its form. Dance and choreography contain all the laws by which my artistic, curatorial and any other projects develop: composition, rhythm, form, internal relationships, the flow of energy. The material can differ. The form differs. But everything comes from a single source and moves in a single flow.

My task is to give out the information as it arrives, like wi-fi, in every direction. Anyone can tune in to that wavelength."
Philosophy of process
Statement No. 3. On clouds ...▷
"Before you can write a description of a project you have to see it clearly in its potential, up in the sky. Only then does it become clear how it can be realised, brought down to earth. That way there is no need to write empty concepts. Much of what has been written is still flying in the clouds, waiting for a favourable moment to land. For that you need a suitable site, resources, and other people who need it."

Philosophy of process
Statement No. 4. On money ...▷
"A process needs possibilities. Money is needed too — to live, and to pay for the possibilities you are missing."
Philosophy of process
Statement No. 5. On partners ...▷
"I am glad of talented partners who know and can do more than I can. There is someone to learn from, and something to feed the living process."
Philosophy of process
Statement No. 6. On the source ...▷
"Every project that does get made comes out of nowhere, out of the chaos of space. I give it one form or another, trying to reach harmony and balance. And if that doesn't work, I simply put the chaos into a suitable vessel."
Philosophy of process
Statement No. 7. On time and space ...▷
"There is always a place and a time.
For the new and the unknown, for reconsidering what already exists, and for doing it here and now."

I would like to express my deepest thanks and appreciation to all the performers, artists, composers, musicians, designers and photographers with whom I have ever had the privilege of working on stage, on a project, or who have inspired me to continue on the path of discovery and learning.
I would like to thank all the producers, managers and technical specialists whose hard work and involvement helped bring these projects to life, regardless of the complexity of the tasks they faced.
I would like to thank everyone who has carefully analysed the projects they have seen, written about them or in any other way covered our projects in the media, on social media or simply in conversation.
I would like to thank my friends and viewers for their attention and support, for their understanding and constructive criticism. In this process, one can discover, explore and share things that can serve as a source of inspiration.
I would like to thank everyone who has supported us with financial and other material resources, without which none of these projects could have seen the light of day and reached their audience.