Concept
«The Formula of the Normal Citizen» explores how social norms shape individuals through the organization of their body, behavior, thought processes, and daily life. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power, the exhibition traces the journey from external regulation to internalized self-control. Moscow Conceptualism and Soc-Art are presented here as practices that reveal the hidden mechanisms of normalization through language, instructions, rituals, archetypes, and behavioral scripts.
Curatorial Text
The exhibition explores how the concept of the «normal» citizen is formed and how social norms become ingrained in daily behavior. The theoretical underpinning of the project is Michel Foucault’s concept of disciplinary power. This power organizes space and time, introduces exemplars, compares, classifies, and registers deviations. Gradually, the external demand begins to be perceived as natural. This thematic concern resonates with Moscow Conceptualism and SocArt. Artists in this circle addressed the language of instructions, slogans, questionnaires, archetypes, and everyday rituals, illustrating how collective norms infiltrate personal experience. The structure of the exhibition is built around three sections of the chapter «Discipline» from the book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison: «Docile Bodies, ” „Methods of Good Training, ” and „Panopticism.“ These sections sequentially unfold the organization of daily life, the comparison of the individual to a normative model, and the internal assimilation of control. The „normal citizen“ emerges here as a construct assembled from rules, linguistic formulas, and behavioral models. The real person never perfectly aligns with this model, and it is precisely this divergence that becomes the space for artistic expression.
Institutional Selection
