As the main characters of "The Matrix," sometimes we have a strange feeling that everything is not real. It seems strange to us why something can look like that, smell, feel, behave a certain way. As if a moment ago there was nothing, and now all of the sudden you are here. This always ends with the inner question of "who am I?" beyond which you do not recognize yourself, and immediately "who am I?" changes to "who is this?"

Within the framework of the exhibition "Red pill" we initiate a conversation about memory and identity. This topic may be relevant in different historical periods and in different contexts, however, we are interested in it as a certain perspective on the social "matrix" that influences the formation of our identity and is based on memory. Simply put, one can notice that we are the result of a mixture of memories at different levels – the "internal" one based on our experience and the "external" one based on experience and knowledge, which we obtain from other sources (people, books, historical narratives, social groups). Our memories are connected with the memories of other people and this connection gives them credibility. Thus, memory to a certain extent forms culture and becomes the basis for identifying oneself and others in the structure of society. Defining others through raising questions about their cultural, national, gender and other identities is placement of an "unfamiliar" person in a more or less comprehensible category, which removes the inner anxiety of the unknown and allows one to build communication. At the same time, the question of whether a person has and needs a core identity seems more interesting. What happens if it is deconstructed, if we adopt the so-called "performativity of identity"? In that case, on the one hand, it may seem that any identity takes place, on the other hand, it could also mean that all life is a performance, a game, a reassembly of identities.

Social theory, referring to the critique of identity, also sees in it a product produced by the supra-individual system, which can be defined as the sociocultural reality of society. Most often this system and its structures are invisible, they are naturalized and turned into Wachowskis' "matrix." In such a system, identity is an invariant of society. Identity is not us, and memory is an endless labyrinth, through which a pixel man runs in search of an exit. And the appearance of the red pill or sociological imagination, on the one hand, allows you to question the set rules, and, on the other hand, probably deprive you of the opportunity to go back and choose the blue pill. "Welcome to the real world," Morphius greets the "liberated" Neo, but this pathos is bitter. After all, constantly staying in reflection promises a constant struggle in everyday life.

Within the framework of this exhibition, we propose to perform a certain deconstruction of ourselves, to find different practices of interpretation of identity and memory, to understand how the overlap of many factors shapes our understanding of ourselves and others. When it comes to the description of identity, one cannot do without metaphor, without the language of the artist, because describing our identity we produce the object of research, thereby becoming an artist.