Artjom Astrov, Kisling, Till Megerle
“Guiding Light”
Parts I-V

Guiding Light is a project by artists Artjom Astrov, Michaela Kisling and Till Megerle. It's different chapters are weaved between the sound, the people, the drawings and the cinematography.

By merging their work Astrov, Kisling and Megerle distort and amplify emotion as they all treat the music band as a formless entity reaching a level of feigned nebulosity. The band plays with extremes and contradictions such as „realness“ and „artificiality“ as both visual and performative tools in order to continually question the essence of their work.



Artjom Astrov, Kisling, Till Megerle “Guiding Light V”
Artjom Astrov, Kisling, Till Megerle “Guiding Light V”

For Guiding Light V Artjom Astrov, Kisling and Till Megerle are supported by Aziza Harmel and Andreas Harrer in weaving together tender gestures, brainstorms and melodious energy. They navigate themselves through various moments of sometimes weird, sometimes eerie fragments to form and perform a complex, intensive structure of audiovisual delight.





Artjom Astrov, Kisling, Till Megerle “Guiding Light”

Guiding Light IV is a concert program that premiered at Kunsthalle Wien on March 17, 2022, in the context of the exhibition “Do Nothing, Feel Everything” curated by Aziza Harmel and Laura Amann. It was accompanied by an edition of 1GB USB Flash Drive containing videos, photos, demos and other files that were accumulated in the process of creating the work.






Artjom Astrov, Kisling, Till Megerle “Guiding Light IV” Artjom Astrov, Kisling, Till Megerle “Guiding Light IV”Artjom Astrov, Kisling, Till Megerle “Guiding Light IV”









Artjom Astrov, Kisling, Till Megerle “Guiding Light”

Guiding Light I-III is a series of three videos made together by Michaela Kisling, Till Megerle and Artjom Astrov and released by the music label Serious Serious in 2021. The videos coexist and interrelate activating each other in a thrilling narrative that is weaved between the sound, the people, the drawings and the cinematography. By merging their work Kisling, Megerle and Astrov distort and amplify emotion as they all treat the music band as a formless entity reaching a level of feigned nebulosity.

The formlessness of the band is also defined or more precisely undefined by their means of production and their politics of desire; entangling labour with domesticity and experiences of clubbing. The hybrid aftermath could be an acknowledgment of what it means to continue making music or art or simply to continue working when everything is mediated by the value-form and hence represented as abstractly equivalent to everything else. It is precisely this realism that transforms itself into an epic saga. The whole becomes a genre exercise where disparate ingredients share an emotional immediacy.

The series is the outcome of a deep hanging out that is neither predetermined nor random. To hang out deeply isn’t merely a genre of music, but a form of labor that embodies inexplicable sounds, intimate or sometimes banal situations and carefully assembled visuals. One could think of these videos as tracks that would form one song, a song that is shaped by the constellation of the voices of the three protagonists and the kind of exteriorizatioon and meaning that they commonly convey.
There is a tender feeling in each of these three videos, and just as you stop to wonder where it might be coming from, along comes the dark undertow.

–– Aziza Harmel



Artjom Astrov, Kisling, Till Megerle “Guiding Light I”