You are the designers of the Russian exposition at the Biennale, but also very famous Moscow architects. And first, a question for the architects. Among your projects, there are many that are quite literal, unambiguous in imagery - just like Frank Gehry's binoculars. Take, for example, your fish house or the interior of the Cocoon club. While most architects try to make the most shapeless, abstract architecture, you are doing this kind of "literalism". What is the reason for this? Is this such a deliberate shock?
Vladimir Kuzmin: Damn it, for the first time in several years I hear a question that I want to answer! Yes, of course, these are absolutely deliberate actions. And you yourself have already given an explanation for these actions. The fact is that one of our favorite architects with Vlad is Frank Gehry. I think it's not an exaggeration if I say that this is our guiding star - we even study it specially with our students at the Architectural Institute. Acquaintance with the work of this person became a turning point in our professional life. He, in fact, personifies what Vlad and I are trying to promote - a synthesis of modern architecture and contemporary art.
What is contemporary art for you? And how can it be transformed into architecture? It just somehow does not fit in my head
Vladislav Savinkin: For us, contemporary art is primarily an ironic reflection on the most pressing problems of today. And it is important for us that contemporary art uses the maximum amount of artistic means to express this reflection - from collage to some kind of video sequence. We, in turn, want architecture to become one of these means, so that it becomes a kind of conduit for contemporary art. Roughly speaking, we are representatives of the project direction of contemporary art, like Donald Judd, Klaus Oldenburg, who, by the way, is the co-author of the house-binoculars.
V. K: However, we focus not only on the characters mentioned. In the list of our authorities there are also n-th number of people associated with the Russian tradition, with folklore, with folk art. But both folk art and contemporary - topical, if you like - art have one thing in common. You called it "literalism", and this, in my opinion, is a very accurate definition. And this "literalism" just attracts us. Our idea is to draw the attention of ordinary people to some everyday, everyday things that they have already become familiar with and which they therefore do not notice. This is where pop art began. People living in a metropolis see nothing but their problems, or do not want to see: trees, fish, birds - this is an empty phrase for them. And we want to make them see it.
Inflating the fish to the size of a two-story house?
V. K: Exactly. Putting houses in front of a person in the form of fish, snakes, and most importantly, naming these objects by analogy with their prototypes - "house-fish", "house-snake", we draw his attention to the fact that besides work, there are still a lot of pleasant little things, we, as it were, for a second return him to the world of childhood. We are trying to create a kind of sign system, where the sign really means what it means. Without any second, third, fifth meanings. Our products are devoid of any connotations. In our opinion, such a childlike spontaneity associated with the desire to touch everything, to climb everywhere, based on pure instinct, can underlie the concept of architectural space.
V. S: Therefore, the most important thing for us is the artistic side of design. That is, we get a kind of architectural environment, but at the same time a certain system of artistic images, partly borrowed from fine art, partly from our memories, serves as the impetus for its creation.
Speaking about the connection between architecture and art … I know that a famous artist and designer Alexander Ermolaev was your teacher at the Architectural Institute. Tell me, did studying with him somehow affect your creative development?
V. S: I just can't get married because of him …
V. K: And it was thanks to him that I got married. And even fifteen years ago. On his student. Seriously though, we owe almost everything to Alexander Pavlovich. We adopted from him his creative method, his worldview. He opened modern art for us, in the end, introduced us to the work of people whom we still look up to.
V. S: Alexander Pavlovich is the person who always supported us in difficult times, was not lazy to listen to our complaints about life. We are so accustomed to listening to him in everything that when we have any problems or when we are experiencing creative failures, a crisis, we already know in advance what Alexander Pavlovich would say about this. Now, unfortunately, we only meet with him occasionally.
V. K: And what is also important - we now teach at the Architectural Institute in the same department as Alexander Ermolaev. That is, at first we were, as it were, his novices, but now we have become his ideological companions and popularizers of his ideas.
While studying your work, I discovered three completely different aesthetic lines in your work. The first line is postmodernism in the spirit of early Gehry, the second is a kind of kitsch a la Philippe Starck, the third is minimalism. What is the main line for you?
VK: You have correctly noticed that there are several lines in our work. Only instead of Stark, I would say Sottsas. As for minimalism, we have never been fond of pure minimalism. Some of our interiors, although laconic, are still not that much.
V. S: We have never set ourselves the task of identifying one aesthetic line for ourselves, in order to then invariably correspond to it.
In other words, you like to be different
V. S: We like to be different as the world, as our customers. Customers are also very different. We like to be different, like our students.
V. K: The main thing that Ermolaev taught us was not to get attached to the national, but to react to nature, to love it.
V. S: That is why we are engaged in some kind of natural sculpture such as the installation "Nikolino's ear" for "Archstoyanie".
Speaking of installations. After all, you have quite a lot of experience in this matter. Tell me, have you somehow applied this experience of yours to the design of the exposition of the Russian pavilion for the Venice Biennale 2008?
V. S: We have been engaged in exhibition design since 1992. And if we summarize everything that we have managed to do in this direction during this time, I think the number of such installations will definitely exceed fifty. We were very pleased that this potential of ours was in demand by the curators of the Venice Biennale. But we realize that here we are just executors of the will of the curators, we are, in fact, engaged in the technical implementation of their ideas. At the same time, the curators listen to us - the work is by no means unilateral. For example, initially four options were proposed, which, if they were not met with a bang, at least provoked heated discussions. The curators also received several interesting proposals, which concerned not only the ideology of the exhibition, but also its saturation with design attributes.
V. S: We have no claims to be ideologues. Rather, it's not even a matter of claims, but of an elementary lack of time. We are practicing architects. Although, as practicing architects, we just agree that there is a situation with foreigners capturing our market. So we accept this ideology. And even more. We want to immerse ourselves in it, we want to understand it, we want to correspond to it.
V. K: We are perfectly aware of the role we will play in this exposition. We are hands, we are not heads. We are the ones who implement the curatorial plan.
V. S: At the beginning of April we went to Venice. There we just walked around the Russian pavilion from hall to hall and literally designed together with the curators on the go. Still, this feeling of collective work is very pleasant. Joint discussions are held, everyone gives each other advice, and at the same time, everyone is an expert in their field.
How do you think foreigners will perceive the concept of the Russian pavilion? Still, such a topic. A game of ownership of the Russian architectural market. Foreigners think that they are helping us, teaching us wisdom
VK: Who helps whom is still a very big question. Do you think they are coming here to us out of pure altruism? As missionaries? They come to us to earn money. And, as a rule, we are talking about very big money. They act in a specific field with specific goals. And if so, it turns out that the ideology of the exhibition is quite legitimate. All this, no matter what anyone says, is a real battle for the market for product sales. This is a kind of Crusade, but not in the sense of religion or the introduction of some new standards into Russian culture. Everything that we need, we will safely take from them. They do not have to come to us for this. After all, we live in the information era. All that remained of the Crusade was the idea of profit. And so, let everyone interpret the idea of the Russian pavilion as he wants: someone will see in this a certain positive, they say, Russians are Europeanizing at least in the cultural plane, and someone will agree that the influx of foreigners into Russia is of an aggressive, occupational nature. … We, the authors of the exposition, by and large, should not care who sees what in this, whether foreigners like our concept or not.
In fact, the question of whom this exposition is aimed at is rather vague. After all, who comes to this Biennale? Who is in charge of this game? Trying to calculate how someone - curators, foreign architects, the press, in the current political situation - will evaluate the Russian pavilion - it seems to me to waste your nerves.
What is the most important thing in this whole story? For the first time in many, many years, not one or two architects will be exhibited in the Russian pavilion, but more than thirty. For the first time in the Russian pavilion, not the activity of one person, but the real situation in the architecture of our country will be demonstrated. Everything that happened in the Russian pavilion before that was more an artistic gesture than a conversation about architecture. And this alone should be of interest.
