The theme of the XI Architectural Biennale was formulated by curator Aaron Betsky as follows: “There. Architecture beyond building (Out There. Architecture beyond building). What is interesting in Russian architecture besides architecture?
20 years ago, one could answer: everything. Everything was interesting, but not architecture. In addition to the fact that the architects sang beautifully, painted and wrote poetry, they also produced many conceptual projects. As for the real buildings, most of them corresponded to the Becki slogan exactly the opposite - “Buildings besides architecture”.
However, today the situation has changed. 15 years of sustained construction boom have created a new architecture. One can argue about whether Russia has received fundamentally new art, new literature, new music in the 20 years of its post-Soviet existence. There is no doubt that she received a new architecture.
What, however, remained in this architecture besides the buildings? Compared to Soviet times, conceptual design has disappeared in Russia. Our taste for architectural theory has also disappeared. Ecological urbanism, new sociality, architecture of the virtual reality era, even art architecture are of little relevance for the Russian architectural context of the 90s and 2000s. We know about these ideas, but they are not exciting because they are devoid of pragmatic interest. We build, leaving intellectual speculation to those who, alas, do not have a construction boom.
Prosperity pleases. But the question posed by Betzky is: what do you have besides buildings? - gives rise to anxiety that something is missing. Probably, generating this feeling is the point of such actions as the Biennale.
No, but really, do we really have no more concepts? Where do the ideas of our architecture live now? “Buildings are replacing land, and this is the original sin of architecture. A building creates something new, but it does not happen in a vacuum. What was once a free land, filled with sun and air, limited only by the horizon, turns into a building. Artificially created by man displaces those born by nature. The volume of the building blocks the air, the sun and the views around. The memory of the existence of the original place is being erased …”- writes Aaron Betsky in the introduction to the book“Architecture Beyond Buildings”. We are talking about complex phantoms of the landscape, in which nothing has yet been built, but the place itself is filled with some kind of meaning-images, quite tragic and contradictory. They precede architecture and are difficult to capture.
At the XI Architectural Biennale, we present a unique master of Russian land art - Nikolai Polissky. This is an artist who has taken an amazing turn in our art. He combined conceptualism with folk crafts, so that today peasants, residents of the village of Nikola-Lenivets, act as absurdist actionists for him. He combined the traditional theme of the conservative line of the Russian intelligentsia - going to the countryside, to nature, away from the temptations of the city - with the logic of avant-garde performance and conceptualism.
Fundamentally, all this happened on the basis of an architectural utopia. A ziggurat made of hay, an Eiffel tower made of vines, a Romanesque castle made of wood - this is the completion of village life to the fullness of universal Existence, and this is how the cosmos of the village of Nikola-Lenivets is designed. The landscape around seems to be filled with unformed dreams that soar in a meadow by a river, on a hill, in a ravine, in a field. Russian utopian consciousness today temporarily lives outside of architecture - it went to the countryside and settled in the landscape.
In part, these are the mental images that precede architecture and which Betsky speaks of. But in his understanding, architecture is born through the sin of violence over the landscape. In the case of installations and performances by Polissky, we are talking about objects that are naively sinless. These are the landscape dreams of being built up. Perhaps such a utopian consciousness is appropriate for a country experiencing a construction boom.
Who makes these dreams come true? Russia participates in the Venice Architecture Biennale 9 times. Conceptual architecture has always been shown in the Russian pavilion. We were embarrassed about what was actually being built in our country, and while we were embarrassed, there was a construction boom in the country. It's time to show real Russian architecture.
But this is not only an exhibition of leading Russian architects over the past fifteen years. This is an attempt to diagnose what is happening. What is the defining feature of today's Russian practice? Five years ago, Western architecture for us was a source of ideas, one might say - an unattainable ideal. All the stars of world architecture are present in Russia today. They win architectural competitions in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Sochi, and receive the most significant architectural orders. For Russians, yesterday's idols have become today's competitors.
We find Russian architecture at a turning point. It is not yet clear who will win this competition. But the situation is interesting in itself. Never before have Russian and Western architects faced each other over "how to equip Russia." Each of the stars, Russian and Western, is represented by a model. The layouts are placed on the chessboard. The main exposition of the pavilion is a game of chess between Russian and Western stars over the utopias of Nikolai Polissky. Time has passed … _
Grigory Revzin, Pavel Khoroshilov
