As soon as the cultural community of the former USSR stopped mourning the blown-up churches and crippled estates - as the daring nineties threw up a new problem, perhaps worse: entire city blocks began to change beyond recognition. They set fire to something, plastered something, finished building, altered - and the multi-stage approval system could not do anything about it, and the security agencies seemed to be doing something wrong. In a word, as everyone is well aware, already in the 1990s, the community of zealots for monuments - fortunately - began to revive, expand, and become more and more diverse in terms of the composition of participants, tasks, and methods of action. Now this community is motley, like the former Soviet intelligentsia, and maybe even more. But - something even managed to defend.
In the late 1990s, one of the high-profile new projects in defense of monuments was the cycle of photo exhibitions by Konstantin Mikhailov "Against the Scrap", and another - the site-community "Moscow, which does not exist", created 4 years later. Of course, there are others, but at the moment these two have teamed up and created an exhibition-action "Demolition cannot be restored". Which combined the characteristic features of the two creators: from "Against Scrap" he got the format of a photo exhibition, only now not only professional photographs are presented, but also works of amateurs fixing the remains of old Moscow as well as outrageous signs of the growth of a new one. From "Moscow, which does not exist" the project acquired an interactive format - it is not just an exhibition, or rather, it is not an exhibition at all.
The event does not really fit into the traditional concept of "exhibition", since the artistic value of the thirty photographs on display is not obvious. But the concept of action or warning is quite suitable for it, if we talk about the main goal pursued by the organizers - to draw attention to the fate of the architectural heritage.
Approximately as it was required from a poor student in the famous cartoon - the organizers invite everyone who came to put a comma in a sentence that is ambiguous without a punctuation mark. The meaning is the same - "you cannot be pardoned to execute." Only for a house, pardon means restoration, but execution means demolition. A comma is an image, a symbol of the action and a call to decide on the fate of the monuments. In fact, no one puts commas, and those who come are offered to vote "for" or "against" each of the objects presented at the exhibition in a paper ballot, as in an election.
Generally speaking, the idea is interesting. It would be curious to introduce it into practice - for example, the Moscow Heritage Committee takes a list of controversial objects, hangs photographs somewhere, and the people vote. Here is just a question - it is not yet clear what the result will be if you really vote. There are, you know, different technologies, so if they are connected … And many residents are still indifferent to monuments. The result of such a vote, if it is really carried out, can upset cultured people - we agree that cultured people have more than once been upset by the results of the people's choice. So, of course, you should beware of crying out to the voice of the people in earnest - he, mysterious, will say something. And in the conceptual form - please. Probably, after the exhibition, the votes will be counted, and another list of signatories in defense of the monuments will be drawn up, already in a new form. After all, supporters of the demolition of their own free will will not come to the action in large numbers. They generally go to other places. Therefore, a positive voting result for monuments is probably predictable. But a positive result in reality? Hard to tell. One way or another, we must admit that the voting process is fresh and quite in the spirit of “Moscow, which does not exist,” which once practiced in the field of protecting monuments something like youth flash mobs.
The exhibition is located in the manor house of Loris-Melikov in Milyutinsky lane. In itself, this place is symbolic, the house is just the same hesitates on the verge between demolition and restoration. Although its small dimly lit rooms are not the most spectacular exhibition space. However, the exhibition is also chamber and, let's say, emphatically inexpensive. Its meaning is not in beautiful pictures or even in depressing pictures. Its meaning is that someone, in addition to those who are officially entitled to it, keeps lists of monuments that are threatened with destruction - and will make them public. This is good, because, alas, the official picture is not always completely accurate. It's good when there is someone who checks it.
There are 2 days left before the exhibition closes, hurry up to vote.
