The upcoming Venice Biennale, the announcement of a new topic, a presentation has already taken place, the participants and curators of the Russian pavilion have been named. All this prompted me to remember that “heroic period”. To visit Venice, to be present, to participate in the competition for this Olympus of architectural thought is the dream of every architect. In addition, ten years have passed since all this was, and rumors have become overgrown with myths, and information on the Internet in the plural gives "Golden Lion for architectural photography …".
According to the official definition of the jury, literally, it was "A Special Prize for a photographer in the field of architecture for a great contribution to the Russian Pavilion, the exposition of which vividly demonstrated the brilliant images of the abandoned ruins of Utopia." Still, for the exposure, part of which was taken by photographs. And the "Golden Lion" went to Jean Nouvel for the French pavilion. It was later said that I owed the prize to Lara Vinca Masini, an art historian and architectural critic, who fiercely defended this ethical position among the other four members of the jury. Then the theme of the biennial is “Cities. Less aesthetics, more ethics”was chosen by the exhibition director, Italian Massimiliano Fuksas. For the first time, the curator of the Russian pavilion was the architectural critic Grigory Revzin, who presented his concept of "Ruins of Paradise", and within the framework of this concept - an exhibition of works by architects Mikhail Filippov and Ilya Utkin.
My appearance at the Biennale is primarily associated with the 1995 exhibition Melancholy at the Regina Gallery. The exhibition was based on one hundred photographs taken in Moscow, which is waiting for changes in the early 90s. The theme of the exhibition was "Ruins", the contemplation of the dying of old Moscow, giving rise to thoughts about the death of the culture of the past century. The ethical attitude towards cultural heritage was the theme of my exposition under the general title "Stratigraphy of the Metropolis". It was located at the bottom of the Russian pavilion. In one room there was a part of the Melancholy exhibition, in the other there was an installation called The Crust of the Earth, which is a heavy block of stone with a plan of Moscow engraved on it - a layer of earth, like a work of art, carved out of the city center. And the installation "Monument of Time", which consisted of 8 etchings, representing successive layers of lines and the etching board itself. Through the artistic act, I urged you to love your city the way it is.
Fuksas responded to the call “Less aesthetics, more ethics” with his exposition in the “Arsenal” pavilion. In it, new technologies and modern architecture saved a dying world. It should be noted that the exposition of the "Russian Pavilion" militantly argued with the concept of Fuksas. And in spite of the theme, Mikhail Filippov's powerful installation, representing the author's neoclassical style, was unlike anything and was very beautiful. The day after the awards were handed out, Jean Nouvel himself came to us, smiled and looked at everything for a long time, then asked to sign the catalogs, and when he left we thoroughly "discussed" his pavilion, which in fact is very similar to the works of Russian Sots Art of the late 80s … These cheerful patriotic sentiments over a glass of wine were spoiled by the appearance of a Russian delegation headed by Vladimir Iosifovich Resin. Grigory Revzin was the first to shoot and report, then Filippov showed his exposition. And no matter how hard I tried, I could not explain the meaning of the exhibition, what is the love for my own city and why I photographed the ruins when there are many good and beautiful houses in Moscow. A little later, at a dinner party, as a "laureate parsley", I was seated opposite Resin, and we continued our conversation about Venice, and I tried to explain the secrets of its beauty, and received a categorical disagreement with my own arguments, and moreover, I heard that the Moscow building complex is going to offer his assistance to the mayor of Venice in the overhaul of his housing stock. And then I screwed up in earnest, and I realized how fortunate that we "slipped through" this time. Now only good things are remembered. There was no pressure from the authorities, and the supervision was not too intrusive, and we did what we wanted to do.
The topic of the author, the curator and the authorities is very fragile and controversial. When, in our distant youth, Sasha Brodsky and I did contests, were not afraid of anything and won, we had no censorship or curators. When later we traveled abroad, did exhibitions and installations, they were not there either. We were lucky and we then "slipped through". But times have changed and apparently now it is impossible without curators. Of course, author exhibitions are one thing, and the Russian pavilion with its patriotic overtones is another. The pavilion represents Russia. Today Russia is a backward state in all respects and cannot compete with developed countries either in social policy or in any area of economic development. The country is at the bottom of the "technical revolution". The only thing that we have and can be proud of is culture, historical heritage, and people, their creative human potential, the real work of authors.
But everyone understands the meaning of patriotism in his own way. Then the question arises, who is more patriotic? A construction complex representing money and power, giving square kilometers of housing, or a bunch of intellectuals from Arhnadzor trying to preserve a small historic house. Why is victory in a football match so important in this country, and it does not matter who wins, Gazprom City or historical St. Petersburg? Why are the Russian authorities so afraid of the author and prefer to deal with an impersonal mass of designers, and in competition and without competition, a project always wins from a foreign "star"?
The understanding of patriotism in each specific case turns out to be decisive. For me, it happened in Holland at the grand opening of the Portal entrance to the Den Bosch ceramic center, which we did with Sasha Brodsky, and there were no Russian delegations there. Then a local resident, a gray-haired old man, came up to me and said: “We fought against you, Russians, we were always afraid and did not love you, but what you did for us - I like it, and now I already think of you differently … . Probably, a victory in sports causes a simpler manifestation of feelings of patriotism, but is it necessary at all costs to turn the Russian pavilion into the Sochi Olympics or Eurovision? All these questions are not a problem for the selected authors this time. You just need to believe them and they will answer the today's theme, posed to the biennial, and arrange everything perfectly, and do their job. They just need not to interfere!
