As for Nizhny Novgorod, most of the day the townspeople overcome traffic jams, work to earn decent purchases in numerous shopping centers that have supplanted all other possible realities in their imaginations. Contemplation - and the landscapes of the Oka and Volga are conducive to such an occupation - has been supplanted by consumption. This is confirmed by one of the emotional cards made for the festival. The collage is made up of photographs of people with beer, bags and carts filling the entire city.
Demonstration of the first emotional maps made by artists, designers and architects was the initial stage of the “Other Dimension” project. The project is designed for a year, it is planned to sum up some results for the next Days of Architecture, but for now the city is being explored during drifts. So a group of artists ‘A3’ demonstrated at the exhibition a description of one of such drifts, and within the framework of the festival the next one was held - a night one …
What will be the results of such collective efforts, and whether they can affect the general mood - nobody knows. At least the purpose of the festival is not just to gather a party and entertain it, but also to provoke some relatively new forms of activity. For example, involve a wide variety of people in conversations about the city. The discussion club in the House of Architects never took shape - this requires thorough preparation of all participants. But such a fashionable format as Pecha-Kucha turned out to be in place. The organizer of the Nizhny Novgorod parties, the MASSOLIT association, willingly agreed to open a thematic branch of Pecha-Kuchi in the House of Architects: “City. Space. Architecture". 20 slides, 20 seconds for a comment on each - in this mode, a story about facades, advertising, graffiti, problem areas and trips to the "beautiful far away" takes place. After the festival, meetings in a new format will be held in the House of Architects once a month.
The headstand exhibition at the festival was a direct provocation. The topics of landscaping, environmental design, as a rule, are occupied by specialists, without touching the feelings of the rest of the public. At the same time, most of the townspeople have no idea what a high-quality environment is, and they associate this concept exclusively with local production of paving stones laid everywhere in the city on prominent paths and paths. What is it really - and showed "Headstand": in order to examine a photograph, first it was required … to catch it. Dozens of images hung on invisible threads at the height of an outstretched arm under the ceiling of the Architect's House. The “photo cars” constantly swayed and revolved, turning to the viewer either with a picture or with a comment from the back. In the comments, specific addresses of Nizhny Novgorod were indicated, but the photos did not fit in with the usual ideas about these places. "Dance Floor on the Oka near the Molitovsky Bridge", "Classes of surfers on the Borzovka River", "Summer awning on the Revolution Square", "Morning yoga classes in Dubki Park. Not everyone has been able to perform a headstand yet”… Not everyone! And this is insulting.
The city can become better and more humane if people do not forget how to look around more attentively, thoughtfully. Will not stop feeling reality. Understand how space works and what it means. At the festival, there was a discussion of a seemingly “non-architectural” film by Milos Jancho “Without Hope.” But the philosophers explained what was happening there with movement and speed, and how to extend these explanations to a living city. Return - at least for a while! - the need for contemplation, unhurried reasoning was tried by the guests of the festival - the creators of the ARKHIproba online magazine - Tamara Muradova and Olga Lavrentieva. Young architects, graduates of the Moscow Architectural Institute, make the magazine solely for the sake of pleasure, finding joy in pure geometry, shadows, halftones, metaphorical statements. The photo exhibition they prepared for the festival in Nizhny Novgorod is about the same. Light, harmonious details, spatial abstractions, and other beauty that can fill our life, if we do not miss the chance to feel it all every day. And respond appropriately - not with ready-made cliches, but responsibly and independently experiencing.
