The central theme of the festival - "signs of movement" - was suggested by the festival site itself, engulfed in multidirectional dynamic processes, which gradually formed into a single powerful movement, into a whirlwind. This is the work on the formation of the city of craftsmen - "ArchPolis", and the creation of the "Art Residence", and the emergence of a farm, and the planning of year-round art and production workshops in Zvizzhi, where a technical yard and a warehouse of building materials are already functioning.
Nikola-Lenivetsky Park as a repository of art exhibits, according to the festival's curator Anton Kochurkin, conceals movement within itself. To cover the artifacts accumulated over the seven years of the festival's existence, a person has to overcome kilometer by kilometer (the park area occupies about 600 hectares), building his own vector of movement. The organizers decided to streamline this process and this year they offered their versions of the routes that turn into an exciting journey. In this scenario, movement can be selected based on their own emotional and aesthetic preferences.
Several such routes were announced in the festival program - for example, a march from AB "MANIPULAZIONE INTERNAZIONALE" called "20 points in 20 hours" or the route of the magazine "Bolshoi Gorod", offering to cover in one day a good half of those realized on the territory of "Archstoyanie" objects. For independent movement along the routes, all visitors were offered detailed maps indicating "stops" at points of concentration of artistic and architectural thought.
The curatorial route of Anton Kochurkin began at the foot of Boris Bernasconi's "Arch". Its impressive monolithic volume of deep black marked the border between the park and the forest in the Versailles zone.
From the side of the forest "Arka" seemed like an impregnable fortress tower, an outpost. And approaching from the side of the "LABSCAPE" platform, red-hot under the hot sun, everyone dreamed of finding a saving coolness in it. And, indeed, inside the visitors there was a shadow and, surprisingly, cold well water.
Simple on the outside, the "Arch" turned out to be very complex and multi-layered on the inside. A wide, twisted staircase could climb to the upper observation deck. From there, the park area is visible at a glance. And also in the same place, above, there was a real village well, which, with a tempting creak of its gate, invited travelers weary of the heat.
Down the route participants were asked to go down another, narrow staircase located on the left side of the structure. A pleasant surprise was a flutist, whom she met somewhere halfway through the secret room of the "Arch". The sounds of music revived the already mysterious interior space.
According to Anton Kochurkin, the "Arch" is entirely made of wood and stitched with steel cables. It took about 2 months to build the grandiose object, and the same amount of time was required to develop the project. And the result met expectations. "Arka" became, perhaps, the main sign of the last festival and even tried to compete with Alexander Brodsky's "Rotunda".
The author of the project, Boris Bernasconi, conceived his object as a kind of antipode to the Rotonde. The opposition is observed in the form - a circle / square, and in color - black / white, and in the filling - in the "Rotunda" there is a hearth, and in the "Arch" - a well with water.
From the "Arka" the route ran to the object of the Estonian architects from the company "Salto architects". "Fast track" is a variation on the theme of movement. The authors tried to revise the generally accepted ideas about the ways of movement. They created a jumping road. Anyone could run, walk or jump on a stretched trampoline, symbolizing another archetype - the street. Thus, "Fast track" has become not only an installation, but also an exciting attraction for children and adults.
According to the curator, the object of the Estonian architects is a reflection on the immense all-Russian distances in general and on the Nikola-Lenivets endless glades and paths in particular. Initially, it was assumed that the "Fast track" will stretch for 200 m in length. As a result, only a 50-meter road was realized. But this was more than enough for the entertainment of the guests of the festival, and for the spectacular performances on the trampoline.
"Storming the Sky" is an openwork tower, reminiscent of the monument to the Third International, and the graphic compositions of Yakov Chernikhov, and the famous Shukhov tower. And judging by the name, the tower of Babylon is the closest to it. After all, building it, people also tried to reach an unattainable goal - to the sky.
Upon closer inspection, it turned out that the tower, designed by AB MANIPULAZIONE INTERNAZIONALE, was assembled from many stairs. The staircase here symbolizes the upward movement, although it is forbidden and inconvenient to climb on them: the steps are too far apart, so that the symbol remains a symbol.
The height of the installation is about 15 meters, it was assembled from 72 modules, with four stairs in each. The stairs were made in advance at the technical yard in Zvizzhi. And directly on the site, the object was assembled as from a designer and it took only two days to do it.
The final point of the route was the installation "The Path of Light", where movement is presented in the form of a subtle immaterial matter of light. A steep path, cut through the forest by Vasily Shchetinin's team, united two previously unrelated festival sites - Versailles Park and the Labyrinth. According to Anton Kochurkin's project, the path was marked with a multitude of multi-colored ball-lamps. Their colors were chosen in accordance with the corporate colors of Svyaznoy Bank, the strategic partner of the festival.
As for the eventual part, then the hand will get tired of writing - so much has been conceived and implemented under the clear sky of Nikola-Lenivets. Separately, I would like to mention Andrei Bartenev's performance "The Kiss of a Tree", staged in the field near Brodsky's "Rotunda". The silent procession of green men left an indelible impression on everyone who saw this show.
The musical and theatrical program of the festival unfolded at three main venues: in the space of the "Universal Mind" by Nikolai Polissky, where the performance of the Teatrika laboratory and the media opera "Harpist in Hell" were performed, on the "Labscape" stage next to the main dance floor, and on the site "Labyrinth". There the music did not stop until the morning.
For three days the pacified space of Archstoyanie was completely turned into motion. Such a concentrated disclosure of the topic provokes, at least out of prank, to rename "Archstoyanie" to "Archdviz."
