The venue for the festival was a former pioneer camp in the city of Yuzhny, on the Black Sea coast. Standard panel buildings, in which Soviet schoolchildren once spent the night, and the space between them for two weeks turned into a testing ground for large-scale art experiments, the common theme of which was disaster. The choice of the topic is simply explained: in the courtyard of 2012, in which many forecasters predicted the end of the world for humanity - it, fortunately, did not happen, but the very concept of a catastrophe has become so firmly embedded in our lexicon that it is high time using artistic means.
Taking into account the global nature of the predicted apocalypse, the format of the festival dedicated to it was also chosen: architects, designers, artists, directors, musicians and writers were invited to participate in it. In addition to the sculptural (architectural) installation - the main genre - the catastrophic theme could be revealed through music, theatrical performances, animation and short films, photographs. By the way, the photo projects “Shelter” and “Polygon” turned out to be the most productive. "Polygon" in its Internet version is still functioning, there you can add photos on the topic, indicating the location of the shooting. Thus, an interesting interactive photo map of catastrophes will gradually be formed.
I must say that the theme of the festival in general found a lively response. And this became clear long before the rally in Yuzhny: in the process of preliminary selection of works for the judgment of the organizers and members of the jury in the person of Nikolai Polissky, Vyacheslav Koleichuk and Totan Kuzembaev, more than 80 projects were submitted, one way or another disclosing the topic of the disaster. The jury chose 17 works from them, several more participants of the festival were invited by Peter Vinogradov himself, and as a result, more than 20 impressive art objects made of wood, plywood, rolled metal, as well as various garbage and scrap metal have grown on the territory of the former pioneer camp in two weeks of creative activity. extracted locally.
All in all, about 120 participants from different regions of the country came to the "Catastrophe" - Barnaul, Irkutsk, Yoshkar-Ola, Kaluga, Yaroslavl, Veliky Novgorod, St. Petersburg, Moscow, Minsk, Simferopol, Odessa and Katowice … Those who did not have enough seats in the buildings, they settled in a tent camp, set up on the territory of the base. I must say that the participants got here in very different ways, some even hitchhiked, carrying with them the main thing - the desire to express themselves, the willingness to experiment.
Apocalyptic moods, albeit in an ironic reading, determined the character of most installations. That there is only one tilted column with gutted entrails - an object called "Post of the Apocalypse" - a truly epic structure, from which goosebumps run on the skin.
But the "Cube of Light" is a much more cheerful object, especially with night illumination. The 4x4 m cube is made of double-ply plywood with bizarre holes cut into it. At night, light pours through them, symbolizing the surviving particle of life on the wreckage of the catastrophe.
But let's move on. In the middle of the field lies an ominous metal "Baska", cooked by the blacksmiths of the "Ferro-ART" artel. And then there is another frightening picture: an iron hand sticking out of the ground. Her bony fingers can move, changing the position of the lifeless hand. The arm is made entirely from locally collected scrap metal.
On the rusted wheels, Seva's screw-up rig, assembled from parts of an old Zaporozhets, froze. His whole figure expresses movement, but he cannot move anywhere - like the iron lumberjack from the tale of Alexander Volkov, he rusted and froze, never making the next step.
"Passive Catastrophe" - the work of a team of architects from Moscow, which is a giant bottle assembled from thick rods with the recognizable label "Stolichnaya". As they say, comments are superfluous.
In addition to the sculptural exhibits, two installations were created during the festival - "The Red Button" and "The Cemetery of Business Cards". And if everything is very clear about the first in the context of the theme of the show, then in the second case you involuntarily wonder what the author wanted to say? The project is a table, on the surface of which there are small gravestones of business cards, and on the side there is a certificate form for filling out, they say, such and such has buried his business card.
Also, within the framework of the festival, several objects were made intended for children, for example, a colorful composition "Invaders" and very cute "Swings". According to the organizers, both of these works will be sent to one of the orphanages in Odessa.
The further fate of the remaining objects is not yet completely clear. The partners of the festival - the companies "Hitachi" and "Epson" - are negotiating the placement of some of them in the city parks of Kiev and Odessa. In the meantime, the management of the recreation center, on the territory of which the festival was held, took on unspoken obligations to preserve them.
