Among the programs accompanying the main project of the XIV Venice Architecture Biennale, the most unexpected and paradoxical is the Antarctica Pavilion with the Antarctopia exhibition. The exposition brought together many excellent architects from different countries, thereby categorically overcoming the strict regulation of most of the pavilions of the Biennale on a national basis. Her image is a happy union of quite serious studies of the ecosystem, life and communication structures of the southern geographic pole with talented artistic ideas.
At the beginning of the millennium, the topic "Science and Art", Science - Art, powerfully declared itself. Alas, as a rule, the experiences of different artists on this territory do not inspire: most often the project comes down to a certain design of aphorisms and sketches that are scientific in form and banal in content. However, a master lives in Russia who is ready to change such a decoration of a scientific theme. This is Alexander Ponomarev, who has a higher education as a marine engineer (he graduated from the Higher Marine Engineering School in Odessa), at the same time he is a brilliant artist, recognized in different genres, from easel graphics to land art and performances. He has something to say about the essential, non-simulative interaction between science and creativity. He participated in several Antarctic and Arctic expeditions, in which, like Descartes, he tried to bring together the universal ideas of physics and metaphysics as much as possible. First of all, to prove the continuity of space and time, as well as to present empirically the complex theme of the absence of voids in the world, rooted in the philosophical tradition of Cartesianism; prove the interconnectedness of the internal and external spaces. The water element for Ponomarev became a universal laboratory for measuring and stretching the length of the universe.
At the previous architecture biennale in Venice, Alexander Ponomarev, in collaboration with Alexey Kozyr, Ilya Babak and Sergey Shestakov, showed the project "Architecture of Mirages" in the pavilion of Ukraine. In addition to subtle poetic dreams and metaphors, it included two very specific projects of museums in Antarctica, which are arranged according to clever technical solutions and can be implemented as a new experience of expanding the space of the exposition, perception and interpretation of contemporary art. Videos of these museums off the northeastern coast of the continent precede the Antarctopia exhibit. One of the museums is a huge pencil case ship, which can be in the water both horizontally and vertically, and change its position due to the moving center of gravity. The exhibition itself must be viewed when the museum is perpendicular and the works of art are displayed in the underwater part, which can be reached by a bathyscaphe. Another museum is a symphony for three floating cube houses that move like valves or keys, up and down, transforming exhibition spaces and presenting the water element in three conditions: liquid (water flows down the walls of the first cube), solid (the second cube is covered with ice), gaseous (the third cube envelops steam). Such models of new museums invented by Ponomarev and embodied by him together with Kozyr and Babak, traveling on the ocean around the coldest pole of the Earth, turned out to be the first part of a global project for the development of Antarctica not for greedy, fatal purposes for the ecosystem, but with the prospect of the development of civilization according to the laws of art and in accordance with the principle of "do no harm".
A young Briton, philosopher and art critic by education, Nadim Samman became the curator of the Antarctic Pavilion. In his brisk curatorial texts, teasing the common taste and expectations, Mr. Samman radicalizes the theme of "Another Antarctica" from the standpoint of a new comprehensive study of the cultural image of this continent, creating an environment for normal, full-fledged human life. At the same time, the opposition between the Antarctic Pavilion and the traditional stratification of the Biennale's programs is important to him. He stresses the importance of creating a transnational space in opposition to "the current policy of territorial representation, cultural ambitions obsessed with sovereignty, which were relevant two centuries ago."
The exhibition was directed by Alexey Kozyr. She is restrained and ascetic in a European manner. Each exhibit is placed on a stand - a portable wardrobe trunk. Two themes are set: the road lab and the traveling artists' tour. These themes are precisely articulated in the objects of the exhibition. A pattern is observed. Russian participants mainly refer to the language of artistic metaphors, emblems, symbols. They prefer utopia more. Foreigners propose projects that really respond to the need to create decent infrastructure and living conditions on the cold continent.
Foreigners are more practical. Russians are more artistic. Sergey Skuratov shows the exhibit “Ideal World. Philosophy of Camouflage”. It is a city or port hidden in a snowy island, divided by perpendicular and horizontal partitions. His appointment is open to discussion. Alexander Brodsky drew and made a small chess pavilion in the layout, lost in the turquoise snowy desert. Another great formula for universal melancholy. Yuri Grigoryan invented a bell in ice that sounds in different keys depending on the snow and weather. Yuri Avvakumov, together with Mikhail Belov, showed the fragile model of the Polar Axis. The image of staircases-crosses between two mirrors has a genetic affinity with the projects of Vesnin, Leonidov and Chernikhov. Orthogonal projections of drifting ice floes were chosen by Alexander Zelikin as the theme “art for art”.
Totan Kuzembaev did not move away from Venice and imagine himself in the ice, but designed a hypothetical pavilion of Antarctica, a bundle of vertical rods 58.3 meters high - it is believed that if all the ice of the world's oceans melted, Venice would go under water exactly to this depth. Thus, the pavilion marks the depth of a possible catastrophe, and if it happens, then only its tops will remain above the water to mark the place of a beautiful city. The layout of the idea was made in the spirit of Kuzembaev, from antennas from radio receivers.
Aleksey Kozyr designed a greenhouse in the form of a snowflake, in which plants can be planted, for which life requires an extremely low temperature (polar poppy).
Perhaps it is Kozyr's project that connects the romantic works of the Antarctic Pavilion participants with those programs that have specific, vital goals in mind. First of all, it is pertinent to recall in this connection the model of the British research station in Antarctica, which was designed by Hugh Broughton's workshop. A composition of mobile blue and red houses on legs - a hydraulic base, actually exists in Antarctica and is called "Halley VI". This composition resembles alien dwellings, as they were portrayed in films of the sixties and eighties. For the exhibition, Broughton sent suggestions for ensuring normal life inside the station's engineering structures. The basic principles of space modules are taken as a basis. Idea: to recreate the feeling of being at home in an extreme space. Zaha Hadid's studio brought a model of the Antarctic Research Center, which sits like a bird among the snowy rocks. The purpose of creating this center is not at all utopian. She is trying to understand how architecture can be adaptable to different operating conditions, how much it can adapt to extreme weather. Mimicry, bionics and biomorphic design, according to Ms Hadid, will help find a balance between new engineering, new function and new aesthetics.
Generally speaking, the task of finding the perfect balance between scientific and technological progress, ecology and creativity is very much in line with the spirit of the second wave of international modernism of the late fifties and seventies, which this year became the main hero of the biennial shows. We remember that these modernist aspirations lived in the disputes between "physicists and lyricists", in the thirst for the development of unexplored lands, extreme expeditions of courageous people: geologists, polar explorers, rock climbers. So Antarctopia, in the context of Rem Koolhaas's scenario for the rehabilitation of post-war modernism, turned out to be very useful.
Moreover, I believe that the Antarctic Pavilion, initiated by the Russian Ponomarev and made by an international team, is much more interesting than the official Russian pavilion with its parody kiosks of the old-fashioned post-Soviet exhibitions in the format of the Zodchestvo festival and the Expocentre on Krasnaya Presnya. Nadim Samman proposed to perceive the Antarctic Pavilion in relation to the theme of the "biennale upside down". In this perspective, this pavilion with the official Russian one can definitely change places in importance. Alexander Ponomarev promises that the Antarctic Pavilion will arrive in Moscow this December.
The exhibition is likely to be open until October 31st.
