Archi.ru: - Wowhaus is well known for its projects of transforming the urban environment, but so far you have done this with purely architectural means. How did you come up with the idea to make the bureau the curator of the whole festival and why do you need it? Oleg Shapiro: - You see, this is not just a festival, but a festival of urban culture, with a certain history. The event has been held since 2011, it attracts Russian and foreign artists of various genres - dancers, painters, sculptors, musicians, and their stay there, let's say, directly affects the city. For example, there are graffiti on the facades of houses, and art objects in the city park and on the streets. In other words, the face of the city changes significantly after each festival, and in this sense its theme and focus are very close to us. Another thing is that until now such art expansion has been carried out rather chaotically, and the same art objects, for example, stand in random places, rust, and require repair. All this does not cause any understanding among local residents, much less delight, the festival actually existed parallel to the life of the city and did not take into account the real needs of its inhabitants, and that is why its organizers, the United Metallurgical Company (OMK), invited us to somehow structure the art -marine and direct his efforts into a peaceful channel, to make him useful for Vyksa.
- What is it all about - the ART OVRAG festival? - Let's start with what Vyksa is. Have you heard of such a city before? I must admit that I had not even heard of it until this year. Meanwhile, it is a fairly prosperous city in the Nizhny Novgorod region, with a population of about 70 thousand people, the bulk of which works at the Vyksa Steel Works, which is part of OMK. People live well in Vyksa: almost all grocery store chains are represented in the city, there are hotels, two or three car showrooms, in my opinion, about 20 cafes and restaurants. But at the same time, the city is quite divorced from civilization: it takes 30-40 minutes to get to the nearest station, and 2 hours to Nizhny Novgorod. And due to this isolation, all life in the city today revolves around the metallurgical industry. In many ways, this is why the festival arose there: the city badly needed an event that would create some kind of alternative reality. In my opinion, this is an extremely successful decision: it is culture that can change the quality of life and fill it with new content. Actually, this project interested us precisely because of this: using the example of Vyksa, we want to check how culture develops the city. - Is it possible to check it in one year? - Of course not. And this was one of the main conditions for our participation in the project: the Wowhaus bureau will be the curator of the festival for at least three years, and possibly all five. It is also impossible to have a significant impact on city life if the festival lasts only a few days, and then all activity freezes for a whole year, so our second prerequisite was to accompany the festival with an expanded non-festival program, which begins several months before the event itself and then continues after it. closing. Moreover, there will be several festival events during the year - one in the summer, one for the new year, another, for example, in the fall. In other words, under the guise of a festival, we want to bring to Vyksa a cultural policy that will constantly influence the city. - Is this your first experience of this kind of kulturtrager? - We had a similar experience in Tikhvin. There is also a factory and several progressive companies that attract highly qualified specialists to work and are very interested in the fact that they wanted to stay there. The task is very difficult, and we must admit that then we could not find a win-win option. We were asked to change a piece of the urban environment in order to make it more attractive and to bring life to life around it. But how to create a fundamentally new environment? Make a new street, a park, build some showcases cafes? Festival in this sense is by definition a more viable programming environment model.
- What are the main principles of your proposed "reformatting" of the festival? - Ideally, we would like to make the festival synonymous with city life, its essence. That is why, by the way, we decided to rename it, calling it the Festival of New Urban Culture, and not just a new culture, as it was before. If we talk about the principles of forming its program, then I would highlight several general points. First of all, rationality. The effectiveness of the selected tools in achieving the goal is more important than the personal taste of the curator and other participants in the process. Secondly, continuity - it is very important for us that we are not starting from scratch, and we intend to support both already established traditions and a number of art objects created within the framework of previous festivals. For example, they have already included in the estimate such an expense item as the restoration of graffiti and a number of park sculptures. And, of course, flexibility and practicality: the ability to abandon decisions made if they don't work, and not so much to entertain as to bring real benefits to the city. The main task of the festival is the development of urban space by creating conditions for education and implementation of social initiatives of city residents, who should turn from passive spectators into active participants. - It's no secret that in the same Perm in the initiatives of the art-landing from Moscow, if they were involved, then only young people. The rest of the inhabitants of all these innovations did not understand. - We would very much like to avoid the Perm effect. Actually, the previous three years the festival has developed exactly according to this scenario. Now we are trying to find points of contact with the city - the unofficial name of the new concept is “Going out to the people”. One of the first practical steps in this direction was the already launched Art-Yard competition, curated by the architect Anna Shchetinina. Within a month, the Vyksa residents themselves choose the courtyards that they would like to equip, then the curators collect these proposals and the jury chooses two courtyards from them, which are then landscaped by architects together with the residents within two months. We also invited the Pole-Design bureau - architects Vlad Savinkin and Vladimir Kuzmin will create a multifunctional environment object, the purpose, area and location of which will also be determined by the residents of the city. Pro. Dvizhenie will execute several metal objects designed to remind that one of the Shukhov towers is located in Vyksa, and Oskar Mamleev will hold an offsite seminar in the city on studying the environment, following which young architects will prepare an exhibition on strategies for possible city development. How will the Wowhaus architectural bureau in Vyksa actually do something? So far, we see our main task in accumulating various creative forces in the city. That is why they brought together co-curators in all areas of the festival - music, architecture, street art, dance, street food. However, an architect from our bureau is in charge of the improvement of one of the courtyards within the framework of the Art-Yard competition. Our employees are developing a children's program as part of the festival. Over time, of course, we will make some specific proposals for reprogramming the urban environment. For example, the art objects I have already mentioned more than once obviously need to be connected by some kind of walking route. And there are also beautiful ponds in Vyksa, but their banks are abandoned, and we, of course, are going to think about what we can do with them. In general, I really hope that over time, more and more employees of our bureau will be involved in the transformation of Vyksa. However, the ideal scenario for the development of the Festival of New Urban Culture is that in the future, curators from Moscow will not be needed at all.
