The Archstoyanie festival has traditionally become one of the most anticipated events of the summer. We asked its curator Anton Kochurkin and project manager Yulia Bychkov to tell about what the ninth festival will be like.
Archi.ru:
You decided to share the curatorship of this festival with Richard Castelli. How did his participation begin and how did he ultimately influence the Archstoyanie program?
Anton Kochurkin:
- First of all, Richard discovered Nikola-Lenivets a number of excellent foreign artists, whose works can be seen at the festival. Secondly, thanks to the practice of Richard, who implements the most daring projects around the world, we managed to "marry" two rather different approaches on the same site - global curatorial practice and local worldview, context and resources.
What meaning do you put into the theme “Here and Now” announced for 2014, who suggested it?
- With the participation of an international team of artists and Richard Castelli, we tried to explore the temporal parameters of art and architecture. The objects of the festival should be considered precisely from the point of view of the parameters of time, which significantly prevail over geometric ones. Richard's declared intention to delve into such an interesting topic influenced the objects that were eventually created for Archstoyanie.
Every year Archstoyanie becomes a platform for experiments in the field of art and synthesis of its various directions - architecture, music, poetry. What are you planning to surprise your visitors with this year?
- The author's ideas are mimicked in the landscapes of Nikola-Lenivets, offering such wonderful ideas as, for example, the 36-hour performance Nikola-lenivetc time, created by the German artist Mark Formanek. Here time is presented as a spatial structure assembled from planks and logs, which at the same time changes every second, broadcasting the exact time.
Another interesting find is the object of the “Remote Office” park, which changes its content and turns into a continuous performance by Sashiko Abe called “Scissors and Paper”. Alef Weisman suggested breaking the closed space by turning an ordinary barn into an endless structure in his project "The Font". And the object of the French professor of the high school of gardening arts Jean-Luc Brisson "Cloudfood" will allow visitors to the festival to watch how art builds connections between society, earth and meteorology. The project provides a new product, the influence of which can capture the mind, senses and even the stomach.
Finally, the most monumental object of the festival - the Lazy Ziggurat, created by the efforts of the Pole-Design bureau, takes root in the Nikola-Lenivets park thanks to traditional woodworking technologies. Made of trees infected with bark beetle, the object becomes a salutary message to the dying forests, simultaneously resurrecting forgotten ancient Russian construction technologies.
That is, after this summer's festival, only one object will remain on the site of Nikola-Lenivets?
- Yes, there will be one large park facility "Lazy Ziggurat" of 18 meters height. I also assume that the Cloudfood project, after a modest presentation at the festival, will acquire permanent owners and will certainly affect the composition of Nikola-Lenivetskaya cuisine. Already now, two local families are arguing for the right to cook using the created technologies. Perhaps, over time, Nikola-Lenivets will give rise to a new image of rustic cuisine. In addition, at the festival, objects created for the children's Archstoyanie planned a month earlier will sound in a new way.
Tell us, how was the selection of objects that will be presented at the festival? What criteria were you guided by when choosing them?
- An important criterion influencing the choice of ideas is the ability of the project to be assimilated by the local context. The spatial criterion was important when choosing a high-rise building "Lazy Ziggurat", which completes the history of the dominant points of the park.
Is there a unifying motive for all projects?
- Thinking about architecture as a spatial art, we often forget about such an important aspect as time. Meanwhile, time carries its own program - generation and destruction, life and death. Rem Koolhaas explored the aspect of temporality within the framework of the Venice Biennale, forcing the whole world to show that after a hundred years, the architecture of modernism was not at all what it was intended. Alfred Speer took time into account in his architecture, suggesting how, over the years, his buildings would be destroyed, turning into majestic ruins. The quality of temporality is studied in all projects of Archstoyanie-2014, even in the monumental tower "Lazy Ziggurat", which makes one think about traditional Russian technologies, within the framework of which all Russian architecture was created in just one summer season.
What kind of traditional technologies?
- This object differs from the existing ones in the park in that it does not use factory materials at all, it was assembled “without a single nail” - just like in the distant past, dwelling houses and churches were erected in Russia. "Ziggurat" is rooted in history, which is why it is so close to Nikola-Lenivets. It also serves as a kind of manifesto to draw attention to the imperfections of our forestry laws. Did you know that thousands of hectares of Kaluga forests die from bark beetles, and forestry departments cannot help save the forest?
Here I would like to quote one of the authors of the belvedere, Vladimir Kuzmin: "Lazy Ziggurat" is our attempt to make not a wooden "non-architecture", but to "grow" a volume of cages-"cubes", without any tricks or meanings, lifting them one on top of the other, following only the rules of felling, assembly and, quite a bit - common sense. The main thing for us is to follow the almost forgotten joyful passion of all tower builders: “Get it! Before! Heaven!"
What event program is expected on the days of the festival?
- The central and unifying action will be the theatrical performance of the "Quantum Leap" group. The path between the objects will turn into a popular science show, where the format of the round table is a Socratic walk, unexpectedly interpreted with the help of animation by the Quantum Leap group. "Scientific" walks will take place during the day, and in the evening, stage music and sound installations inside the new belvedere await spectators.
In addition to the festival itself, other, very different events are constantly held in Nikola-Lenivets. What's in store for visitors this summer?
Julia Bychkova:
- We are working to make the site interesting to our visitors and residents all year round, therefore, a fairly dense program was created for the whole season: "Archstoyanie Children's" will tell you how you can interestingly and constructively relax with the whole family in nature, the "New Media Night" festival will present works of young Russian and foreign media artists, the children's camp in one summer alone will host about half a million children who will be able to get acquainted with the basics of various professions. Today in Nikola-Lenivets there is a very large number of a wide variety of educational programs and projects.
In Nikola-Lenivets, educational activities are indeed very actively developing. For example, there are landscape workshops. By whom and for whom were they created? What do they teach?
- We have created the Archstoyanie Laboratory program, within the framework of which numerous educational projects are being implemented, including landscape workshops, a curatorial residence, performance residences, etc. All of them grew out of the professional activities of the Archstoyanie festival. The "Landscape Workshops" program, which began its work in 2012 in the territory of Nikola-Lenivets, is based on the same principles that were used in the Nikola-Lenivets landscape park "Versailles". These principles and approaches were developed jointly with the teachers of the Higher School of Versailles (France). An understanding of the landscape on three levels is important here. The first level, tentatively called "Ambush", allows participants to learn how to observe the landscape as a complex, changing picture in order to determine the most accurate place for the construction of their object. Construction itself is already the second level, called "Living Borders", which makes it possible to realize that there are not only visible, but also the boundaries of microlandscapes. Through the implementation of small objects, participants will be able to fix the found "reference" points. The last, third level is “Large territory”. Here we tell the participants on what principles the sustainable development of the landscape is based on the example of the territory of Nikola-Lenivets. Representatives of landscape, ecological schools of Russia and national parks will take part in the program.
This year the ninth festival will take place. How has it changed since its inception?
Anton Kochurkin:
- Archstoyanie this year is, first of all, a bright conclusion to the history of high-rise belvederes in the Versailles landscape park, the space of which will be filled with new routes and meanings.
Julia Bychkova:
- In the ninth year of the festival's existence, it becomes obvious that we managed to create a project that is bigger than ourselves, which has turned into a real institution, a school, where many creative people aspire to get, and not only from Russia. This allows us to confidently say that we are on the right track. We have learned how to work with government programs, grants, funds and are quickly approaching the format of a self-sustaining project, although it is still difficult to say for certain when this moment will come.
