You are the curator of the main, historical part of the exhibition. What, in your opinion, did this exhibition manage to reveal that, for example, had not been noticed before? What is the increment of knowledge?
It was interesting for us to make a kind of "pit" - to see how all possible social and architectural experiments were implemented in a particular area of Moscow in the 1920s and early 1930s. It seems to me that in the interdisciplinary approach (when we simultaneously look at architecture, and at everyday practices, and at residents), a new optics is manifested. Plus, we show the reflection of today's students, who, in fact, at that time would have been the addressees of all these projects related to the new way of life.
More generally, it seems to me fundamentally important not to take the avant-garde out of context - something that many researchers of the era tried to do in the 1960s – 1980s, and even later. All these, excuse me, giblets and garnishes - and everyday life, and discussions, and politics, and the environment around - are incredibly important in order to understand what was done and why. In distilled form, the avant-garde loses much of its content. Until now, we have to prove all the time that it is impossible to remove politics, Bogdanov, Trotsky, the discussions in the Communist Academy, Gastev from the conversation about the constructivists, it is impossible to throw out all this "philistine" life from the house in Krivoarbatskoye - it will already be another house and it will not be anymore Melnikov! Just on the last topic, literally recently, they argued with one excellent architect. Returning to Shabolovka - Nikolaev's "ship" in the form of sterile drawings and axonometrics (such modernism "in general"), and he, with his machinery of living students against the backdrop of broken cobblestones and a crooked wooden Zamoskvorechye - these are things completely different in strength of impact!
Are you happy with the result?
I am very glad that we managed to launch this story, that it turns out to involve the local community, and I think this is a good start for discussing the scale of the security zone around the Shukhov Tower. Finally, this is the first exhibition of the Avant-garde Center on Shabolovka, and the first partnership project with the Gallery. Together with our excellent architects, we managed to find an interesting plastic solution for a rather dry concept - in the case of an exhibition-documentation, this is a rare success.
Who came up with the idea of limiting the exhibition to a kilometer radius around the tower? It turns out that the tower-antenna spreads avant-garde architecture around itself like radio waves; people of the twenties would like this idea, probably … Or an attempt to fit into the radius is a way of "defamation", a new look at the well-known material, recently sounded in connection with the protection of the tower from demolition and
creating a cultural cluster?
Yes, this was our constant thesis during the period of protection of the Shukhov Tower from relocation last spring. We tried to prove that it is deeply connected with the area, the environment. I estimate that there are over 70 objects of the 1920s-1930s within walking distance of the tower. At the exhibition, we have selected only eight - the most striking and typologically significant. This is a truly unprecedented concentration of architecture of this period for Moscow! So, apparently, the tower actually became an antenna, which physically began to radiate around itself new ideas: a new way of life, a new ritual, a new culture. This is approximately reflected in the credits of our newsreel about the Anti-Religious Carnival in Zamoskvorechye - "from the church to where the radio is."
You show the crematorium, the new way of life, and so on, and study them as a historian. How close are these ideals personally to you, are you fond of them and where, in your opinion, begins that line of the researcher's detachment that allows you to look at the material objectively?
In other words: what are these crematoria, hostels, typhoid lice announcements to you: a curious historical curiosity or an interrupted path to a lost ideal?
This is a difficult question for me, I will try to answer. I am sure that the art historian is still more often engaged in what is not disgusting to him, even, rather, close. A purely detached, medical interest can also be, but, from my point of view, if only he and everything is present, this turns the historian into a pathologist. And this is a pity.
As for my attitude to these ideas … A lot of what was proposed, it seems to me in the context of that life, that situation to a large extent reasonable and humane. On the part of architects, a sincere desire to help and improve the quality of life is clearly visible. The toughest, even cruel, as it seems, the project of the city-commune, invented by the Tomsk student-architect Nikolai Kuzmin, as it turns out, was born in constant conversations, surveys of the "customer" - the Kemerovo miners. The separation of children from their parents, the elimination of the family as a phenomenon - this was, after all, a response to constant domestic violence, to the monstrous living conditions of children in families, and gender discrimination. A commune, a factory kitchen, a bathhouse, a swimming pool, and scheduled exercise are paradise for those who live in a dugout.
Time has changed - of course, total socialization, the forcible separation of children and other postulates already seem like wildfire. But our current redundancy in everyday life, to be honest, makes Rodchenko's slogans relevant again. Speaking about myself, I would very much like to have a nursery in my house, where I would take my child, a kitchen factory, a library, as well as showers, a solarium and a summer cinema on the roof. Sounds like an advertisement for a new luxury home. And this is a typical infrastructure of a communal house. As for the crematorium, to be honest, the idea of buying myself a cell in the Donskoy columbarium seems very attractive to me. Just like a hundred years ago, the wild growth of cemeteries around Moscow, the conditions of burial, all this humiliating situation, dirt, transport problems, and so on, associated with this, is monstrous in relation to both loved ones and the city, ecology.
To what extent, in your opinion, did the works of the SK Bauhaus-30 students Alexander Ermolaev fit into the context of the historical avant-garde?
To begin with, I myself studied with Alexander Pavlovich at the Moscow Architectural Institute. I know this school from personal experience, in a university, of course, not a college, interpretation. The architecture and art of the Soviet avant-garde is one of the pillars on which the entire ideology and the program of the TAF workshop are built. This is clearly seen in the student section of the exhibition. And, unlike the widespread formal, contemplative approach, they try on this life, these views. Knowing this, I suggested taking a walk with the students around the area, telling them about the communes and so on. I really wanted to know where the border between the permissible and the unacceptable (unnecessary) lies for them personally now, in 2014-2015. It turned out interesting, for me, in many ways, unexpected. I will not retell - you can come to the exhibition and read their essays.
What are you planning in the near future? Other exhibitions?
For now, we have to live through this exhibition … We have prepared a large educational program for it, dedicated to the new way of life in the 1920s: Thursday lectures, Sunday film screenings, excursions, meetings. The Avant-garde Center also has further exhibition plans jointly with the Na Shabolovka gallery - for example, a cycle with the working title “Unknown Avant-garde” - almost never exhibited graphics from the family collections of artists of the 1920s – 1930s, another amusing exhibition about the area - “Shabolovka in the context”is a local archeology from the Paleolithic to the XX century inclusive. It is still too early to talk about the rest, but I would like to continue the line of exhibitions-micro-research, exhibitions-publications. There is a feeling that they are very much needed.
