The magazine INTERNI annually organizes an exhibition of installations in the Renaissance courtyard of the 16th century of the University of Milan, where for the fifth year in a row the work of the SPEECH bureau has occupied a noticeable place, on which - now we can say that traditionally - Sergey Tchoban, Sergey Kuznetsov and Agnia Sterligova have been working. This year, as in the past, their new object, included in the architectural part of the exhibition, is located on a lawn in the middle of the courtyard. And if the predecessor of 2015 was a forest of mirror columns with an L-shaped section, vividly reflecting everything around, but essentially static, then this year's installation is interactive.
The tall - 12 meters - cylindrical pillar consists of 336 densely packed LED screens, which makes the cylinder look a little faceted, like the Arsenal Tower of the Moscow Kremlin, but otherwise the seams between the screens are completely invisible, at least from afar (the project was implemented by VELKO GROUP). The surface of the cylinder changes the background: a gradient stretch of two contrasting colors, of which the most attractive combination, "natural" yellow-blue, successfully echoes the fresh spring grass and the sky. Over the background, smoothly replacing each other, the graphics of Sergei Tchoban and Sergei Kuznetsov appear - drawings and watercolors with images of towers, ranging from ancient bell towers to a drawing reminiscent of Moscow City, or any City in general, and fantasies on themes of modern towers and turrets, among which also has a picture of the Berlin Museum of Graphics. The installation is called Towers. The graphics are very accurate, some watercolors, at first glance, can even be confused with photographs.
But the meaning of the project is not only to show the graphics of two famous architects, but also in the fact that any of the visitors can join them by drawing something of their own - whatever - on the tablets installed at a distance outside the lawn, closer to the arcades of the courtyard. The drawing instantly appears on the surface of the cylinder, and one can imagine the emotions of the painter, when from the pen - sometimes sophisticated, and sometimes not at all - something large easily and quickly materializes, higher than the buildings of the courtyard, and from this monumental. All drawings are preserved, although their further fate is still unclear, now the installation is being filled with sketches and by the end of the exhibition its visual range will probably be more than diverse.
Media screens are now popular, but here it is in some way the quintessence of technology: the screen is large, with a dense and bright surface (although the dots are still visible), curved, spectacular. Like any new technology, it requires more and more new forms of display, and the media pillar is one of them. The iconography of the object, on the other hand, is eternal, much can be seen in it: from the advertising stand to the posters pasted on it - to Trajan's Column, which, frankly speaking, is also very informative in its own way. The authors, however, compare the cylinder not with a column, but with a generalized image of a vertical man-made shape, a blank tower. Although
the column museum of Sergei Tchoban and Agniya Sterligova, built last year at Archstoyanie, had similar proportions, and there are roll-overs between the two objects. And it echoes perfectly with the columns of the courtyard arcade. However, whether the column, the tower, and the cylinder is the prototype of both.
A column-tower is a good information carrier, a screen facing everyone around; he does not turn his back on anyone. The ancient image has merged with the current technology: there is no border between the eternal and the modern, volumetric and flat, the architecture of the drawn and the real volume, the traditional and digital drawing - which perfectly reveals the theme of the INTERNI 2016 festival: Open borders, Open borders. Not to mention the fact that people who draw on tablets installed a couple of tens of meters from the column-screen will probably feel the effect of effortlessly overcoming the main of all boundaries - space and time, since the result appears immediately - and at a distance. A very valuable, one must think, feeling of power, albeit fleeting.
Other participants also took the topic seriously: for example, a curtain made of plastic strips that descends in wide waves from an arcade on the second floor - an installation
MAD architects is the name of the "Invisible Border". The mirrored walls of the polished metal installation "Room of the Void", also located nearby, reflect everything around, confusing, but perfectly combining the perspectives of the reflected buildings with reality. The installations collectively transform the courtyard - it's not for nothing that they belong to the architectural group - and the work of Choban-Kuznetsov-Sterligova is also in the lead, building the space around itself.
The appearance of virtual towers on the cylinder-column partly transforms the vast university courtyard into a city square, where both a Roman column and a bell tower are appropriate. In addition, the installation is bright, attractive and very beautiful in its own way: it is capable of both entertaining and staying in memory - if only because it itself plays the role of an exhibition, to the creation of which everyone is invited. Who got to Milan and entered the courtyard.
The exhibition will run until April 23.
