Sergey Kuznetsov and Ekaterina Pronicheva conducted a tour for journalists on the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale of Architecture on May 26. At the beginning, the story touched on the strategies for the reconstruction of VDNKh, where, as Kuznetsov emphasized, revitalization was chosen between destruction and conservation. The curator emphasized that it is necessary to abandon the ideology of the past, developing an attitude towards VDNKh as a monument that must be preserved. And at the same time - to work out a "new ideology" for the future development of this territory. We have recorded most of the story of the curator and co-curator, devoted to the principles of choosing a development strategy, as well as the research carried out as part of the work on the pavilion, and we bring this story to your attention. Questions are asked by journalists, participants of the excursion. The recording begins with the hall of ideas for future development on the second floor, near the VDNKh model, made in the form of a microcircuit.
Sergey Kuznetsov:
- The microcircuit or motherboard is designed to briefly and clearly show our current attitude to the development of the territory. Our curatorial position is that architecture today is not the work of frozen forms, which has a beginning - a project, and an end - commissioning. Architecture today is a profession designed to constantly search for something, invent, try, search for meanings. Buildings, territories, parks, such large objects as VDNKh have become like gadgets. In other words, they have a rigid base and there is a current that feeds it. As a person who, on an iPhone on the same base, can assemble different applications, even today an architect or authorities who develop the territory, management, or even just people who come here can collect the necessary number of stories, activities in this territory. like it. This "motherboard" can be charged with different meanings that we tried to imagine. Behind you, you can see the results of the workshop that we conducted with colleagues from the Higher School of Economics, Vicente Guayarta and his institution. "Motherboard" is hard, workshop ideas are software, they are located opposite each other here. The software can be crazy, unreal and look absolutely strange, while being interesting. And the hard is tough, maybe more strict. And nevertheless, we understand that it carries this software. You can invent, even make mistakes in something, do some simple or complex things, temporary or permanent. It is an indissoluble process, it has no end.
The territory lives as long as there is a process of its design and creation. This is stated in the text (written on the end wall), and about the same say well-known, successful architects in the video. They participate in our work, share their ideas with us. In addition, there is a video that shows the workflow of the workshop. It was a separate, parallel to the creation of the pavilion, very interesting work with students who plunged into the topic of VDNKh. We told, explained, gave some assignments. And we created a package of ideas. Moreover, without even delving into them deeply, we see that this is an absolutely endless set of all sorts of things.
Ekaterina Pronicheva:
- I will only add that VDNKh is not about the past. We do not want to be a mothballed museum of the USSR or a monument of the Soviet era or some kind of constant. We respect the heritage that we have inherited, the monuments. But we want a new life. Therefore, young interesting architects, urbanists, philosophers, museum workers, people who are engaged in museum exhibitions, athletes - anyone, come and offer a new life, based on the needs that are now dictated by modern citizens. And this is our main mission: cities in a city where you can organize your leisure or your life, having equal opportunities, but on such a matrix, on the motherboard of a beautiful architectural ensemble.
Question:
- What new things is filling VDNKh?
E. P.:
- Life. If back in 2014 it was a shopping mall or an open-air market, now it is a large socially oriented and multifunctional complex: museum exhibitions, sports activities, and an expo, which functions as one of the city's main venues and the largest leisure center. It seems to me that everything has changed.
Question:
- How do you plan to develop VDNKh in the future?
E. P.:
- Actually, we are now talking about how we plan to develop, using the foundation that was laid in the form of an architectural ensemble, inviting young architects and urbanists. We have laboratories constantly working, research on the subject of VDNH. We conduct sociological research, determine the features of this ideal world, can I put it this way? Answering these requests, we formulate the answers, determine the content and functions. The cultural and educational function prevails.
Question:
- Were there any interesting ideas during the workshop?
S. K.:
- There are a number of ideas that are absolutely insane, just thinking about some distant future. There are ideas of a practical nature, such as a festival of contemporary art, unmanned aircraft, flights, new types of transport that could be tried at VDNKh, and, in general, technical chips, innovations in urban management, and so on. By the way, what the students of the School of Urbanism and Vicente Guayart do in general is all sorts of innovations and innovations in the urban environment. Something can really be implemented. Although, I say it again, the idea was not to find specific things for VDNKh, the management finds them in large quantities anyway. The idea was to show the wide range of possibilities of the given territory. She was abandoned, neglected and engaged in absolutely banal things. Where is the front line? The front line in every person passes. How to get the banal out of it and put the interesting in. We, as architects, government managers, civil servants, are fighting this.
Library hall
S. K.:
- It seems to us that after everything they have seen, people should want to know something else, more about what VDNKh is, how it was created, how interesting it is. And we made a semblance of a library: a space in which graphic works of one of the students of the Academy of Arts, Alexei Rezvy, are collected, created especially for the pavilion. And the "library", which contains a lot of interesting facts. All these books are real, they were created for the pavilion. Not really books, but rather sets of some interesting things: postcards, fragments of plans, some illustrations. For example, "Oltarzhesky's Personal File", the person who actually created this idea, invented, gave birth, realized, and went to prison later. Here is a story about his fate.
Without understanding the personalities: the contribution of the people who created it, it is impossible to take this territory seriously. We will try to develop it correctly. What we own deserves great attention. And sometimes it is undeservedly overlooked. It's like the history of photography: the woman from the stairs on the poster of the Biennale, who explored the desert, made sketches. We are often unable to understand, appreciate what we have. Either there is not enough time, or we are held captive by other things. And we invite everyone to breathe out a little, to stay: there is a table, chairs, you can sit down, take any book. This is a real scientific study of the history of the creation of VDNH. There are various newspaper clippings, articles. At the same time, it is a small museum, about the size of a room. The budget of the pavilion also went to research and collection of material, work with texts, illustrations, graphics, and so on. A huge, huge number of tasks.
I will say on behalf of the whole team: we are happy with the result. This is a work that took a year, a year of life for each of us to meticulously collect materials, build a story, because it is not so easy to put into a person's head in 10 minutes of visiting the pavilion an idea of this gigantic story, which is physically huge. And if we take into account its length in time, then it is generally virtually endless, multi-layered. We tried to realize this task by talking about our attitude towards it, talking about what the Moscow government, headed by Sergei Semenovich, is doing today, what ideas we have.
And this story is actually broader than just about VDNKh. It is also a story about how the city of Moscow is developing today. What you see here, on the example of VDNKh, and what is happening in Moscow today, are caused by absolutely the same premises, ideas, considerations, desires. It's just that VDNKh is a phenomenon, because everything is collected here: history, culture, Soviet legacy, and later legacy, history of the fall, uprising from the ashes. Even in comparison with the huge number of social projects: housing, kindergartens, schools, this is probably the most social project of the city that we have today. At the exit we have a credit list where you can see everything. The team is huge, about 100 people are a team, a giant team to which we are wildly grateful.
Question:
- How many books have you published in total?
E. P.:
- Forty-eight types of books. It is only to print, but to digitize the material, this is the State Archives, this is the archive of VDNKh. We are very grateful to the Museum of Architecture, which provided us with absolutely unique materials.
Question:
- Will it be used in some way in the future?
Do you want to sell, distribute it?
E. P.:
- In this case, we are talking about the popularization of knowledge and about the heritage that we have received. Access to heritage should be public a priori. We will create an appropriate media library, and all students and those who are simply interested will be able to get free access to this knowledge. This is what is important to understand about the development of architecture and such institutions that were created at the turn of the 30-40s.
S. K.:
- We want to exhibit it in Moscow. The exhibition will move, we will find another place at VDNKh.
Question:
- Have you already decided where the exhibition will move?
E. P.:
- We are determined. I think it will be somewhere in the entrance lobby of VDNKh, so that everyone has general access and the opportunity to get acquainted with the history.
Question:
- Why did he (Alexei Rezvy) draw by hand and not use a computer?
S. K.:
- We have done a lot by hand. We in Russia honor manual labor, namely artistic labor, to a very high degree. In our country, for example, architectural education is still given through a huge amount of work by hand. I myself, as a student, when I was studying, we have the skills of working with hands in the first years before you start working on a computer and doing things common to all architects, you will definitely work very intensively with your hands for 2-3 years. Because in our Russian, Soviet school there is such a conviction that education obtained through manual labor, even craft skills, is assimilated much better. This is our school. The structure is also hand-made. It's also a matter of continuity and identity. We show our Russian culture. This is very important to us. We can all print on 3D, but we want to show a story about why that culture, in many ways it is also ours today, and the culture of production. We want to be able and appreciate.
E. P.:
- We say that VDNKh is in many ways an educational area. And for us, this project, among other things, was educational. A huge number of guys, students, both from the Academy of Arts and from the Graduate School of Urbanism, had the task of creating something based on common knowledge. Therefore, everything that has been created here is mainly created by the hands of students, this is a laboratory about VDNKh.
S. K.:
- You can compare the room that is about the future, it was made on a computer, and even a model was printed on a 3D printer. Here, on the contrary, everything is about continuity, awareness, comprehension, identity.
