Captured By A Lost Paradise

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 02:26

The exposition of the Russian pavilion, which for many years after the Soviet reconstruction suffered from the disconnection of the lower and upper floors, for the first time received a spiral staircase - a spatial "bolt" that made it possible to fully use the space and even organize various routes along it. The fact that Sergei Kuznetsov cut the floor of the main hall with a round hole and placed a staircase in it is a bold and important decision, and one would like to hope that the staircase will be preserved; it depends on the future curators, but they are not their own enemies. However, the Aravena Biennale as a whole, I must say, tends to cut through the walls - in the nearby German pavilion, part of the walls of the 1930s were dismantled, despite the status of the monument: here the holes symbolize the country's openness to refugees. Canadians have made a tiny hole in the ground and show there a video about the resource economy. In the Uruguayan pavilion, also in the Giardini, the floor has been hammered, signifying the despair of poverty. The last comparison, of course, is completely unacceptable, since in the Russian pavilion the staircase connects two full-fledged exhibition spaces, serves to connect them and develop the theme. In it, the staircase denotes, as you might guess from the context, the movement from the old, historical VDNKh - to the "revitalization" of the space of the giant exhibition - this is how the authors call their approach to the future: its territory must be preserved, but filled with new meaning.

The new route, proposed by the pavilion's curator Sergei Kuznetsov, organizes its space with the help of color, light and music. The lower, relatively speaking, archival and museum halls are deliberately black, dark, with bright flashes of white sculptures, gold media panel with a bas-relief, flickering video. The staircase is illuminated with thin strips of lamps, the strokes of light form a spiral of ascent. Below, Shostakovich's bravura overture knocks down. We go upstairs - the march is replaced by the music written specially for the pavilion "12 months of VDNKh" by the group Tanatos Banionis. Above, above the stairs, there is a dome with a kaleidoscope of pictures, similar to the "fairy tales on the ceiling" of the Moscow metro, which prompts the idea that VDNKh is similar to the Moscow metro as a whole.

We find ourselves in the central hall with a video diorama. Directly opposite judgments have already been expressed about its quality; the diarama is divided into four parts and is not docked in a ring, which would be difficult; at the same time, it is large and ringing, on it there are large - lilacs and tulips, Moscow, red; skates; walking. The video represents the present day of VDNKh, but somewhat resembles the newsreels of my childhood, as if its past, the Soviet exhibition of the eighties, and its present of the public space being developed during the reign of Sergei Semenovich Sobyanin, somehow docked, if not merged. In the hall of the diorama, dark and light are mixed, we can say that in half, which is logical, since he is a transitional link.

Two halls on the sides are light, even bright. First, according to the curatorial plan, you need to go to the left room, which used to be the entrance. Here is the "library": an extensive compendium of publications of different periods about VDNKh, collected by Pavel Nefyodov - the organizers promise that after the Biennale the exhibition will be transported to Moscow and the selections will be available there as well. The hall, on the other hand, shows the options for the future invented by the students of the Higher School of Economics at a workshop held in May, here are also voiced recommendations for the development of the exhibition space from famous architects and the "motherboard", a symbol of the idea of revitalization: filling the old "hard" with new meaning. The exposition is integral, executed in large strokes: music, sculpture, videos and students' fantasies merge into a certain row, presenting the exhibition brightly, but dotted line. It was not for nothing that Sergei Kuznetsov separately noted that one of the curatorial goals was to show VDNKh to foreigners who do not know her in 10 minutes. However, for those who appreciate information, there is a selection by Pavel Nefyodov; he also wrote an article for the catalog with the history of VDNKh, dividing it into eight parts.

"[And I don't] want to pull up my pants and run after [this] Komsomol."

Mayakovsky [Yevtushenko]

When I entered the first hall on the first floor, I wanted to run out of there. The Soviet people, the Party and the Government in their edition for about 1953 marched on me in a brisk march. With Vladimir Ilyich Lenin on a high banner. With a dove of peace. Gold, bronze.

I turned around and watched the video. It very briefly describes the history of VDNKh, which generally ends in the 1990s, this period is characterized as decay - disintegration, extinction, and rhymes with the collapse of the USSR. The empire disintegrated and entered the market with its component parts, and VDNKh, the reporting symbol of the Soviet empire, became a market - also quite symbolic.

And now you are standing in the corner, to the left of the Soviet people with the banner of Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin. And next to it, the video reproaches, and you understand that yes, it is to blame, I supported the collapse of the USSR, and now I support it. You feel like a stranger at this holiday, I never liked VDNKh either, especially Soviet pasties. But here everyone decides for himself, someone, one must think, will seize the impulse of the procession and the marching music will delight. An excellent attraction for foreign visitors: plunge into the atmosphere of a Soviet meeting. The media copy of the bas-relief flickers like a living, just about someone will come out of it and ask where I am doing my Komsomol ticket in 1989. In a word, a lively, soulful impression. Someone is frightened, someone is captivated - here, it seems to me, the front line passes, and not in the struggle for the revival of the public space of VDNKh, which is not a struggle, but work.

Exegi monumentum

Horace

It is difficult to treat such, as suggested by Sergei Kuznetsov, detached, as a monument of history and culture. In addition, the exposition itself is tuned to more emotional than analytical perception. For example, articles about VDNKh and stamps are a good historical source, an archive selection, but not research. Also, student studies, if anything, investigate the personal feelings and fantasies of their authors. It would seem that the difficult fate of the bas-relief, which was opened in 1953, then closed for repairs, removed Stalin, but for some reason Marx and Engels too, then they hid again, history is still silent, when - reopened in 2014, it was found by restorers as an antique grotesque, covered by Christians, and discovered by some Renaissance humanist of the popes. In this sense, he is, of course, a monument. But I would like to ask - what is the monument to? The humanists of the Renaissance, when they uncovered their grotesques and dug up marble idols from the ground, wanted to live like the Romans. They did not consider the monuments detachedly out of context, "only as monuments outside of ideology", on the contrary, that archeology, during its formation, was filled with living nostalgia, the pathos of Re-nessance. These things, which pressed the saints in the chambers of the Pope, carried many meanings and were called upon to evoke a response. By the way, in the 19th century, archeology was not so detached, it was filled with meaning - the revival of ancient democracy. Depicted with archaeological precision, the sandals of the Horatii and the Roman bath of Marat, they are for a reason. However, it’s time to stop, otherwise I’ll agree to hell with the White Devil from Merezhkovsky.

And so: we enter the hall of copies, sculptures of the Exhibition of Economic Achievements, executed by trainees of the Institute. I. E. Repin, famous for its academic traditions. Sculptures alternate with architectural details, capitals and flowerpots, all on a slightly different scale; The worker and the collective farmer, with their impulse, seem the most playful. In addition, it is not for me to judge, but it seems that they are not performed very skillfully. Some flowerpots, on the contrary, are good, although here is Alexey Tarkhanov

I remembered in my article about the "famous monumental eggs" of the bull, and now if it were not to reproduce the whole bull entirely, but only to them, and in general to limit ourselves only to the elements, it would be objets trouvés, one could suspect a rethinking in the spirit of modern art. But no, it is not suspected. Plaster casts look like student models, like David's mouth for drawing freshmen [by the way, why, instead of a Worker and a collective farmer, it was not entirely possible to reproduce their eyes, for example?]. But they are arranged like antique antiques, reminiscent of a museum, and some kind of private one. In this sense, gypsum as a material fails a little: copies in the Tsvetaevsky Pushkin Museum and other museums of the 19th century were painted to imitate the yellowed marble of the originals; this imitation is lacking for reproducing statues as monuments. It is also embarrassing that at the Biennale [for the first time] an exhibition of the Victoria and Albert Museum was opened, entirely devoted to the problem of copies and with very delicately, carefully executed and varied exhibits: for example, there is a stereolithographic copy of the Venus Borghese in three forms: a sculpture of Canova made of glass, pink rubber [sic!] and plaster. There they laugh at the copy, praise the copy, look at it from different angles, but here we have just copies, also a student workshop.

Strictly speaking, there are three types of student works in the exposition, and it turns out that the younger generation of artists (watercolors by Alexei Rezvy), sculptors and urbanists are engaged in the study and rethinking of VDNKh, like Raphael painted antiques. In a sense, what we see in the pavilion is, to a large extent, a collective workshop, the work of a group of apprentices, but what is the purpose of their training: to adopt the skill?

"Silence and power rest in the heart"

Sergey Yesenin

At the same time, the curatorial name of the hall is the crypt, and we remember that although the crypt in antiquity was called the underground space, in a Christian church it is primarily a place where the relics of the martyrs are kept. Of course, we can say that this is a semblance of an antique columbarium, where the new VDNKh looks at its ancestors. But the effect of admiration, veneration of the shrine does not go away, the VDNKh monument is shown from the perspective of falling back to the origins, but not in the spirit of the Venice Charter with its conservation and fixation - so harmful and boring, however, for non-specific exhibitions. The fact that Pavel Nefedov's collections were placed in a separate room also fits into the plot of the Renaissance collecting: there are objects, there is a library. But the analysis is not accentuated, emotions of empathy prevail. And the results of the student workshop remind in this light of Goya's Los Caprichios: here, instead of Lenin, there is a Guy Fawkes mask on the flag, and according to an old photograph of VDNKh, imperial fighters are chasing Han Solo's ship. As if the younger generation also felt the redundancy of the imperial pathos and is trying to desacralize it with laughter. As if he says: guys, you are not serious?

What is missing from the exhibition is a story about modern projects of VDNKh. Just like the story below, they are shown in dotted lines in the video of the central hall, but that is in the format of a newsreel. Meanwhile, one must agree with the curator and co-curator that the market in such a place is a disgrace, almost like a market in Istanbul's Rotunda, in the old imperial palace Mireleion. But VDNKh is also the history of the modern reconstruction of the pavilions, the opening of Stalin's facades with the destruction of the 70s "covers". This is Arch Farm and a skating rink with a bridge, and finally, the Moskvarium next to the Cosmos pavilion. This is a threat to the development of the exhibition area, and one should not forget about it. Obviously, it was possible to fit this reality into one exhibition only by oversaturation, but there is one more question for the exposition: it does not at all sharpen problems, does not even try, but by itself acts in the VDNKh paradigm, where the Soviet person did not need delve into the problems of animal husbandry, but only admire some of the largest or most useful animals, for example a piglet [it was an indelible impression].

Of course, it's hard not to notice that the entire Biennale is dedicated to various types of assistance to the poor, and our pavilion is VDNKh. And VDNKh is the most ambitious illusion of the prosperity of the Soviet economy, which, as you know, in reality often did not flourish at all. But the people who came to the exhibition were satisfied in different ways: in the animal husbandry pavilion there was a queue for sausages, but whoever got it, it was delicious, and people thought that they would still be patient, and then they would live under communism. This was an illusion of the people's well-being, a reason for pride, not in any way connected with the real improvement of life. That there is a profanation of leftist beliefs: they wanted to [suppose] to do so that the workers and peasants lived well, but saved up only one piglet to show it at the exhibition, like the Potemkin village. Not a bad offer from Russia, with its great experience, for left-wing populists from all over the world, Brazil there or Venezuela - if it is not possible to really improve the life of the population in the spirit of Aravena, then, as a last resort, VDNKh can be built for it.

Our front is not where Aravena pointed out. Our front line is at heart - it's not for nothing that Sergei Kuznetsov says that the old VDNKh ideology must be forgotten and some new one must be invented. Our front is not protection of the environment, and not the fight against poverty or even banality, our front is one and global, according to Dostoevsky, or according to Freud - in the soul of a person who needs to remove self-censorship, release funny monsters from the subconscious and decide what he needs from VDNKh: nostalgic imperial pathos or simple joys of gentrification with its urbanism.