The third annual Vasari festival kicked off on Friday 16 September. The main venue for the event was the Arsenal Center for Contemporary Art, located on the territory of the Nizhny Novgorod Kremlin. The weather in the city did not work, so all the main events were literally packed inside a modern museum. Outside, there is only a fallen "Tree" - an art object by designer Liza Abrosimova, intended for the entertainment of children. A large-scale book fair unfolded on the ground floor, which was open for all three days of the festival. Children's master classes were held right in the foyer of the left wing of the building. In the "Mediatek" they almost continuously broadcast films about architecture, arranged presentations of new books, and gave lectures. On the second floor, in the “Space under the Arches”, the guests of the festival participated in interactive games for adults. And the most serious and detailed discussions and round tables took place in the Arsenal's cinema and concert hall.
The organizers tried to fit various events into the framework of the chosen theme - "Architecture and Text". The theme is consonant with the name of the festival: the Italian painter Giorgio Vasari was also the first author of texts on the work of artists, the founder of modern art history. Festival curators Evgeny Ass and Anna Gor, director of the Nizhny Novgorod NCCA, conditionally divided all texts into three groups: texts “inside architecture”, that is, written by the architects themselves, texts “on architecture”, which include critical articles, books on the history of architecture, guidebooks, etc., and, finally, texts “around architecture” - opinions and statements of consumers, ordinary citizens. Each group had a separate day of the festival: “Architect's Day”, “Critic's Day” and “Citizen's Day”.
It was planned to speak about texts in the framework of discussions and lectures. However, the very first discussion on architecture and communication boiled down to the figure of an architect, whose language is not clear to society, and whose image is close to the image of the creator, one can only talk to him unilaterally, not counting on an answer.
Evgeny Ass
architect, rector of the MARCH architectural school:
“It is generally accepted that architecture itself is a text, it has a certain plot and meaning. To what extent does contemporary architectural space play the role of a communicator? Architects are a fairly isolated community. How possible are communications between them and society?"
Yuri Grigoryan
architect, head of the Project Meganom bureau:
“Any project is the story of the creation of a form, which somehow has to be told, because it has to be built. Such a story contains a place, people, circumstances, method, values. And all this information is stored after the construction of the building. Thus, architecture, having appeared, communicates itself. But architecture is more than history. By itself, she would like to remain out of communication, would like to remain silent, being inside her world."
Werner Huber
architect, editor of the magazine "Hochparterre":
“Architecture can be compared to an esoteric sect. More precisely - with religion. Or even with multiple religions. They have different ideas about what architecture should be. Representatives of different "religions" build their own world, while losing contact with the outside world. To an outsider it sometimes seems snobbery."
The central event of the first day was the opening of the "Radiation" exhibition. The exhibition project was included in the festival program for the first time. The curator was Kirill Ass, who dedicated the event to the recent anniversary of his father Yevgeny Ass. Nadezhda Korbut worked on the design together with Kirill. In the exposition space of the Arsenal, it was possible to collect 24 works. The curator explained that radiation is the pulsation of the world: “knocking in the temples, rustling of leaves, rhythm of a poem, vibration of a string, vibration of color. There are radiations that transcend time and space. They are caught by people who turn out to be close to each other. " Such vibrations combined into a holistic exposition such different creative statements of such artists, photographers and architects as Alexander Brodsky, Dmitry Gutov, Evgeny Dobrovinsky, Oleg Drozdov, Irina Zatulovskaya, Yuri Palmin, Alexander Rappaport, Lev Rubinstein and many others.
Evgeny Ass, who enthusiastically examined the exhibition, prepared a gift for the public himself - “A Simple Concerto for Violin with an Architect”. The festival program included Elena Revich (violin), Mark Buloshnikov (piano) and Evgeny Ass (voice). It was thought that this evening the curator would sing. But no, to the music of Bach, Schubert, Silvestrov and Pärt, Eugene Ass read an essay on simplicity in art, while his graphic drawings flashed on the big screen.
The "Day of the Critic" was somewhat more prosaic, which began with a lecture by the historian of architecture Anna Bronovitskaya, who presented books-manifestos. Among them - "Towards Architecture" by Le Corbusier, "Style and Era" by Moses Ginzburg, "New Brutalism" by Reiner Benham, "Complexities and Contradictions in Architecture" by Robert Venturi, "The Language of Postmodern Architecture" by Charles Jencks and "S, M, L, XL »Rem Koolhaas. Bronovitskaya explained her choice by her desire to highlight the most important books for our country. In the last century, foreign professional books were rarely published in the country. The same Robert Venturi, whose book Anna Bronovitskaya called "the most important book after Le Corbusier's Toward Architecture", was published in magazines in separate fragments, but they immediately became frenziedly discussed.
Following Bronovitskaya, Alexander Rappaport and Sergei Sitar gave their lectures in the cinema and concert hall. Both speeches were devoted to the problem of the architectural language. This topic, according to Rappaport, requires a new look, since attempts to create a theory of architectural language over many centuries have not led to anything. Architecture has not created its own language, but uses the languages of geometry and psychology.
Alexander Rappaport
architecture theorist:
“In the era of degeneration, extinction, the individual author and the individual project will disappear. Environmental fragments and loci will be designed. 80% is our nearest prospect. By 20% - architecture will become a playful interaction of the transcendent and the divine … A new norm of understanding of dying and eternal existence comes into force. Architecture is threatened not only by the lack of orientation towards eternity, but also by the devaluation of eternity itself. A new ethic of presence in finite space is being born, which contributes to the formation of a new ethic, which in turn should lead to conversation, free from chatter."
In a much lighter format, the traditional for the festival "Critics Show" was held with the participation of the poet Lev Rubinstein, literary critic Anna Narinskaya, linguist Irina Levontina and architect-critic Kirill Ass. The show was hosted by Anatoly Golubovsky. Anna Gore, anticipating the start of the event, explained that this year, non-architectural critics were deliberately invited, with the exception of Kirill Ass. This was done in an effort to understand how architecture penetrates into other spheres of culture and life.
Anna Narinskaya
“Literature and architecture are exactly the same thing. An architect, designing a building, invents your life for you. Likewise, a writer rules your life while you read a book."
Lev Rubinstein
“Architecture is not what I stare at, but what rushes by. I can hide from literature, music, painting. But architecture surrounds me everywhere, like nature, as part of the landscape."
Kirill Ass
“Most of the architects are trained hamsters who know how to build houses, drive square meters and so love to go to the country house, where there is green grass, fresh air and there is no architecture.”
Irina Levontina
“If one can hide from architecture at least in the country, then one cannot hide from the language anywhere. We have a simple, everyday language that is fraught with a lot. Therefore, you should not look for a separate architectural language and require ordinary people to understand it. It would be nice if architects learned to speak with people in the language that already exists. To be able to speak in an accessible language is an art."
The final day of the festival was entirely dedicated to the city dweller. Nizhny Novgorod and the people inhabiting it were at the center of all discussions. From quotations from books on architecture and urban planning, Nizhny Novgorod residents built an associative map of the city, linking statements to specific addresses. The central event of the day was a round table dedicated to the Nizhny Novgorod architectural school that emerged in the 1990s. The unofficial leader of this movement was the architect Alexander Kharitonov. And the result of ten years of activity - buildings, which, according to Alexander Lozhkin, "were surprisingly accurately inscribed not only in the Nizhny Novgorod, but also in the global world context."
A separate mention should be made of the book fair, which was attended by over 40 Russian publishing houses, as well as bookstores and periodicals on architecture and art. Within the framework of the festival, a discussion took place, timed to coincide with the release of the new issue of the Tatlin magazine, entirely dedicated to the building of the Arsenal museum. Sergei Kavtaradze presented his book "Anatomy of Architecture" to the public. For children and their parents, a discussion of the books by Anna Chudetskaya "How to look at graphics" and "What Le Corbusier invented" took place. Another book in this series is What Shukhov Invented. It tells about the childhood years of Vladimir Shukhov, his hobbies and the most unusual inventions - from the first nozzle to oil tankers and artillery platform. Immediately after the presentation of the new edition, the boys - probably future inventors and engineers - lined up to be the first to purchase the book.
The final chord of the Vasari festival was a concert by the Moscow contemporary music ensemble. While on the ground floor the participants of the events packed books, folded up stands, locked hospitable halls with locks, the musicians continued to play. And at that moment, the brick walls of the Arsenal, immersed in darkness, seemed to answer the questions posed for everyone - both about the architectural language and the power of architectural utterance.
"… Scientists are engaged in the study of reality, architects - in the creation (creation) of reality." (from a lecture by Alexander Rappaport)