What is MosDvorFest?
Cycle night this weekend is held as the Festival of courtyard and city stories, MosDvorFest. This means that our Moscow courtyards will become venues, each with a special art-historical program: mini-excursions, installations, quests, and concerts, all site specific, only here and now. Each participant starts from the nearest area of interest to him, and then travels from point to point at his own pace. It is very important: you can use any type of transport, from a bicycle to a scooter, or even jogging.
That is, the bike is not the main thing?
The main thing is to visit interesting courtyards.
Why courtyards?
Each city has several facades: ceremonial avenues, squares, embankments - this is the visible part of the iceberg, then there are side streets, outskirts, and so on. And there is a courtyard facade - sincere, genuine, about how we live. For Muscovites, this is the atmosphere that the Pokrovskie Vorota film glorified 30 years ago. And now - in the context of global nostalgia - courtyard culture excites the hearts of people, and we are trying, if not to return to it, then to figure out how it was arranged. Somehow back in the early 2000s, while walking, the term courtyardism was born, then it seemed like a joke, now it turns out to be serious. Look at how developers are now pushing on courtyards in their advertisements!
Since 2007, you have been holding bike nights in Moscow and other cities of the world. Why did they turn to the courts just now?
New technology was needed.
Cycle night - a night bike tour, when we started doing it it was an avant-garde project - and the participants of the first walk from the Kursk railway station to Plyushchev were only one hundred people plus three TV groups. That first time, we could easily drive into any courtyard on Dangauerovka, admire a flower garden or a lopsided statue. But the project went public, and when hundreds and thousands of people became involved, attention to detail became impossible. When the Velonoča column made a traffic jam on Varshavka (Yuzhnaya Velonoč 2013 - ed.), It became clear that stories can only be told at the macro level. Courtyards, alleys are gone; Last year, the city administration agreed on a route only along the main streets - of course, it is much easier to lead a huge column this way. And then we got the idea of a network of stops with different art content, united by a common theme.
What is the theme of the Moscow Bicycle Night this year?
We called it ghosts. We are talking about a parallel Moscow - unbuilt, or demolished, or never existed at all, but paradoxically defining the current life of the metropolis. The Palace of Soviets, the main building of the USSR, was never built, but part of the city was rebuilt for the sake of it, a new avenue was built, which is now proudly called Komsomolsky, and a metro station was set up - Kropotkinskaya. Skyscrapers were also designed to match him. They are all there, but he is not. Here he is one of our ghosts. The list of sites can be found on the registration page on the velonotte.com website.
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zooming 1/4 … in the courtyard of the VKHUTEMAS, where we will teach you how to take a photo in the style of Rodchenko. We will also put up a memorial art sign there … Courtesy of Sergey Nikitin
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zooming 2/4 Courtesy of Sergey Nikitin
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zooming 3/4 Courtesy of Sergey Nikitin
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zooming 4/4 Courtesy of Sergey Nikitin
How will it go?
There is no starting point - everyone starts his walk from the site nearest to him. For convenience, we make a unified schedule of activities at all sites - from 8 pm to 11 pm, the next session starts every 15 minutes. 20:00, 20:15, 20:30 … and so on until 22:45. In addition to sites with a narrative, this year Velonochi has a dense network of partners - coffee shops, bicycle shops, burgers. So, there is no start, but you have to finish at the Museum of Moscow - there is a picnic with a food market and music. The brilliant group "Olya and the Secret Plant" will perform with songs about Chertanovo and Belyaevo.
Who came up with these eight sites?
The site plan was developed by the team of the International Bicycle Night. Then we offered students of cultural studies from the Higher School of Economics to become curators of individual points. As a result, we have a young team of artists, architects, poets, musicians. 35 creators - not counting volunteers. The project was supported by Roca, which is very pleasant for us.
What other plans for the yards?
We have created a Department of Courtyard Studies in Moskultprog, with which we are preparing a large exhibition and a book, a video series is being filmed, which can be watched on YouTube here - https://moskultprog.ru/courtyardology-dvorovedenie/ - there are already courtyards from Arbat to Biryulev. Moscow photographer Alan Vouba is involved in the project.
Where else will the Cycling Night be this year?
We were preparing Obninsk, it was a very interesting project, but, unfortunately, the leadership there has changed and that's it.
May I invite you to Berlin? On September 7, as part of the Bauhaus week, we hold Velonotte Bauhaus - about the city of Mies, Gropius and Sharun: houses, temples, parks and, of course, legendary unfinished projects - architecture without a dream is impossible. The walk is in English, but there will also be a Russian translation. The information is already on the website velonotte.com.
