The curators' competition took place in the summer, and the submission ended on September 20. Announcing the winner at the press conference of the 2019 festival, Nikolai Shumakov commented on the winner's personality as follows: "The very same editor-in-chief of Tatlin magazine … he has not only a magazine, he has a large production." Which, of course, is true: Tatlin is one of the oldest architectural magazines based in Yekaterinburg, but well known throughout the country. The publishing house was also the first in Russia to initiate a series of monographs by architects' portfolios - dozens of volumes have been published; Eduard Kubensky regularly organizes exhibitions and special projects, publishes research on the history of Soviet modernism, participates in architectural festivals with creative projects - so the position of the next curator of Zodchestvo looks predictable and justified in his career.
“I want to rearrange everything. - says the future curator of the festival Eduard Kubensky. - It seems to me that everything is correct in Zodchestvo, but everything is out of place. As if all the necessary words are in the sentence, but his, this sentence, cannot be counted as a literary masterpiece, it is just a collection of words, but there must be a work of fiction.
I think we need to start with the fact that the opening of Zodchestvo should not be the stands of cities and regions, but children. Further students, but not with their term papers, but with manifestos, search, errors, in the end. The competition of projects and buildings should not be held between everything that was sent and paid for, but between the best. Workshops should be role models, not paid square meters of floor space. Cities and regions should not account for the number of schools and kindergartens built, but submit curatorial projects like the Venice Biennale. It is necessary to find a balance between the eternal and the temporary, ideas and money, good and not so, for the sake of the first provisions of the above. I hear in the word an architect - a superhero, and not just another main builder. The architect must save the world. Daily. Hourly. I am not kidding! And for greater persuasiveness, I would start writing the word Architecture with the English Z, like Zorro, so that every architect taking part in the main Russian architectural festival would try on the mask of a superhero."
As a symbol of his curatorial project, Eduard Kubensky, barely learning about the victory, presented the editors with a plastic fork with the inscription eternity, without commenting on the object in any way. Suppose that a disposable fork means the paradox of the temporality of its use and the eternity of its subsequent existence, since plastic, as you know, decomposes very badly - so we are dealing with a correctly found designation of permanent / temporary, "eternity" of our time of garbage and consumer goods. But this is just our guess.
Meanwhile, at the exhibition that has opened today, Kubensky is supervising an exposition called "The Architect's Pattern". It is located almost in the middle of the Gostiny Dvor, consists of plastic "patterns" sent by many famous architects, and shines perfectly in the sun. The project is a "transparent" version of the object, which was exhibited at the Museum of Architecture in December 2018. Below are a few words of the curator about his 2019 object.
It is no secret that you were inspired to create the project by the Italian architect Alessandro Mendini, who embodied his individual style in a personal pattern. What do you think was his intention? What is the intention of your exhibition?
E. K.: I think that Mendini's project is, first of all, a reflection on his own work. My idea as a curator was to define the vector of reflection of Russian architecture. Is she capable of self-criticism, self-irony, self-reflection, finally. Still, as a publisher of monographs by Russian architects, I need to know who I am dealing with.
Is the "Architect's Pattern" exhibition just a study of the styles and handwritings of the main Russian architects, or is there really a feeling that modern architecture is being created "according to a pattern"?
E. K.: Any architecture is created according to a template. The only question is who creates these patterns.
How does the concept of the exhibition resonate with the theme of the festival - "Transparency"? Will new patterns be presented within the framework of Zodchestvo, or will it be a repetition of the exhibition in the Museum of Architecture?
E. K.: Within the framework of the exhibition at the Zodchestvo festival, the same patterns will be presented, only in a new quality - this time they will be made of transparent plexiglass and will form a single composition. This is already a reflection on reflection, an attempt to find something new through endless repetition. We are literally trying to create a kind of prism, passing through which, on the one hand, the light breaks up into elementary components, and on the other hand, it appears to the viewer in a new quality.
Will the collection of patterns be supplemented with new pieces in the future?
E. K.: Not. At least in the near future. It was an experiment, a game. Perhaps in the future we will return to this idea or even ask each of our heroes to create something similar. But now it seems to us that we have developed the resource of the project, and our heads are busy with other stories. They are no less interesting and we will show them soon.
