It is not known if the curators assumed that the game would start even before the departure of the festival spectators who had reserved their places, but the heavens favored their plans. Guessing before leaving for Nikola-Lenivets, whether it will rain or not, with the questioning of Zen, Google and other search engines, seemed like a ritual act. Fortunately, the clouds on the horizon left no doubt that the answer would be positive.
Comrades descendants!
The presentation of one of the new buildings on the territory of the Nikolo-Lenivets park – the “Capsule of Predictions” by the architect Alexei Kozyr – looked no less ritual. A brutal metal container, resembling at once a giant server shell, a storage room, and a sarcophagus with pre-made flower beds welded on top, was open to all who wanted to send a message to the future. . The predictions are covered with a glass lid, fixed with a sealant, and when 1500 capsules take their places in the time machine invented by the architect, the iron door leaves will close.
At a table in front of the building, kind people politely issued a personalized certificate, “confirming that your message for the future has taken its place in the cell phone number…in the ‘prediction capsule.'” The certificate promised a reunion in 2050. , when the “prediction capsules” will come to light.
Continuing the tradition of sending messages to beloved “descendant comrades” in the Soviet years, this new architectural object dialogues with both Mayakovsky’s poem “Out Loud” and Platonov’s “The Well.” The foundation pit, by the way, was nearby: huge, freshly dug, ready to hide our hopes, wishes and greetings for a better future for 27 years. At the same time, the storage of these “capsules”, which have to make their way through a huge number of years, looks like a triumph of ecological awareness and respect for nature. The container-server-sarcophagus with predictions after the festival should go underground, leaving instead of a sign above it rectangular flower beds with wildflowers. And the capsules themselves against this background began to resemble children’s “secrets” or the seeds from which the future should grow.
If Aleksey Kozyr is building a “server” for the future, then the St. Petersburg Katarsis architectural bureau strengthens the connection with the past. Clearly, rudely, visibly. Its thirty-foot wooden tower resembles a watchtower, a fortress ready for siege, and a frustoconical obelisk pyramid. A long narrow window in the basement, like a loophole. The second light window is on the roof. Through it, from a sofa on the second floor, it is good to look at the stars on a clear night and dream. Inside, the house is also ascetic: a table with two long benches reminds you not so much of a Russian hut as of a train compartment. True, if this train rushes, then only through time. Something like an armored train on a siding surrounded by an apple orchard or cherry trees. Capsules with predictions here would be a clear exaggeration: where time goes in circles, no one asks what will happen next.
The prediction game continues with the “Air Pipeline” from the “Plum Cherry” art group. His compact house looks like an unidentified silver object that landed near the Ugra River. It’s full of corners, and all rounded. These hoods, on closer examination, turn out to be air ducts that provide ventilation in the building. Ivan Shevchuk and Aleksey Papin turned these pipes into a building. By the way, the authors guarantee that everything is in order with ventilation. An unidentified object, playing like a dovecote in the backyards of the “aviaries” of the metropolis, seems the ideal heir to Michelangelo Pistoletto and other heroes of arte povera. No wonder Nikolai Polissky, from whom the advent of modern art began on the Ugra, compared it with sculpture. But for the authors, his object is not the hero of a lyrical tale, but that of a classic dystopia. In some unimaginable future, clean air could become a luxury only the rich can afford. And then, for the sake of a breath of air, squatters will make their way into the air ducts, connecting to such fans.
Is it necessary to say that the “Air Pipeline” of the group “Plum Cherry” is inspired by memories of the covid, pandemic and dreams of easy breathing and fresh air outside the home?
Unlike the “Air Pipeline”, the “Pavilion of Delusions”, created by Irina Korina and Ilya Voznesensky, at first glance looks like the outline of a dream. Well, or to a house with a mezzanine, where girls in white sing, and young poets read poems, represented by the Voznesensky Center. There are no walls in this house, instead of them curtains of light tulle. There is no table or chairs here, but a huge bush has grown in the middle of the house. This house without walls or doors seems like a poetic greeting to the constructivist steps of El Lissitzky. True, the structures are hidden here, and the poetic platform is always ready to become a theatrical stage. Here the reality of delusions is indistinguishable from the ruins of real life. Everything is like in a real theater. And it does not only appear in the performance of poets.
son t in the woods
Playing with time, which was proposed by artists and architects, is just one of the plots framed in the main theme of the festival. The other refers to folklore, village fortune-telling, folk signs … What predictions without asking the young cuckoo about the allotted time, and the girls in the mirror – about the betrothed? Is it any wonder that the Down and Ashes Theater, together with the choreographer Olga Tsvetkova and the composer Anton Svetlichny, named their promenade performance after the words of Lensky’s aria “What is the coming day preparing for me?”, and its Tatyana’s dream of the fifth chapter of “Eugene Onegin” was the culmination.
The actors led the audience through meadows, forests, bridges and paths towards new architectural objects. But at the same time they also drew into the depths of poetic space. Pushkinskaya Tatyana, who “believed in the ancient legends of common people, dreams, card fortune-telling and moon predictions,” both in the novel and in the play, turns out to be an ideal companion on a walk. that connects a strangely mysterious forest and architecture, dreams and poetry, popular culture and Russian classics.
Just as in poetry the most ordinary dialogue (“What is your name?” He looks and answers: Agathon) begins to glow with humor and tenderness, so in the theater performance “Down and Out” the most ordinary things, whether be it bottles, a tin trough, iron sheets, an old bicycle wheel without a tire, even abacuses and plastic tubes can be turned into musical instruments… A pile of shoes and shoes in the middle of the road, into accessories theater and old frames. from mirrors, windows and doors – to that “mirror” that girls should open fate.
This world has almost forgotten speech. Things and plastic pantomime here seem more eloquent than words. However, silence is also a property of dreams that are more like silent movies than romantic comedies. And if the wooden birds on poles “flew” from the northern villages, where they are made for children, but more for sale, then the bicycle hoops seem to have rolled from the paintings of Brueghel the Elder. But the heroes of Tatyana’s dream are not forgotten either: “one with horns and a dog’s muzzle, the other with the head of a rooster, here is a witch with a goat’s beard, here is a stiff and proud skeleton, there is a dwarf with a tail , but here is a half crane and half cat”. They gradually appear, calling, intriguing, driving into the depths of the forest, inviting to the table. Either bylichek heroes, or fairy tales, find themselves in a nightmare, where “everything points to her, and everyone shouts: mine! mine!”.
The performance space becomes a portal to several “other” worlds at once. Spectators do not watch, but live Tatyana’s dream, which turned out to be the forerunner of the macabre surrealist. Each gets his own: on a brittle twig – a one-line tape torn from Pushkin’s verse and presented as a sign, a message, a consolation and a warning. And the aria, if I’m not mistaken, from the “Queen of Spades” still makes the heart beat. Despite the fact that “your card is defeated.”
