Celebrating 10 years of INTERSTUDIO

(Photo: Vladimir Lupovskoy )

The international workshop of the theater of synthesis and animation INTERSTUDIO from Tsarskoye Selo (also known as the city of Pushkin, also known as the region of St. Petersburg) is actually a theater institute, which until this year even had the status of a state higher educational institution. But ten years ago, its co-founder, along with the then director-in-chief of the Leningrad Puppet Theater Mikhail Khusid, was the artist Yuri Sobolev, a participant in the legendary exhibition of 1962 in the Manege (when Khrushchev called the artists “fags”), a friend and colleague of Kabakov, Yankilevsky and other nonconformists of the sixties . Sobolev himself, however, does not like to remember past achievements. But the reader must know his heroes.

So, thanks to Sobolev and his Workshop of Paratheatrical Forms (i.e. installation and performance), organized at INTERSTUDIO in 1994, Tsarskoe Selo today has become one of the strongholds of contemporary art. Students, interns and teachers of the Sobolev School have united in the “Emergency Exit” group for five years now, working in St. Petersburg, Moscow and throughout Europe. And the International KUKART Festival, organized by INTERSTUDIO every two years, is now not only a theatrical and musical event, but also an occasion for exhibitions and actions by artists - not only from the Sobolev team.

This year there is no KUKART, but the tenth anniversary of INTERSTUDIO has happened. And for the reasons stated above, it is clear that the main event of the anniversary celebrations in the Reserve Palace - the residence of the Workshop - was the “art part” in the strict sense of the word. And not the graduation performance of graduates or concerts of INTERSTUDIO’s permanent partner, Hamburg musician and composer Heinz-Ericke Goedicke, as well as Muscovites Vyacheslav Gaivoronsky and Evelina Petrova, brought by the famous music critic Nikolai Dmitriev. In turn, the main part of the exhibition program was the project “Tsarskoye Selo Topography”

This exhibition is the result of the curatorial efforts of Nikolai Palazhchenko, the current graduate of INTERSTUDIO, who, however, became more famous for his tireless assistance to Marat Gelman in organizing his festivals. Which is a scandal for the residents of Tsarskoye Selo who are far from artistic passions. Well, God be with him, with Gelman, although the exhibition participants from Tver (Inga and Alexey Aksenov) and Nizhny Novgorod (Sergey Provorov and Galina Myznikova) are precisely the talents found during the “In Search of Cinderella” festival. But besides the young provincial “Cinderellas”, who this time showed something extremely unintelligible, mature “princes” from both capitals also took part in “Tsarskoye Selo Topography”, such as Konstantin Zvezdochetov, Igor Makarevich, Olga and Alexander Florensky, Maria Chuikova and Georgy Litichevsky ( he, however, now played the role of a foreign guest, having moved to permanent residence in Nuremberg).

It should be noted that the aesthetics of Sobolev’s “Emergency Exit” is based on seriousness and autism, on the transformation of art into a means of psychological self-therapy. The anniversary dedications of the guests turned out to be completely different in spirit - summer Tsarskoe Selo is conducive to cheerful relaxation and friendliness towards the audience. Konstantin Zvezdochetov used his old work, made for the "Art Magazine" of 1994, - a diagram and views of the "Chinese state of Pagodenburg", a fictional "aestheticocratic monarchy", located, according to the artist's plan, on the site of the real "Chinese village" in Aleksandrovsky and Catherine's park in Tsarskoe Selo. This time, the magazine project turned into an installation: it was possible to examine the pages of “XJ” only by sitting comfortably on heaps of hay scattered on the floor. Maria Chuikova, a culinary artist, built “small sculptures” of carrots, bananas, cucumbers, etc. on the balustrade of the Reserve Palace - all sorts of crocodiles, hedgehogs and other living creatures that skillful housewives use to decorate salads. (The living creatures were immediately devoured by the spectators.) The Florenskys put up homemade posters for tourists on poster stands in front of the palace with stories about the sights of Selo or, for example, a message that “Alexander Pushkin (1799 - 1837) lived and worked for a long time in Tsarskoe Selo! ". Passers-by got acquainted with interesting information and left enriched. The funny thing is that the work of a modern artist as a cook, guide, organizer of spectator leisure and comfort is an influential global trend (there is even a term coined for it - “participatory aesthetics”), and therefore all the simple ideas described are excellent, although not very original, examples of contemporary art.

In contrast to the performance presented by the Moscow gallery Escape (it is located right in the studio of the artist Valery Aizenberg), a guest of the INTERSTUDIO anniversary. Valery Aizenberg and Bogdan Mamonov explained the meaning of the name of their institution by “escaping” (that is, running away) when someone tried to talk to them. The gesture is radical and, it would seem, suitable as a gift for the Tsarskoe Selo recluse Sobolev and his disciples devoted to the Great Art. But over ten years of INTERSTUDIO’s life and five of “Emergency Exit,” their leader and participants have long become a significant fact of today’s culture. They will no longer be able to sit back and escape into themselves. Which is good.

August 3, 2000