Why a barn?

In the village of Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga Region, the sixth annual festival of landscape objects "Archstoyanie" was held, which brought together more than 6,000 guests.

Elena Kalashnikova

The public was presented with an exposition of thirty-six objects, including six new ones - "Saray Saraev", "Standless Steel / Non-Standing Steel", "Functional Lowing", "Barn Wall", "Nests of Light" and the capsule hotel "Your Cabinet".

At a press conference, the founder of Archstoyanie, artist Nikolai Polissky, said that the organizers of the festival needed to formulate new principles, because the fame of Nikolo-Lenivets was brought by artists and architects of the older generation - Brodsky, Ass, Grigoryan, Avakumov, Bashkaev. “What kind of art does this festival make? They have set the bar so high that the youth is facing a difficult task.” In March of this year, a competition was announced for the best interpretation of the barn as a piece of art. According to curator Anton Kochurkin, about 350 entries were submitted to the competition. “Although opinions were divided, and no one was awarded the first place, instead of one competitive project, we will present six. Why a shed? If in past years the themes were quite abstract, on the verge of art and architecture, then the barn is an elementary particle of architecture, the simplest typology that everyone draws from childhood - a house with a roof. We were interested in how artists and architects would approach this topic, what romanticism could be pulled out of this image. In addition, this is an elementary agricultural unit, and since the festival takes place on the lands of former agricultural land, it seemed appropriate for us to go into the peasant theme. But there is a third point - these sheds mark the territory. Project manager Yulia Bychkova said that Archstoyanie this year represents the second part of Versailles Park. “We are again working with graduates of the Versailles landscape school. Here they laid the foundations of the park and in three years we will be able to present the finished product in the form of landscape architecture.”

The space of Nikola-Lenivets has also become a creative laboratory for musicians and artists. The curator of the event program Inna Prilezhaeva comments on the premieres of the festival in the following way: “The line that began in 2009 with the theme “Out of the Earth”, when we thought about architecture in non-architectural ways, this year was reflected in acoustic experiments with the landscape. Thus, the work created by Dmitry Vlasik for Nikola-Lenivets gave a new volume and quality to the territory of more than five hectares. The Glade of Labyrinths inspired musicians, painters, dancers, performers to create a landscape performance.”

A sociological study was conducted at Archstoyanie. The author of the ArchMovement project, Viktor Vakhshtein, said that he and his colleagues studied “what kind of reaction objects cause, how they are interpreted by different groups of visitors, how much they involve them in interaction. Interestingly, many of our initial hypotheses were confirmed exactly the opposite. It turned out that older people more often than young people use photo and video equipment, that visitors, when reading works, are not so much interested in the author's intention, but rather rethink and redefine them based on their own experience. Even the border of the work itself is not fixed and depends on the type of interaction of the viewers. We have yet to find an explanation for these and other facts.” The results of the study will be summed up in September.

Maxim Nogotkov, President of the Svyaznoy Group of Companies, owner of the land of the Nikola-Lenivets Landscape Park, announced the creation of ArchPolis, a space for the life and work of architects, designers, and artists. The project will begin work in May 2012.

The architect, manager of the NP Project Nikola-Lenivets, Anna SCHETININA, told Novaya Gazeta:

We already have our own niche, but we are not very active on the international stage yet. I am sure that the festival should be held on a competitive basis, it should have a board of trustees and an objective approach, and not a small-town one - we have already experienced this. This is no longer just a glade of a single artist or architect, this place is becoming a laboratory, a meeting place, seminars, a single park, a little Strelka, Skolkovo, Winzavod ... We are interested in making individual objects and positioning them as exhibitions, and throughout the year to arrange small presentations to which one hundred to two hundred people are invited. It is necessary to reduce the audience of events, but do them more often and leave the annual large thematic festival.

In the fifth, last, festival, we were a little tired, but now we are starting. We will deal with a new topic - with Valery Petrovich Novikov, director of the Ugra National Park, and Kolya Polissky, we will work on the Settlement project. Using the means of modern culture and art, we will restore historical sites, mounds, and settlements of the Ugra National Park.