Translated material
Under the very demolition
In one of the abandoned buildings of Perm, squat will soon appear - rooms in which artists will be able to live and engage in creativity for a symbolic fee. As always, this idea, ripening in the head of Marat Helman, has already caused a wave of criticism. Moreover, this time these are not just duty provincial moans from the series "Perm artists will not get anything again." Critics also have ideological claims: after all, “bastard” in the original sense is a self-seized room and creating it “initiative from above” is somehow strange. There are real "squat" in Perm too. But their days, it seems, are considered - a whole street, who is inhabited by free artists, can be destroyed this weekend.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
Khakimovs
In a pair of spacious two-story barracks on Kislovodskaya Street, almost the entire artistic life of the city was once concentrated. There were workshops in these houses, which were distributed between members of the Union of Artists. Here, at one time, the first classic squat appeared in Perm - the artists Marina and Ravil Khakimov, who did not belong to the Union, managed to settle in the workshops.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
Now the Khakimovs are one of the last inhabitants of the empty and the decline of Kislovodskaya. They called us a friend - the artist Anton Semakin. Anton is the old friend and fellow student of Marina, so he was invited.
And I decided to take advantage of the last chance to visit the legendary place.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
Artists live on the second floor of a wooden hut-all neighboring Mastern rooms on the floor have long been abandoned. They have two young children and a cat. The cat, however, is called bad - he all the time rushes along the floor in search of incomprehensible what. And when trying to stroke it, he begins to nibble his fingers extended to him. If you can’t pull your hand in time, the cat will choke in a fit of hobby.
- You are just shoes, please take off. In our shoes, only officials go here, ”Ravil warned me after meeting.
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Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
At first, I really did not take off the shoes - in the darkness the floor seemed very dirty. Just taking a closer look, I realized that these are not dirty stains, but dried spray of paint. The wooden floor resembled an art palette.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
Gradually, I examined the rest of the apartment-it also resembled an art palette in a sense. If in a good way, then it should be museum to museum in its entirety. Many small works of art have developed into one large and indivisible. Applications, oil paintings, paints, pencils, wooden frescoes, dolls, embroidery, home -made lampshades and chairs, carved chests. All this is so successfully intertwined with ordinary household items like children's toys or sewing accessories that you will no longer understand where the ordinary object is, and where is art.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
It is damn comfortable here. Neither at the first nor at the second glance you can guess that there is a desolation behind all this - there is no water and heating in the hut for a long time. At the same time, small children live here. Their parents go to the column for water and save themselves and their offspring by heaters.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
In winter they drown the stove. Here, by the way, a rare and paradoxical harmony - when cold, the inhabitants of a residential hut, use a neighboring, non -residential hut as firewood.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
They advised me to go there - he has long become a refuge for drug addicts and homeless people. Although there you can still find a lot of interesting things right under your feet-from postcards to sketches and books. The current inhabitants of the non-residential hut are not very interested in the inheritance.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
We brought a bottle of white wine with us - we were not going to linger, so we clearly miscalculated. It would be worth a guess to take more food.
- True, we have nothing to put on a tooth today. Maybe the bud was still left, - Ravil worried.
On the table, an ascetic still life formed - a bottle of white wine, four different glasses and a loaf on a plate.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
Of course, there is no Internet here. Only an old computer, in front of which a small child wrapped in a blanket sits and watches cartoons - “Mountain of Semlodes”.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
Artists, however, are aware of many things taking place in the Perm cultural sphere. They discuss the recent ghostly festival "European accents", Helman and everything else. But the conversation is still gradually sliding to the pressing - at the end of the week everything that we see around can be destroyed, erased from the face of the earth with bulldozers.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
The inhabitants of the barracks are now in a limited state - they cannot find out any details regarding their fate simply because they do not know who to ask.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
The ends are now not to find with all the desire. Once upon a time, the land belonging to the Union of Artists was semi-legally sold unknown to anyone. Since then, the owner of the land has changed six times already. Those who now owns the land do not say to the artists - "commercial secret."
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In this sense, they are not considered to be residents in this sense - officially they do not exist in this territory, which means that the owners of the land have the legal right to turn a blind eye to them. You never know who huddles in dilapidated houses - artists or homeless people. Residents of houses learned about the new date of demolition almost by accident - from workers who dismantled communications in the neighboring building.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
To find out for sure what awaits them, there is nowhere to the inhabitants of the vast - maybe bulldozers will come to them on September 18, or maybe everything will be deposited again for an indefinite period, as it happened more than once. Now they have to sit on their suitcases. They have not yet found a new place of residence.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
- Only some paintings will take some things. We will not take furniture, we will leave everything here, ”says Ravil.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
He was not alone to choose such a strategy. If the bulldozers get to the Kislovodskaya, they equalize not only wooden walls and furniture, but also a huge number of artistic supplies and paintings. On the second floor of the hut is even more than a dozen Mastern rooms. All of them were empty when their owners in one way or another received a chance to get out of the dilapidated hut. Now the dark rooms are literally littered with clippings from magazines, cards, banks and tubes with dried paint, subframes, palette and other remnants of the former creative splendor. But the most important thing - among all this garbage is full of sketches, drawings, completely completed work.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
“Listen, but it’s all that you need to somehow evacuate from there, because it’s sorry to be crazy,” I told Anton, already when we headed home.
- And what is “sorry”? These are unique works for you, and for artists - routine. The artist is probably doing this with 90 percent of his works. It just leaves them and that's it.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
In the workshop of Marina and Ravil, everything is different-work is stored that the hand will not rise to leave somewhere just like that. Marina shows us a diptych - two boards on which jewelry, as in medieval engravings, two faces are scratched - male and female.
“I still want to connect them among themselves so that they close and open like a book,” says Marina.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
It would seem that a kilometer should be seen that there is nothing special to profit from this building - unless, of course, spiritual food is interested. But suspicious individuals are still visited.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
“The other day even a thief climbed here the other day,” said Ravil, “however, greedy was ruined.” I scored and lowered such a bunch of things on the rope that in any case I would not be able to take away. So I would have taken it a little, tied it up - and only they saw him. And he rolled. I go near the house-I look, the photo enlightener is lying on the ground for some reason, all sorts of other things. Went around - and this man behind the house is just. Turned him from there.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
Fomichev
On the ground floor, it is probably even less safe to live than on the second, but in one of the workshops of the first floor, life is also glowing. The artist Alexei Fomichev lives there. They respect him respectfully that this is probably the last Perm artist who is engaged in a multi -figure composition. His work looks impressive - each of the works occupies a whole wall in the room.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
He also prepares for the worst - gradually collects in a small cart of the book that he wants to take with him. How, interestingly, you can take out such huge paintings? The next moment I saw an impressive roll standing against the wall. The paintings will have to roll and pull out of the hut if the circumstances are forced.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
Artifacts
On the ground floor and in the corridor are books. Books and drawings. There is no light almost anywhere.
With difficulty, he nevertheless “evacuated” something from this “informal cultural heritage”-items lying in corridors and rooms no longer need and, most likely, will die (if not under the caterpillars of the bulldozer, then simply from time to time), but with living inhabitants it would look like fuel ends.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
We leave the barrack in the late evening - at this time at least it is clear that the house on Kislovodskaya is still alive: the lantern over the entrance and a pair of windows are burning. In daylight, the local barracks do not serve any signs of life.
“You come in,” Ravil Khakimov tells us, “look in the week.”
“Let's go,” naturally, we promise.
Photo: Ivan Kozlov / Salt
In fact, let's go. It is even better if you can go next week. If at all there will be where to go.