Date

Author

Рамиль Ниязов

Source

syg.ma

Preserved copy

Internet Archive

Translated material

This city will remember you

This project is a poetic chronicle made in the form of insta-stories and VK screenshots; the story of how a seemingly simultaneously close, but at the same time completely alien story of pain, loss and bereavement becomes almost our own. This contains at the same time a terrible cynicism of the artistic view, which tries to transform any feeling and experience into creativity, and, at the same time, sincere compassion and empathy.

A story of pain and fear, almost artistic exhibitionism, of a poet who went through despair and tried to describe it; a story of pain and fear, which, however, ends not with them, but with art - contradictory and ambiguous, but art.

The organizer of the exhibition project would like to present this text as an epigraph:

“A person is not only what he is, but also all his desires and aspirations.

There lived a girl named Nastya in Almaty. She believed in friendship, love, that wars would someday end and wanted to become the energy of good and a spark in every person. We hardly knew each other personally, but I really want to believe that one sentence is enough to feel a person.

Nastya was an artist and poetess who wanted to leave behind not tears, but something very pure and bright. A couple of months ago I felt this (this unimaginable energy) and I would like to share it.

This pop-up exhibition project is not about a person, but a dedication to the artist and poetess who lived with us side by side and loved, loved with all her heart, and would like to talk about it.”

In addition to the poetic chronicle, the exhibition project will include the installation “You are the city” and personal works by Anastasia Galeeva herself.

Entrance to the exhibition. Photos by Olya Loginova.

Installation “You are the city”, (2019).

Wall of works by Anastasia Galeeva. There should have been insta-stories posts in the corner (which were not working at the time of filming).

At the beginning of the interview it was written: “Nastya, like me, is a graduate of the Arai high school students club (former Komsomol headquarters in Almaty). Interviewed by Lola Madyarova. Editors: Konstantin Chuprin and Roman Lukyanchikov.” Link: https://vk.com/wall-171141431_50

The reverse side of the wall with the installation is printed 10x15 screenshots of Nastya’s Instagram. @vesta_edova.

Work 8. A2 format. Text: I’m walking, and the boys on Vinogradov say: “He’s like Sherlock Hill: he disappeared, but he was alive,” and so on all day, as if he’s been talking to me about Nastya all day, as if we have nothing to talk about today, as if I had lost a loved one, but no, because I took my grandmother’s death easier, because there was nothing left to do, and here it always seems that this is not enough, little, little, and you’re alone in a huge world that locks you in a cage and shows her photo every five minutes, I haven’t seen anyone’s photograph in my life as often as hers, although we were never even close, I saw her once in Meloman, my friend and I met her friend, he asked: “Is Nastya with you?”, and she answered yes; and then we went to the classics department, and she was standing with some guy, she was in black, short-haired with white hair and asked what we would advise them to take sentimental for a gift in English, and I said Jane Eyre, and they answered me: “Oh, yes, great”; and then we left; today a loved one called me, who was feeling bad, and I said that I am now completely unable to speak, because before that my friend said that February is a terrible month, and at the same time a year ago a guy from her school, where she went to the last 11th grade in the Russian outback, died, and she was told to do a presentation on him, and she felt something the same, and she periodically remembers him and cries, even drunk at her birthday; and a friend of my friend said that at the end of winter there are the most suicides, because everyone is in crisis, he just buried his girlfriend in the fall, they discussed hitchhiking for the summer, and in the morning she wrote: “Take care of yourself, good luck,” and through mutual friends he finds out that she hanged herself at the same time; my beloved person later said that when I feel bad, she listens to me, and when she feels bad and she calls me, she gets a minute and thirty-seven seconds, and I understand that this is so, but I don’t understand why I can do everything for a stranger, and with my loved ones I fuck up that’s the only way, but know that I will remember your pain forever, forever, forever, and you are all in my heart forever, forever and for life, so throw me into an emergency before it’s too late, please, please, please; I look at that photograph of Nastya that was published in the wanted ad, and for the first time I feel warmth, some kind of strange warmth, today I tell everyone that I miss her, as if we were good friends and haven’t seen each other for a hundred years, and I think why is this not true, why, why, why, why I never wrote to her, didn’t hit on her, maybe I didn’t even hit on her badly and terribly, maybe that would have changed something, maybe that would have helped, but every time, when I looked at her photographs, I felt some kind of my own, but still cold, cold and hunger for something above and anti and above, and meta and beyond, and now it is warmth and this longing, I was told that she has looked more harmonious lately, and I desperately hope that she will be found, please, Nastya, be found, please, please, please.

Work 13. A2 format. Text: today Pavel Gerasimenko and I spent the whole day posting notices about the disappearance of Nastya, periodically with malicious causticism and, as if a lump of nerves escapes from the throat, cursing, learning that literally the day before yesterday the leaflets had already been torn down, and instead of them there was some kind of tattered advertisement of the same poor people like us (although they say that these are cleaners, which, however, are also difficult to justify, but I want to) - but finally I could understand why I photograph every leaflet I pasted, every Nastya I left in this city - I want him to remember her; I remember forever - today one person close to Nastya wrote one amazing thing about her: he said that he would tell about her something that perhaps no one knew about her, but I seemed to have learned nothing new, and as if I was jealous, because I would really like one day to write the same thing about me, and I read her posts, and I am surprised, as if I am baptized after a thunderclap, how behind the general and seemingly obvious words there is bubbling lively and tender energy chirps like pansexual cicadas, and although I cannot be completely sure that I have not succumbed to “having is not appreciated,” I can be sure that my fucking snobbish arrogance has been knocked down completely, and I can look at her the way I would like to be looked at at me: I steal her poems and voices from her loved ones (as she steals them from the air), and I feel amazing impulsiveness, which, on the one hand, seems terribly natural in the Soviet materialist paradigm imposed on us, and on the other, like Pechorin or Ryzhy, who seem to shout with all their gills: give us a language, a new language; languages with which we will overthrow you or deify you, and we will follow you, to the ends of the world we will go, forever we will go, we will go, we will go, we will go, we will go, but no one answered them, gave them anything, remained silent, concealed themselves, hammered, forgot, and I cannot calm down because of this, because Bannikov gave me the language with which I now call it white cisgender a man, but I didn’t, but as if I could. Noel Gallagher, it seems, said that in a world in which there are so many terrible things, not to do something beautiful, if possible, to do it is a crime, a crime, violence, violence, violence, and Nastya seemed to do it with her mere existence no matter what. Thank you, Nastenka - it’s probably terribly rude and familiar to call you that without your permission, even if in reality you would hit me for that, huh, I just hope that someone called you that.

Work 30. A4 format. Below there is a pedestal with copies of this work (of the same quality), which everyone could take for themselves.

PS .: instead of pre-/ and post-/ words:

***

My friend is an artist

Alexander Barkovsky,

echoes Castaneda

when I ask about God:

"we are just cattle

great consciousness

and our goal is

accumulation of awareness,

to whom It

feeds after our death."

My friend is an artist

Alexander Barkovsky

(what a stupid rhyme -

why is she?)

echoes me:

“Do you remember when we were sitting in this... glamorous restaurant and eating this, some... awesome, best sausage in the world from the best pigs in the world, in everything, in all this glamor, at this huge round table, and... and you arrived, late for the poetry evening that you organized that day, and you came from the cemetery, you had such an interesting, interesting borderline state of trance, and here you are I was sitting at the table, and you came from the cemetery, and you may have seen a corpse there, yes, and you, well, got from a ship to a ball, and this is the state in which you find yourself, when these other worlds border, these abysses, these gaps, when you move from one world to another world; from the cemetery to the table with sausage, ahh... Write something about it. You spent a lot of effort, a lot of energy when you were looking for your girlfriend: you... uh... I followed your posts, you posted advertisements, you were looking for this person, you... uh... put all of yourself into it, enormous strength, and... You were impeccable in finding this girl, and... Then there was a cemetery, a funeral, a table with sausage, so... And it seems to me that this could make a very good text, here. Ah... But I would like to read this text. But otherwise why the hell is it all? It’s like... It seems to me that the whole movement should turn into some kind of artistic gesture, that’s it. Otherwise, all these movements are completely meaningless. Ahh when they don’t bring results in the form of some kind of artistic gesture. I would like to read some text from you about these last experiences of yours with the missing girl, uh, with the corpse and with your appearance after the cemetery, uh, eating sausage and all this bullshit, here. Okay, bye, hugs.”

“Hello, Sasha!

Unfortunately, I never sent you this letter, so you will read the answer with everyone at the same time.

On the loss of Byron’s notes, Pushkin once said: “The crowd greedily reads confessions, notes, etc., because in their meanness they rejoice at the humiliation of the high, the weaknesses of the mighty. At the discovery of any abomination, she is delighted. He is small, like us, he is vile, like us! You’re lying, you scoundrels: he’s both small and vile—not like you—differently.” He said this in a letter to Vyazemsky, which has long been stolen for quotes. I thought about this a lot while I was preparing an exhibition about my missing friend.

She wasn’t my friend either, although the story of our non-acquaintance is similar to a terrible fate: we went to the same organization with the same leader; I know all her best friends just as she knows mine, and there were so many opportunities for us to cross paths, but it didn’t happen. One day, my friend, who was preparing to interview her, asked us what question she could ask her. I said, “What will be left of you if you die tomorrow?” Nastya replied: “...I wouldn’t want these people to cry, I would like them to be happy. I wouldn't want there to be any tears left behind. I would like something very pure and bright to remain after me, so that I become the energy of goodness and be a spark in every person.” If it weren’t for these words, I might not have done anything, but now I think about how fragile and, at the same time, very naturally said. Very kind. But my exhibition is not dedicated to a person.

There she also had a remark that many people can write poetry and draw, and her talent lies in understanding and empathy. The exhibition was dedicated to such an artist. The exhibition is about the fact that, continuing, as it seems to me, your thought: everything does not flow into an artistic gesture - the artist is the gesture.

No matter how good a non-artist is, his text remains closed within his framework. He can expand it to his loved ones, to the city, country, world, but without the text he will be forgotten, because the text is longer than memory. It will seem that all the good that he did was so that he would feel good now or be considered good, because without knowing the past, we will repeat the same mistakes. And the same good people will be needed again, so that they will do the same good things again. But no matter how morally bad a good artist may be, his text is always aimed at the world. Even when he talks about himself - and maybe especially when he talks about himself in order to show himself to the world, because, in addition to consoling his vanity, he wants to share his experience (the most proven and reliable, because his personal) with the world. All the aspirations, all the pain, all the hopes of at least half of the groups, classes, ethnic groups of humanity are just a couple of clicks away: I believe that one day at a meeting between two warring countries, instead of diplomats, there will be poets who would turn their souls inside out, and then hug like friends, because they could finally understand each other. This seems like a stupid utopia, but I don't know better words to say it. To say what I felt from Nastya - only now I realized that her interview ends with the words that she is “such a stupid little person who still believes that wars will someday end.” There are too many things that look like coincidences.

Fortunately, as Grandfather Beuys said: “Every person is a modern artist.” There is some kind of feature of the era, some kind of freedom - not to go into the forest, but to be with everyone and everyone (even if only somewhere in the soul) to be recognized, doing absolutely meaningless, but extremely personal things. And every artist deserves to have an exhibition dedicated to him.”

PPS:

Unfortunately, there was not a single publication about the project in the media, but these posts, which, of course, are much more expensive, really stuck with me:

1. “Isn’t life a funny thing? Your friends won’t call an ambulance for you, they’ll wrap you in a carpet and throw you into a water canal, and a person you hardly knew will desperately put up leaflets around the city and look for you. Isn't it funny? Not really,” - @isataynuray .

2. "On April 10, the body of Anastasia Galeeva was found. ⠀
On April 21, Asya Tulesova and Beybarys Tolymbaev unfurled a poster with the well-known “You can’t run away from the truth.” ⠀
I didn't know either of them, but both events were significant. At least for me. How quickly our law enforcement agencies act when they see even an indirect hint about themselves, but how (most often) basic civil rights are not respected and they do not respond to the disappearance of a person. Everything is so simple. ⠀
I didn’t look for Nastya, I didn’t stick a single advertisement on any pole or bus stop in our city. But yesterday I covered the wall with photographs of the announcements themselves, which @crossaqualung had been making all that time. And for some reason I remembered “Tree”. ⠀
This tree is doomed in this city, I know it all. But I spend all my time next to him. I'm tired of all other things. ⠀
I can't think about anything but my tree. ⠀
Come. Just two days. And they will cut again,” - @whecuba . ⠀

3. "adesso state ammirando i lavori di una ragazza. una splendida ragazza. di una ragazza che credeva nel bene e nell'amore.

peccato che é morta. un talento sprecato, no? é scomparsa il 9 febbraio del 2019. ma, la cosa che mi tocca di più é che, perche i suoi cosidetti “amici” quando il giorno dopo l“hanno trovata, non hanno chiamato la polizia? l”ambulanza? nah, troppo semplice. l“hanno avvolta in un tappeto per poi buttarla in un canale infangato. disumano. io mi chiedo, come hanno fatto ad andare avanti, sapendo di avere compiuto un azione cosi…schifosa? come hanno fatto a guardare neglio occhi i suoi genitori? perche esiste gente talmente insensibile? perche un ragazzo che la conosceva a malapena, con il gelo che c”è qui, andava in giro appendendo annunci su annunci della sua scomparsa? perche lui sentiva i sensi di colpa, quando i suoi “amici” se ne stavano tranquilli e beati? oggi, (precisamente ieri) questo stupendo ragazzo ha organizzato una mostra in suo onore. postando i suoi quadri, poesie, annunci. lui voleva che questa città la ricordasse, come una cosa pura e leggera. grazie alle parole di @crossaqualung il mio cuoricino é definitivamente spezzato", @ incroyableshaanti .

(This is in Italian, but if translated through Google Translator, then everything is quite clear: “now you admire the work of a girl. A beautiful girl, a girl who believed in goodness and love.

It's a shame she died. Wasted talent, isn't it? she disappeared on February 9, 2019. but what touches me the most is that her so-called "friends", when they found her the next day, did not call the police? ambulance? no, it was too easy for them to wrap him in a carpet and then throw him into a dirty canal. inhumane. I wonder how they carried on knowing they had done something so... disgusting? how did her parents look at her eyes? Why are people so insensitive? Why was a boy who barely knew her, coldly here, going around with notices of his disappearance? why did he feel guilty when his "friends" were quiet and blissful? today (yesterday) this colossal boy organized an exhibition in his honor. posting your paintings, poems, announcements. he wanted this city to remember her as a pure and light thing. thanks to @crossaqualung my little heart is definitely broken."

4. "I will miss you."

“Everyone wants to be remembered” - I heard this phrase for the first time, it seems, the year before last. But then I didn’t attach much importance to this phrase.

Everyone wants to be remembered. And everyone wants to leave their mark on history. Someone wants to erect a monument to themselves. Others want to leave a piece of themselves in their works, be it books, poems, paintings. But there are also those who want to remain memories in people’s memory. And, unfortunately, there are few of the latter left, but while they exist, the hope burns in my soul that not all feelings or emotions can be bought...

-Did you know her?

-No, what about you?

-No.

But everyone stands, listens and cries, cries and listens. Everyone is hurt. It hurts that another person passed away, but remained in his works, remained memories.

“I envy those who knew her personally” - I heard this relatively recently, but to be honest, I don’t remember from whom. Now I would completely agree with this person. But at that moment I didn’t delve into this phrase, I just nodded and plunged headlong into the “problems” I had invented. I envy those who knew her, she was clearly a wonderful person.

She will remain memories for me. I carried within me the emotions that I lived during your search and after the announcement of your death. Today I will leave this here with the text that I write under the influence of those emotions.

Nastya, I didn’t know you, but I will miss you...” - @ “The wind smells of lilacs” .

PPPS:

Poster, design and co-curatorship - Ekaterina Smirnova.

Providing the gallery and believing in the project - Togzhan Sakbaeva.

Technical supervision - Zhanna Nugerbek.

Help with installation of the exhibition in one night: Alina @valenciakaay_ ; Camilla from Esentai Gallery, whose contact information I forgot to take; Alisa Yakuba, Anna Gayda and Alisa Igilmanova.

Thank you for your support: Yasmin Avagyan, Asel Shaldibaeva, Daria Spivakova, Karina Ibragimova, Janelle Dekenova, Alexander Barkovsky.

Thank you for your patronage: Victoria Rusakova, Bobyl Fedor, Asem @ssygma, @s.umiia, Yulia Brezinskaya, Olya Loginova, Kristina Gaponova, Alisa Yakuba, Yulia Chernykh, Aigerim Sakenova, Aiman Kodar, Karina Ibragimova.

Ramil Niyazov poetry contemporary art exhibition project