Ay, car 2008

The 100th anniversary of the Tunguska meteorite was celebrated in Krasnoyarsk

The anniversary of the anomalous phenomenon that excited Russia called the “fall of the Tunguska meteorite” (or fireball, fireball - a bright interplanetary body shaped like a fireball, burning in the upper layers of the atmosphere) can and should be celebrated with passion and talent. The Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation, Siberian Federal University, and Krasnoyarsk Museum Center did everything right. They suggested reflecting on what happened in the basin of the Siberian river Podkamennaya Tunguska on June 30, 1908 as an event that had primarily cultural significance. What this meteorite is, what it is made of, what its origin is, whether it existed at all, in the end, is a highly specialized problem. Much more important is the resonance that caused his fall in the self-awareness of the culture. After all, the comet over the taiga actually opened the 20th century and became a symbol of radical processes in the way of thinking and creating. One of Yuri Lotman’s books that ended the twentieth century not nominally, but quite phenomenally, was the monograph “Culture and the Explosion” published in 1992. In it, Yuri Mikhailovich very convincingly talks about the laws of changing cultural paradigms and cultural semiosis. These laws are based not on the principle of evolution, but on the principle of semantic explosion, the destruction of stable canons of language, semantic boundaries, the highest creative tension, in the light of which Truth shines in all its integrity, which is not captured by the calculating intellect. It’s not for nothing that Lotman, as an elegant commentary on his judgments, chose Blok’s poem “The Artist,” which contains the following lines: “The hours that carry the world last, // Sounds, movement and light expand. // The past looks passionately into the future. // There is no present. Pathetic - no." This creates a completely adequate image of the phenomenon of a huge fireball, no longer in the atmosphere, but in the noosphere of civilization.

The “Tunguska Substance” program was modeled on the principle of an explosive mixture of different languages ​​and cultural strategies fraught with unknown meanings, which took place at the Krasnoyarsk Museum Center from June 27 to 29. The scientific conference prepared by Irina Prokhorova and Sergei Sazonov was structured in accordance with the logic of paradoxes. The wise messages of astronomers, biologists, and physicists about the substance of the celestial body that invaded the taiga and the natural consequences of this invasion gave way to stories about the mythopoetic and parareligious components of the “Tunguska substance.” Cultural historians were replaced by philologists who discussed the catastrophic discourse in Russian literature of the 20th century, from the futurists to Vladimir Sorokin. The artist Alexander Ponomarev, using the example of his large-scale installations and performances (the disappearance of an ocean island in artificial fog, painted submarines floating in the fountains of the Louvre and in the Moscow River, a multi-ton wave driven by human breath) spoke about the great role of “natural chance” as the engine of creativity process.

An exhibition in the museum center is dedicated to such a natural accident, a deliberate violation of language taboos and norms. Ponomarev swung a ball similar to a Foucault pendulum, which felled rows of planed boards according to exactly the same “radial principle” that was recorded by expeditions in the case of a fallen taiga forest in the area of ​​the anomaly. Thanks to the hinges, Ponomarev’s “line” either falls or stands up. An event that happened a hundred years ago is reproduced in cultural memory again and again. In active dialogue with the kinetic installation of Alexander Ponomarev is the work of Dmitry Kavarga “Fluctuation of spatial arrays”. On the strings lie sheets of plastic in the shape of a model of the Earth modified by a meteorite. Streaks of light shine through the cracks. The needle trees shudder from low-frequency vibrations generated using built-in speakers. It is alarming, however, and terribly interesting. Krasnoyarsk artist Viktor Sachivko placed funny plastic figures on sparkling white lamps like a strobe, mounted in a row around the perimeter of the room - a paraphrase of the traditional carving of northern peoples on mammoth bone. The number of lamps and figures is, for obvious reasons, one hundred. The figures resemble cartoon characters from the “plasticine” series and are associated with defenseless and touching either aborigines or aliens caught in the “turbulence” zone (the ufological topic of the Tunguska meteorite was developed by the writer A. Kazantsev in 1946; in the story “Explosion” the assumption was made , that an alien probe ship powered by nuclear fuel crashed over the taiga). Sergei Shutov recalled other science fiction stories, in particular the Astra spaceship from a Soviet film. An aster in the form of a star flower is assembled from logs in the shape of a fallen Tunguska taiga.

No less active in communicating with cultural memory and just as spectacular and plastically convincing are the projects that play on the “genius loci” of the Krasnoyarsk Museum Center itself. After all, the gigantic building in the style of international modernism, created in 1982-1987 by the chief architect of Krasnoyarsk Areg Demirkhanov, was nothing more than the last Lenin Museum in the Soviet Union (and in the world, probably). Today, a permanent exhibition with documents about Ilyich’s life is inseparable from the theme of the explosion that occurred in the public consciousness. The giant stepped museum, resembling an Assyrian ziggurat, has been thrown by culture into the same space of simultaneously sparkling myths and metaphors as the Tunguska phenomenon of a hundred years ago. For creative people, the museum center is also a zone for generating extraordinary creative energy. Valery Koshlyakov works talentedly with cultural memory. On the platform of the entrance hall of the museum complex, reminiscent of the propylaea to the Palace of Congresses, he installed his “sarcophagus” - the ruins of Soviet artifacts and archetypes, from the monument to Lenin to a small station cafe, a tractor, the tower of an abandoned elevator. Everything is made of cardboard, everything is torn and shabby. Everything rhymes perfectly with the post-Soviet landscape outside the museum’s windows. Young artists from Krasnodar Andrei Blokhin and Egor Kuznetsov undertook sabotage right inside the former permanent exhibition of the museum. In the diorama “Old Russia” with dolls of peasants, merchants and industrialists, mountains made of plastic bags, shining scarlet and blue, are mysteriously breathing, deflating and inflating alternately. Tunguska phantoms reformat cultural memory. Just like the computer photo collages of the Ufa artist Rinat Voligamsi are reformatting it. 24 images exquisitely stylized to resemble old photographic documents invite you to immerse yourself in the alternative mythology of the Tunguska anomaly. It turns out that Vladimir Lenin’s brother had a twin, Sergei, who equipped expeditions to the epicenter of the meteorite fall in order to obtain the sacred fire of the “Great Spark”. The photos record the stages of Sergei Lenin's long journey across Siberia. Apparently, the power of the meteorite allowed Sergei Ilyich to turn everyone into the image and likeness of himself and his brother. Even his little daughter has a beard, mustache and the recognizable squinting of cunning eyes.

The territory of today's myths of consciousness was explored by members of the Dutch-German-British group GOB SQUAD. The art program of the conference included a film they made about the walks of four friends around Krasnoyarsk on the night of museums on May 18. The work was made in the genre of total cinema, without editing. The heroes of the film try on various common roles (including a ladies' man, a superhero) and bravely start conversations with walking Krasnoyarsk residents of different ages (usually young people). Difficulties in translation do not prevent residents from having fun playing along with conceptual tests to identify behavioral stereotypes in order to further overcome them. A light and charmingly artistic film.

The artistic program of the interdisciplinary conference was created by the curator, deputy director of the Krasnoyarsk Museum Center Sergei Kovalevsky. The entire new life of the former Lenin Museum, which has fallen into the vague myths of our country, rests on the enthusiasm of the museum staff. The Krasnoyarsk Biennale, which has existed since December 1995, can give a head start to the Moscow Biennale in terms of content. In the future, new projects and the development of unknown, sometimes simply fantastic spaces and Siberia in general, and the last Lenin memorial in particular.

Sergey KHACHATUROV, Krasnoyarsk - Moscow