Translated material
World map neural network
Festival "Unknown Siberia" in Lyon
The cult book of the French structuralist philosopher Michel Foucault “Words and Things” (archeology of the humanities) talks about the fundamental role played by the category of similarity and resemblance in the European civilization of the Renaissance period. Foucault speaks of the continuous convergence of the essences that form the universal Chain of Being, and quotes Gianbattista della Porta’s treatise “Natural Magic”: “In terms of its growth, a plant is similar to a wild animal, and in terms of feeling, a brute animal is similar to a person who, thanks to his mind, corresponds in the rest of the natural luminaries. This mutual and continuous connection acts so clearly that it seems like a string... the highest virtue, shedding its rays, will reach such a point that if you touch one end of the string, it will tremble and set everything else in motion.” Can the image of this Renaissance Chain of Being be restored? Can it be a formula for an effective cultural strategy?The “Unknown Siberia” festival in Lyon, organized by the Mikhail Prokhorov Foundation as part of the Year of France in Russia and Russia in France, gives an affirmative answer to such questions. What is a typical program of diplomatic cultural contacts “on occasion”? Cossack choir, Mariinsky Theater, jewels from the Kremlin, for dessert - Kulik and Zvyagintsev. This set can be taken anywhere, shown anywhere: an untouchable cultural reserve. What did the curator of the festival, which ran for a week (from November 15 to 21), Irina Prokhorova, decide to do? First of all, to break stereotypes and violate “horizons of expectations.” Agree, this is a great courage: instead of the Cossack Choir, bring the metal ensemble of Peter Aidu, reviving the spirit of constructivist musical agitprop, and instead of the Mariinsky Ballet, bring the nativity scene, which fits in an organ grinder's box, the Lilikansky Theater of Maya Krasnopolskaya and Ilya Epelbaum. This gentle, tiny and beautiful Lilikan Theater suddenly became the emblem of the revived dialogue “on strings”. The theater seems to be a puppet theater, but it transmits the same meanings as the Renaissance: thin threads-nerves, from each artist to the viewer, from event to event, from image to image - this is how the neurosystem of world culture is built...
When talking about the past festival, the image of a mirror perspective is also very important. Almost all the projects brought to Lyon were devoted to how culture realizes its history and revives it in the present day, reviving it in modalities from romantic (for example, in the concert of the ensemble of soloists “Studio of New Music” under the direction of Igor Dronov) to ironic (for example, in video of the group “Blue Noses”, in the concert of the group “Christmas Tree Toys”). And sometimes - in both (I remember the performances of the AXE Theater and the Chelyabinsk Theater of Contemporary Dance). The great and terrible Russian character is dissected with surgical precision by director Alvis Hermanis, led by Evgeniy Mironov and Chulpan Khamatova, by a team of actors in the Theater of Nations play “Shukshin’s Stories”. And the crying is interrupted by laughter, and everything is terribly familiar, everything is balancing on the brink, at the edge of the abyss... I remember how the French reacted - at first with caution, and in the finale they jumped up from their seats and gave a stormy ovation. “Our Everything” - Malevich with his peasant cycle - turned out to be built into the performative culture of today thanks to the Liquid Theater pantomime. Proletkult became the theme of exquisite music-making - a montage of sound utopias of the 1920s-1930s, arranged by Pyotr Aidu, Dmitry Vlasik, Grigory Durnovo, Asya Sorshneva, Konstantin Dudakov and Co. The farcical but clever direction of the action (or, as they used to say in the old days, disgrace) in combination with the highest culture of performance made it possible to integrate the image of the constructive 20s into the acoustic niche of today, liberated that energy of creativity that had not yet been covered with rust by all sorts of “isms” and comments. Then the musicians, as actors, participated in an alternative to glamor show of camp collections of post-Soviet clothing by artist Alexander Petliura, “Snow Maidens Don’t Die.” Powerful energy was revealed in the exhibitions that landed on the main town hall square and in the best halls of the city (including the town hall itself). The first of them is “Who should I be?”: children from Russia and France, under the leadership of Mikhail Labazov, showed such a class of “design thinking” that it was time for Hirst, Koons and the Chapman brothers to retire with a severance pay at the same time. And for modern Russian architecture, which is oh so hard to be proud of, is the second exhibition of fantastic models of temples, palaces and monuments of Nikolai Levochkin, a metro driver, made from auxiliary materials (including old computer monitors, plastic, crystal chandeliers, school writing supplies and clippings from magazines) that captured the image of the collective consciousness of Soviet people dreaming of Paradise, but living in residential areas. It turned out piercingly - also the moment of truth. By the way, the legacy of the deceased driver and “architect of Paradise” Levochkin was saved by the late director of the Museum of Architecture David Sargsyan. The Levochkin Foundation was brought by the current director of MUAR, Irina Korobyina, and the architect Sergei Sitar. They gave lectures to Lyon students of the School of Architecture, including on the symbolic essence of architecture and on the future of the architectural museum, which is seen in accordance with the idea of creating museum quarters in major European capitals.
Photo artist Alexander Podosinov and film directors who participated in the video festival of the Siberian city of Kansk spoke accurately and carefully about the cultural topography of Siberia in their project (the third exhibition on the town hall square in Lyon). The discipline of the eye, the sense of rhythm, tempo, the ability to not be talkative, but to speak to the point, are convincing, placing Siberian projects among the events of good “minimal art”. And again resonance and threads: both with the avant-garde and with new experimental cinema.
Actually, cinema was also present at the festival in a whimsical way, in the same resonating, “string” (including in the literal sense) space. Violinist Alexey Aigi and the 4'33'' ensemble accompanied with their music the screening of two legendary films by Boris Barnet: “Girl with a Box” and “House on Trubnaya”. Again, a mirror, or (and) an acoustic niche: our chronotope recognizes itself in history and awakens it from hibernation.
Curator Irina Prokhorova got rid of the hackneyed cliches and moves of cultural diplomacy, to the delight of everyone, decisively and mercilessly. Even the respectable Pletnevsky RNO, which opened the festival, offered a program that was not at all well-worn: Rachmaninov’s small operas “Aleko” and “Monna Vanna”, then Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini (soloist Nikolai Lugansky) and the prelude “From the Middle Ages”, little known even in Russia, and Alexander Glazunov’s Sixth Symphony . Masterly performance (helped by the choir of the National Opera of Lyon) made it possible to hear the resonant connections created by the Russian composers themselves, this time with the great romantic culture of the 19th century.
The image of resonant connections and mirror perspectives, sensitively guessed by the curator, is supported by the cultural history of Lyon itself. After all, he sends greetings to the main Russian culprit for the trembling of the tiny nerves of culture - the Lilikansky Theater, which has performed its masterpieces "Carmen", "Eugene Onegin", "The Magic Flute" several times - on behalf of the Lyon creators of the world famous puppet theater "Guignol" ( there is a famous puppet theater in the city) and on behalf of the organizers of the Lyon miniature museum of models and scenery for films.