Translated material
Project "Monument Cemetery": how it all turned out
After the events around "Passage", architect Eduard Kubensky, co-founder and editor-in-chief of the TATLIN publishing house, came up with the civil cultural and historical project "Monument Cemetery" . The point is to collect in one place and in a visual form to perpetuate all the losses that the urban environment has suffered over the past couple of decades.
Yesterday, on the night of museums, at 21.00 the opening of this project took place - the cemetery found a temporary home in a tiny park on the street. Belinsky, between the library. Belinsky and the building of the City Without Drugs foundation. It was very emotional and even somehow poignant. Cemetery symbolism and aesthetics are very complex things; It’s easy to overact and slip into clowning or horror with farce. But yesterday everything was exactly as it should be, very humble, touching, respectful, and proud - at the same time.
It’s unlikely that my bad phone photos can convey the atmosphere, but still:
My role in this project was very modest - to advertise it on the blog and help raise funds. I report: a little less than 45,000 rubles were collected, a total of 47 people made donations. The minimum amount is 48 rubles, the maximum is 10,000 rubles, there were two such donations (one was mine, and the second, as far as I understand, was from Evgeny Sharovarin). This amount covered only 50% of the project's needs; in the end, Eduard spent more of his own money (and a lot of time), and was able to collect something from businessmen he knew. Summary: we are already succeeding in small crowdfunding urban projects, but we can do better and more, there is something to strive for. And a huge thank you to everyone who participated!
I think the most important thing in such projects is that they be successful. It’s always scary to donate money to a “pig in a poke,” because it’s not very clear whether it will be possible to successfully collect it? Will the result live up to expectations? When opening this fundraiser, I wrote that I was confident that E. Kubensky would be able to make a very cool project (based on the experience of getting to know his publishing projects), but the result exceeded all my expectations. It turned out to be an excellent exhibition - actually, a cemetery (I hope this cultural object will exist for a long time, and will become one of the attractions of Yekaterinburg), it turned out to be a very good website (which, by the way, collected twice as many lost objects - there was enough money for 48 tombstones, but in reality in the city architectural martyrology of recent years, almost 100 monuments...), and an absolutely wonderful set of postcards was published, where detailed historical information is given about each monument (this information is also available on the website). On Friday I held these postcards in my hands, sorted them out, reviewed them, and for a long time could not put them on the table - both the quality of execution and the tactile sensations made me look at them again and again.
Take a look here if you haven't seen it:
The Monument Cemetery at its present location is under bird's rights; It’s hard to say how long it will last there. Be sure to have time, it's worth it. Come, bow, remember, think. Go to the site too , it will be up for a long time in any case.
... As a child, I very often walked in Kharitonovsky Park, and then for a long time it seemed to me that there were two rotundas there: one on the island, the other on the hill, closer to Shevchenko Street. But then, as an adult, I couldn’t even find any traces of the second rotunda there, and gradually convinced myself that it simply never existed, and it was my child’s imagination that completed it. And just yesterday, I finally saw her on the oval, looked at the years of her life, and immediately remembered a bunch of all sorts of sweet childhood memories.
... It’s just a pity that all this very wonderful thing is on such a sad occasion.