In the world of abandoned houses

Art-resident and eco-feministic festival took place on Lake Baikal

Morning. Irkutsk region, the village is large Golousy. In the meadow, carcass children are fussing. Camouflage costumes hang a bag, as if bought for growth. The veteran of the Second Chechen War examines the appearance of young fighters. Having received a portion of reprimands and instructions, Irkutsk schoolchildren line up three. After ten days, they are already tightened without a hitch in chorus: “Here the birds do not sing, the trees do not grow, and only we shoulder to our shoulder grow into the ground here. The planet is burning and spinning, over our homeland smoke. And that means we need one victory - one at all - we will not stand at a price. ”

Opposite the children's military-patriotic camp, participants in the international art residence defeated their tents. For breakfast, porridge with halva and prunes - on the water, as there are vegans in the group. Faces with piercing and tunnels in the ears are exhausted by rain, chronic lack of sleep and tedious crossings along a bumpy road. Artists from Berlin, Minsk, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Irkutsk came to Baikal to get acquainted with the local context, build their own artistic practice in interaction with the environment and conduct art master classes for the inhabitants of the villages of Malaya and Big Holouse.

After the first meetings with local residents in the village houses of culture, it became clear that the exchange was underway. The artists decided to go beyond the institutions and explore new spaces. Following local children, they went outside and ended up in the world of abandoned houses inhabited by children's fantasies. The village ruins became a workshop, a canvas for creativity and an exhibition space at the context festival.

The dilapidated house on one of the central streets of the Bolshoi Golousnoye in a few days turned into a museum of contemporary art. In the impromptu “White Cuba”, the joint work of children, Julia Kazakova from Berlin and Bazinato from Minsk, were collected. Galina Yaptik from St. Petersburg gave the Museum a collection of masks.

On the walls of the house - photo documentation of interactions of residents of the village and participants in the residence, bodily practices of Anastasia Lonshakova from Irkutsk, Julia was from St. Petersburg and Daria Sedova from Moscow. Irkutsk artists Alina Blinova and Sergey Shevchenko made the voices of the Golousnins in QR codes.

The large Golousnoye is located 140 km from Irkutsk on the northern shore of Lake Baikal. The population, depending on the season, ranges from 300 to 700 inhabitants. In the fall, the village is empty before the start of the new season - many leave for Irkutsk, only pensioners and several families with children remain. Permanent jobs, except for the school, administration, the village house of culture and shops, create forestry and the Ministry of Emergencies. The rest live by natural economy, small trade, fish, collecting mushrooms and berries, transportation on motor boats and renting rooms to Russian and German tourists, trying to earn all year over the summer.

Meanwhile, more and more tourists come to Bolshaya Golousnoye. Baikal is not ready for their reception - garbage reform and an ill -conceived decision of the government on the transfer of the exclusive right to export garbage to the regional operator put a marshmallow on the brink of an environmental disaster. For several months, household waste has not been taken out of the village. In addition, new norms prescribe a sort of containers for separate collection of garbage and equipped gathering points. The creation of such sites in specially protected environmental zones on the shores of Lake Baikal is prohibited. The situation has entered a legal impasse. As a result

Residents are forced to store garbage in their sections for weeks and take the bags to illegal landfills in the floodplain of the river between the villages of Maloye and Big Golouse. The river poisoned by garbage flows into Baikal.

At the festival, participants in the discussion "What to do with garbage?" They expressed hope that the problem will be solved before the end of the year. A temporary decision was calculated by separate collection of garbage. The artist and activist of the Ecoirk community Lena Sisilev showed that the sorting and removal of garbage can be organized by the efforts of local residents. During the residence, she conducted classes with children and taught them to correctly sort the waste. The garbage issue in the village was also dealt with by social entrepreneurs and activists of the School of Ecological Entrepreneurship (ShPR). In the final pitchhs, the team with the “waste in income” project won, which proposed organizing a campaign among children and adolescents to collect plastic containers for a reward. The launch of the project is expected in September this year.

Having set the impulse for dialogue and interaction, the artists and activists themselves could not solve the waste problem, leaving behind a bag of garbage. At night after the festival, cows mercilessly gutted him, pulling the remnants of vegan foods, empty paint cans and crumpled sheets of flip chart paper with business schemes to introduce separate garbage collection.