(Re)Inventing the Public

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http://publicartvlg.tilda.ws/
http://publicartvlg2.tilda.ws/
http://publicartvlg3.tilda.ws/ - documentation of the project will be available in October 2018

For several years I with the local communities provide active work to build and strengthen the image of Volgograd as the existing center of contemporary culture. One of the practical steps for realization of this idea is the project «(Re)Inventing the Public» - the only annual event in Volgograd region in the field of contemporary art.

Building art community
For 5 years we have been generating self-organisation of local contemporary artists, curators, urbanists, managers of sociocultural projects and started a «new wave» of Volgograd contemporary art. We think of the Decade as an educational project and strive to teach artists the entire cycle of creating works in the urban space: from the conceptual development of ideas and budgeting to the elaboration of the final documentation. Six months before the implementation of the Decade, we with the artists begin an active joint work, which includes both group sessions (lectures on public art, workshops, artistic and curatorial research of urban spaces), and individual sessions.
Our community that realizes the Decade is an extra-institutional self-organization, grassroots initiative, which is based on the enthusiasm of local initiators and initiative groups. Now our community consists of over 40 active members.

Activating local communities
An important content of Decade is the orientation towards socially-engaged art practices: participatory art, relational aesthetics and art, working with urban communities (community-based art): whether it is a community of residents of one courtyard, a club of violet breeders, a community of garage cooperative, or a community of amateur artists located in the Centre of the city. We decided to invest our resources not in the literal and direct solution of the situation, but in changing the attitudes of citizens to the different city issues: from the condition of roads to the preservation of cultural heritage. Our socially-based art projects aims to play a role in raising awareness of the public about their participation in the social life and political processes, they try to show people, that their opinion matters and that they can shape the environment they live in and make it better.
What is important in our project activity - is the involvement of as many stakeholders as possible: governmental and non-governmental organisations, profit and non-profit sector. For me, significant component is also not the directive management of the projects, but the participatory management: involving in the process of project activity not only the members of the project team, but all people and organisations, that have interest.
Our last project «Hostlity / Hospitality» was dedicated to the World Cup: what changes it brings to the life of local communities and urban public spaces. FIFA World Cup 2018 brought new challenges. The city has been significantly rebuilt. New hotels appeared on the site of parks and recreational zones. Citizens of Volgograd are concerned about the fact that the construction of hotels destroys public areas of the city. The negative effects of hospitality cause conflicts between urban communities. So hyper hospitality can not only generate cross-cultural relations, but also can become a factor of social dissensus. We expanded the conversation about intercultural interaction through the problematic of migration. Volgograd, being a border and transit city, experienced several terrorist attacks by terrorists from the North Caucasus and is still full of islamophobia. Volgograd is still in war and hostility mood. Ethnic and religious communities in this most polyconfessional and multinational region of the South of Russia do not interact with each other, leading an autonomous existence. Nevertheless North Caucasus is world well known for it’s forms of hospitality (Caucasian feast is a form of cult of God Uastyrdzhi (patron of travelers); guest in the Ossetian culture has a special sacred position; in Dagestan there is a phenomenon of kunachestvo – special form of hospitality). During the Public Art Project we investigated the ideas for hospitality as a technology for establishing relations between local communities and between citizens and newcomers (migrants from the Caucasian republics and guests of the World Cup).

Placemaking: invention and reopening of public spaces
In Volgograd there are hundreds of urban spaces which were used to be public, but now they are abandoned and inactive. Every year we choose for our projects urban spaces, unique in terms of architecture, but inaccessible or empty, in the hope that contemporary art can become a mechanism for revitalization and redevelopment of these architectural objects: the ruins of Alkohol plant, the Water supplies of the 19th century, old Soviet Film Centre, public zones, that have not become public, or have lost their function as public: underground passages, small architectural forms of the Soviet period, courtyards, ruins of the unfinished waterpool in the city center, transport stops, minibuses and even the Paleolithic settlement, etc.
So we try not only to bring the life to this spaces (other project managers still use those spaces for their projects and we are now using the platform of Water Supplies on permanent basis), but we changed attitude of the citizens and public administration towards certain objects of urban infrastructure and heritage.
The museum of contemporary art «Garage» (Moscow) was interested in our case and choose Volgograd to represent regional scene on the Triennale of Russian contemporary art.

Tags: participatory approaches, #contemporaryart, participatoryart
Topics: Art, Culture und Leisure Activities


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Created on: 09/11/2018
Last updated on: 03/01/2022

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Project administrator:  Anton Valkovsky

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