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ARTKOMMUNALKA: ABOUT US

The museum residency “Artkommunalka. Erofeev and Others” is a partnership project between Moscow Oblast’s independent state cultural institution “Centre of Cultural Initiatives” and the non-profit organisation “Museum Town”, with the support of the Ministry of Culture of Moscow Oblast.

Time

The opening of the museum residency in Kolomna on 1 December 2011 was timed to coincide with the day Nikita Khrushchev visited an exhibition of avant-garde artists at the Moscow Manege on 1 December 1962. The museum features Soviet Kolomna in the 1960s, and provides information on the communal way of life and the dissident spirit at the time of the Khrushchev Thaw.

Place

The museum residency is situated at the very heart of the Old Town, on the most revolutionary crossroads in Kolomna – the corner of ulitsa Oktyabr’skoy Revolyutsii [October Revolution Street] and Ploshchad Dvukh Revolyutsii [the Square of the Two Revolutions]. The windows of the museum residency look out onto the old market square and a memorial to the victims of the two revolutions, a small silver statue of Lenin and the Church of St. John the Evangelist, the bell-tower of which is the Old Town’s most prominent vertical feature. The view joins together a bizarre triptych – one of the museum residency’s most valuable exhibits.

The genius of the location

The building where Artkommunalka is based is notable for the fact that it became a turning point in the fate of the writer Venedikt Erofeev. It was here, in the wine department of the Ogonyok delicatessen, that “Venichka” Erofeev stopped being a student for good and became an unskilled labourer, after being expelled from the Kolomna Institute in 1963. It was exactly at this point that his “very way of life” began – a life of wandering and creative freedom. Banished from Kolomna half a century ago for daring to be different, Erofeev has returned to the city once more. He has returned to give the city the opportunity to suffer, to comprehend and to accept a Different experience, a Different feeling, a Different person. The recognised genius of Venedikt Erofeev’s creative freedom has become the genius of the museum residency’s location.

Mission

The Time, the Location and its Genius predetermined not just the name and unusual format of Kolomna’s new cultural venue, but its mission as well – to start a permanent creative revolution and generate modern art in the historical centre of an historical city. Its ultimate goal is to depressurise the urban environment and make it open, emotionally comfortable and tolerant.

Residents

ArtKommunalka operates in the format of a residency for artists and writers who are creating new art and new literature right here, right now. The art residency and literature residency work as an open funding laboratory and workshop all year round.

Art residents in 2012 Misha Le Jen (Saratov, “А, К, Ц, И, И” exhibition), Vita Buivid (Moscow, “Past painted” exhibition), the “Mylo” [Soap] duet (St. Petersburg, “The State of Things” exhibition), the “Archaeopteryx” art group (Izhevsk-Berlin, “Catching Fleas in Kolomna” exhibition), Mirona Radu (Romania, “24 Years in 24 Shades of Solitude”), the “Sinie Nosy” [the Blue Noses] art group and Evgeni Ivanov (Moscow-Novosibirsk, “Russian Monsters” exhibition).

Art residents in 2013 Anton and Pavel Yakushev (Kolomna, the “Heavy Illustration” project based on V. Erofeev’s poems “Moscow-Petushki”), Peter Bauhuis (Munich, “Lost Treasures – a free interpretation”), Mihaela Dashkova (Nothing happened in Kolomna), the creative union “Where Dogs Run” (Ekaterinburg, “Pause” exhibition installation).

Art residents in 2014 Sergey Ponomarev (Kolomna, the “Agitpattern” project), Alexandra Mitlyanskaya (Moscow, “A Collection of Exercises in Russian Spelling”), Aleksey Ermolaev (Kolomna, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man”), Erik Goengrich (Berlin, “Kolomna 1991-2014”), Elena Skripkina (Moscow, “The Invisible Father”).

Art residents in 2015 Igor Ulangin, Alexandra Grach (“Jasmine Keeps Blossoming”), Ekaterina Kravtsova (“Communal Anecdotes”), Elena Skripkina (“Archeology of Reflective Bodies”), Ivan Ninety (“Fragments and Finds), Maria Baturina (“Pathology of Cell or Scenes of Family Life”)

The literature residency is, by its very nature, a laboratory of meanings – a “writer’s study” with the opportunity for face-to-face contact with the public and the residents of the city. ArtKommunalka’s literary residents and inhabitants include: Natalya Shmelkova (Moscow, 2012), Slava Len (Moscow, 2012), Sergey Levitov (Chaplygin-Ranenburg, March-April 2013), Denis Osokin (Kazan, April-May 2013), Evgenia Romanova (Kaliningrad, May 2014), Sergey Veprev (Mariupol, August-September 2014), Svetlana Shteba (Perm, February-March 2015, “Familiarizing the Space”), Elena Utenkova-Tikhonova (Moscow, November-December 2015,“Christmas Tree in the Room/New Children’s Encyclopaedia”).

Artkommunalka hosts educational classes, master classes, expert meetings, lectures by specialists and musical events – all of which fuse together around the creative people involved in the museum residency, generating a new and much-needed intellectual space for the modern inhabitants of the city.

contact information

Address: d. 205, ul. Oktyabr’skoy Revolyutsii, Kolomna, Moscow Oblast (please use the courtyard entrance).

Executive Director – Ekaterina Oinas, [e-mail]

Art Director – Mikhail Lezhen, [e-mail]

Curator, Literature Residency – Igor Sorokin, [e-mail]
artkommunalka.com

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16