Barbie | Nikola-Lenivets Art Park, Russia | summer 2019
In collaboration with curators: Robert Mull and Xenia Adhoubei, tutors: Thomas Randall Page, Victoria Wägner, Hidemi Nishida, assistants: Sasha Gogoleva, Mary Tyulkanova, Elena Sokolov and students: Anna Gudkova, August Junge Halvorsen, Sofia Hesselstrand, Bohdan Kryzsanowsky, Nora Linnros, Lina Milovidova, Stina Nilsson, Kiia Nummenpalo, Aapo Rautio, Yelizaveta Rykova, Anna Satarova, Therese Skevik
Nikola-Lenivets is an art park, situated around a tiny village in the Kaluga region 200 kilometers north-east from Moscow. A collection of modern art pieces and architecture finds itself in the beautiful natural landscape. All art objects are specifically created for this place throughout the last 17 years by artist Nikolay Pollisky and participants of the Archstoyanie festival. During the two-week workshop we were introduced to the park and its installations together with the theme of degrowth and art movements of Russian Povera and Russian land art. Our minds on the anti-consumerist values and our hands on the poor materials and the available poor working methods we designed our own installation to the park, Poor materials as freely available, local, cheap and unlimited materials and poor working methods as ways to construct easily, using low-tech labour intensive methods we began to work.
Our intervention is a degrowth landmark built from free locally available materials. It is a wooden tower with a disposable barbeque cladded metal cylinder on top marking out the location of a new meeting place for the locals and the visitors of the art park. The tower is an example of how something considered waste can be turned into something functional and beautiful with a good team effort.
Photo by Maksim Chernyshev
