Russian artist Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich staged a “naked performance” at the Met Gala 2017 in New York

Ukrainian journalist Vitaly Sedyuk, who regularly causes a stir in secular society(you can read about all his “tricks” with the participation of stars), a serious competitor has appeared. Journalist and former editor-in-chief of the weekly Molotok, and now performance artist Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich appeared at the Met Gala 2017 evening in New York completely naked.

Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich appeared at the Met Gala in the midst of the evening - when the paparazzi lined up to meet the stars. They waited for Beyoncé, who never arrived, but the 41-year-old Russian performance artist, closed with 18 screws in a glass box with small holes for air, put his naked body on public display. It was carried to the Met Gala by four accomplices, like-minded creative people. They set it up and retreated, leaving the guards and the stars who had already arrived on the red carpet in bewilderment. The security did not immediately succeed in lifting the box with a total weight of 100 kilograms. They hid the nakedness of the “foundling” with a white sheet, and only then decided what to do with him.

Only by dragging the “object” to a safe distance and cutting the box (the artist refused to go out any other way), the situation was resolved: Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich was arrested and taken to the police. However, after 22 hours they were released. There was no reason to detain the artist in his actions: in the box he was grouped in a position that precluded the demonstration of his genitals.

Pavlov-Andreevich’s action is called “Foundling” and made him famous in certain circles for a long time, but this was the first time he stormed New York with his naked performance. Pavlov-Andreevich came up with the idea of lying in a transparent glass box, curled up in a fetal position, and appearing in this form to the world, or rather to the elite of this world, a few years ago. He performed his first “Foundling” during the 56th Venice Biennale, then appeared in obscene form at the Museum modern culture"Garage" in Moscow, at a party auction house Christie's in London and at the Biennale in Sao Paulo. In total, according to the artist, he planned a series of five performances, so the performance in New York was the last.

, TV presenter

Fedor Borisovich Pavlov-Andreevich(English) Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich, at birth Pavlov; April 14, Moscow) - Russian-Brazilian artist, curator and theater director, former TV presenter.

Biography

Parents: film critic Boris Pavlov and writer Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. Great-grandson of the linguist N. F. Yakovlev and great-great-grandson of the revolutionary I. S. Veger.

Since the 2000s - theater director, performance artist, director of the State. galleries on Solyanka in Moscow. Lives alternately in Moscow, Sao Paulo and London.

Video on the topic

Career

In the 1990s - 2000s - editor-in-chief of the magazine “Molotok”, host of the popular TV show “Under 16 and older...” on the ORT channel, columnist for a number of periodicals (“Brownie”, etc.). Founder modeling agency Face Fashion, which later became a production company marka. Hosted a number of television programs. In 2002, he was the host of the daytime talk show “The Price of Success” on the RTR TV channel (Russia), paired with Senator Lyudmila Narusova. In 2003, he hosted the daytime talk show “Short Circuit” on the same TV channel (later he would be replaced by Anton Komolov). In the fall of 2004, he was the host of the romantic TV show “This is Love” on STS.

In 2002, Pavlov-Andreevich made his theatrical debut with the production of “Bifem” based on the play by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. In 2003, the performance received the “New Word” award at theater festival « New drama» .

Among others theatrical works- “Old Women”, a thirty-minute experimental opera based on a text by Daniil Kharms, nominated for two awards at the national festival “Golden Mask”, in 2010 and “Andante” - a performance based on the play by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, staged in 2016 on the stage of the Center. Sun. Meyerhold.

Since the late 2000s, Pavlov-Andreevich has been involved in contemporary art. Collaborates with artist Marina Abramović, director London gallery Serpentine by Hans-Ulrich Obrist, director of New York's MoMA PS1 Klaus Biesenbach. Performances and personal exhibitions of Pavlov-Andreevich were shown at the Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art, at the Garage Museum (Moscow), Künstlerhaus (Vienna), Faena Arts Center (Buenos Aires), cultural center CCBB (Brasilia), Deitch Projects (New York), ICA (Institute of Contemporary Arts, London), Sao Paulo Museum of Contemporary Art MAC USP, etc.

He earned international fame thanks to the performance “Foundling”: the throwing of a naked man shackled in glass box Pavlov-Andreevich for a number of social events (the opening of the Garage Museum in Moscow, the party of the French philanthropist Francois Pinault at the Venice Biennale, the Met Gala ball in New York). During a performance at the Met Gala on May 2, 2017, he was detained by the New York police for unlawful entry into private property and nudity in a public place and sent to Central Booking Prison, where he spent 24 hours.

Pavlov-Andreevich dedicated a series of performances Temporary Monuments (2014-2017) and solo exhibitions of the same name at the Moscow Pechersky Gallery (2016) and at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Sao Paulo MAC USP (2017) to the problem modern slavery in Brazil and Russia. In each of the seven performances in the series, the artist immerses himself for 7 hours in the conditions in which slaves had or still have to exist. During one of them (Pão de arara), he subjects himself to medieval torture, which is currently used by the Brazilian special forces, during the other (O Tigre), repeating one of the rituals of the Brazilian slaves, he crosses Rio De Janeiro, carrying on his head basket with sewage.

The range of Pavlov-Andreevich’s creative interests is formed by three themes: the distance separating the viewer from a work of art in performance, the temporality and defenselessness of the human body, the connection between the sacred and the obscene.

Selected solo exhibitions and performances

2017 - Adventures of the Body, personal exhibition. Baro Galeria, Sao Paulo

2017 - Temporary Monuments, personal exhibition. MAC-USP, Sao Paulo

2016 - Temporary Monuments, personal exhibition. Pechersky Gallery, Moscow

2015 - “Peter and Fedor”, 24-hour discussion-performance with artist Pyotr Bystrov, curators - Daria Demekhina and Anna Shpilko. State Gallery on Solyanka, Moscow

2015 - O Batatodromo, personal exhibition, curator - Marcello Dantas. Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil, Brasilia

2015 - Os Caquis (The Persimmons), performance, curated by Bernardo Mosqueira. EAV Parque Lage, Rio de Janeiro

2011 - Photobody, personal exhibition, commissioned by Galerie Non. Non-Stage, Istanbul Biennial, Istanbul

2009 - I Eat Me, personal exhibition. Paradise Row Gallery, London

Selected group exhibitions

2017 - Pieter Bruegel. An upside-down world, curated by Antonio Geusa. Artplay Design Center, Moscow

2015 - Trajetórias em Processo, curated by Guilherme Bueno. Galeria Anita Schwartz, Rio de Janeiro

2013 - “Zoo of Artists”. State Gallery on Solyanka, Moscow

2013 - Our Darkness, curated by Viktor Neumann. Laznia Center for Contemporary Art, Gdansk, Poland

2011 - “9 days”, curator - Olga Topunova. State Gallery on Solyanka, Moscow

2009 - Play: A Festival of Fun, curated by Lauren Prakke and Nick Hackworth. Paradise Row Gallery, London

2009 - Marina Abramovic Presents, curated by Hans Ulrich Obrist and Maria Balshaw. Manchester International Festival, Whitworth Gallery, Manchester

Selected theatrical works

2016 - “Andante”. Center named after Sun. Meyerhold, Moscow

2015 - “Three pieces of silence.” Center named after Sun. Meyerhold, Moscow

2013-2014 - “Tango Square”. Center named after Sun. Meyerhold, Moscow

2012 - “Bakari”. Theater "A. R.T. O.”, Moscow

Notes

Pavlov-Andreevich Fedor. Interview / Fedor Pavlov-Andreevich (Russian). Echo of Moscow. Retrieved November 29, 2017.
History of Solyanka (undefined) .
Director Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich about the arrest, the difference between theater and performance and his new performance in “Practice” (Russian), Poster Daily. Retrieved November 29, 2017.
Lyudmila Narusova will interrogate successful plumbers. In defiance of the “Big Wash”, RTR begins filming a new talk show “The Price of Success” (undefined) . Komsomolskaya Pravda (July 25, 2002).
The price of success: there will be no decoys (undefined) . Moskovsky Komsomolets (July 25, 2002).

- Most recently in Russian media Your “Foundling 5” campaign was widely circulated at the annual Met Gala in New York. It was reported that you were dragged away by police. How did this story end?

I am not at liberty to comment until the trial, which is scheduled for June 5th. I was arrested and put in jail for a day. And accordingly, they were released from the courtroom. I was charged with four counts: insult public opinion, disobeying the police, spreading panic and trespassing on private property. My lawyer has a serious answer to each point; the director of the Brooklyn Museum wrote a long conclusion that my performance is a serious work of art, and the Met Museum in this situation looks so-so. The story will end at the moment when the trial takes place, which will either overturn the charges or pronounce a sentence. Until then, it’s difficult to predict anything.

- Were you prepared for this development of events?

No, absolutely not. I've done this performance four times before, and it never ended like that.

- What cities make up your geography? Everyday life? In your profile on Snob, you indicated Moscow, Sao Paulo and London as your place of residence. How relevant is this?

It is like this: I am divided between these three cities. But there are others too. I can say that I live nowhere - or that I live in my own body, because I am constantly moving. But Moscow, of course, is still the main point, since I am working on Solyanka and I need to be here all the time, working on exhibitions, on future projects. Well, my theater is in to a greater extent Here. At the same time, I currently have a large exhibition at MAC USP, the Museum contemporary art the city of Sao Paulo, and a project is also being prepared in London. New York may become another such city for me, I don’t know, everything will depend on the court’s decision. If they bring a guilty verdict there, they will simply block my entry. I often visit other places. For example, in my Lately a lot happens in Venice. By the way, I don’t know if you’ve noticed: if you go to some group today international exhibition contemporary art, you can see how on the labels next to the art objects it is written: “Artist such and such, born in such and such year, lives between Nairobi and Santiago de Chile.” Or “between Nuremberg and Beirut.” There are many wonderful combinations - the stranger, the more sexy it sounds. It seems to me that people are running away from the situation of being tied to one place. The world today is so unsettling. People want to find themselves a calm - although sometimes, on the contrary, restless - as much as possible appropriate place where they will feel good. True, according to my observations, no matter where a person lives, he always complains. I know very few people who would be happy with the place where they live. Either the weather, or the crisis, or crime, or the lack of culture, or the excessive dominance of culture, no modern architecture, too much modern architecture - there is always something to complain about. Therefore, people are constantly looking for a place for themselves. It's bad everywhere. And it’s good everywhere too. We can say that this is the modern consciousness. Frequent movement eliminates this dissatisfaction. I only have time to miss Brazil - I begin to yearn after two weeks spent outside this place of mine that is now completely home country. But I almost never miss Moscow or London. Only for your family and your pets - you want to take them with you in your suitcase.

"Andante" at the Center. Meyerhold, 2016.

- Do you have to somehow divide your activities into categories? Today is an exhibition, tomorrow is a festival, is there a performance here, is there a performance here? Or is it all one big process in which everything is interconnected?

- As long as I can remember, from the very beginning early childhood I suffer from severe attention deficit disorder and separating activities is a way to cope with it. I do different things. I curate exhibitions or organize some projects in the space of contemporary culture - all this today completely defies categorization. For example, my installation “Fyodorʼs Performance Carousel”: now we will have the third episode in Sao Paulo, at the Sesc art center, the previous one was a year ago in Vienna, two years before that in Buenos Aires . This project requires a tremendous amount of managerial brainpower: you need to find money, gather artists and explain to everyone what this absolutely unknown format is. Three visitors sit on exercise bikes placed around the carousel, pedaling and changing every five minutes - and inside the carousel, nine artists perform performances for five hours a day for at least a week. This is all very strange. I don’t have a large management team that would do everything for me, and never will - it’s very important to take care of the organizational process yourself. In the next couple of months, I'll be working on, for example, the budget for the Performance Elevator project at the Fierce festival in Birmingham, where five elevators with artists inside will go up and down in a separate new business center, and the artists will perform performances that are on average only one minute long. This is a live installation, I myself will also be riding in an elevator with my own live work, but I also have to figure out who these other artists will be, what works will fall into this format and how it will all interact with each other. For me, these tasks are interesting; they provide a certain kind of brain massage. At the same time, I am actively working on calculating the cost of the “Performance Train” in New York. And of course, almost every day I am immersed in much more ephemeral things - and this is already very difficult to standardize or lead to some kind of schedule. Basically things that need to be resolved in artistic sense, occur in your head when you are half asleep. I have this system: I need to wake up slightly and go back to sleep, not right away - and at that moment everything will be decided. That’s why I really love jetlag, this uneven sleep when you open your eyes after five or six hours, not completely waking up, but half awake. At such moments, answers to the most difficult questions come very well.

Installation “Carousel of Performances”

- In one of your interviews, you said that you got into performance art from the theater. What is this story?

I started doing performance art because one day, in 2008, curator Christina Steinbrecher came to my performance. This was my first experience of fast theater, when I changed actors almost every day. The project was called “Hygiene”, it took place at the time in the Giusto club, where the Workshop theater was later located. We played a certain text by Petrushevskaya twice a day. Every day new people came to play it. We went through this very different people- Joseph Backstein, Tanya Drubich, Anton Sevidov, who is now known for Tesla Boy, wonderful Vasilyev choristers (artists of the choir of Anatoly Vasilyev’s “School of Dramatic Art” theater. - Note ed.). All amazing people, very different in an acting sense. Everyone read the text - but they read it from the screen, which the audience did not know about, because the screen hung behind their heads, hidden. There was a feeling that the actors were terribly tense, and this is exactly what I wanted. All my life in the theater I have been ineptly fighting Stanislavsky’s system. I'm clumsily trying to make my theater as formal as possible. My task, relatively speaking, is to force the actor to squeeze a nickel between his buttocks. How singers are sometimes taught. So that all this looseness, gutturalness, mask - everything will go away, including all sorts of fussing with the face that depresses me most of all in drama theater. In general, thanks to the text on the hidden screens, the feeling was created that the artists were very concentrated, they were all looking at one point. And they were just worried that they would say something wrong. Because no one showed them the text before they went on stage, they only rehearsed the movement pattern. And then Christina Steinbrecher, a German curator of Russian origin, came, looked and said: “Oh, Fedya, you’re doing performance art.” I say: “In what sense?” She says: “Well, what I just saw is not a theater.” I say: “Cool, I didn’t know.” She says: “Come on, there will be an exhibition of young art in Rome, come and do some work there.” I was so happy - at that moment I was very confused in my life. Working as a TV presenter, marketing, PR, all this crap that had happened before all my life, some magazines, newspapers - I didn’t understand what I was doing, I got lost. And there was a theater the only place, where I clearly knew what I was fighting and what I was trying to go towards - at least on an intuitive level. Anyway, Christina invited me to that exhibition, and a gallery owner from London saw me there and said, “Oh, I want you to do an exhibition with me.” And then I made an exhibition, where Hans Ulrich-Obrist, a grandfather for a turnip, accidentally came in, saw my performance and said: “Come on, take part in our exhibition “Marina Abramovich Presents” at Manchester international festival" I was like, “What?!” And some artist dropped out two months before the start. My eyes popped out of my sockets when I found out where and what I had to do. It all felt a little like a dream. That's how it all started. Since I am a swindler by nature, I adapted to all this quite quickly.

“Carousel of Performances”, performance “Empty Buckets”. Buenos Aires, 2014.

- How do you define the difference between performance art and theater?

This is very complex issue, I don’t know the answer to that. What we are doing now in “Practice” is precisely an attempt to answer this question. Alina Nasibullina, actress of Brusnikin's Workshop, graduated from the Pyrfyr performance school at the Na Solyanka gallery. You could say she is my student. It sounds crazy. Yes, she is such a rebellious creature, in a good way. She doesn’t fully understand whether she is an artist or an actress. He always comes up with ideas for himself fictional characters, being in an excellent state of throwing. Uncertainty and mistakes, in my opinion, are the two main points of support for an artist. Another thing is that everyone is scared. Because no one knows what it is. But people who confuse these two concepts - theater and performance - are mistaken. These are very different things after all. The actor goes home after the performance, he has a wife, children, a refrigerator, a TV and all that stuff. But the performance artist is not going anywhere, his work is part of his life and its truth is from the inside out. The process in performance does not end at all. It's all so serious, so bloody, if you really do it, that you have no chance to pretend that it's all over and “can I go home.” Recently, when after the “Foundling”, handcuffed, wrapped in a white sheet, I stood like an antique statue, and there were five police cars around, and with them three more fire brigades, I had the feeling that now I would wake up, and all this will end. But for some reason they took me to solitary confinement, there they chained me to some pipe, interrogated ten different people, then they took me to prison and put me in a cell where I was the only white person. And then the endless hip-hop battle began. On the one hand, I was wildly happy, because something was happening that I no longer had anything to do with, I was only a conductor for this story. It’s always like this with “Foundling” - I have a complete feeling that I didn’t invent anything and my task is just to let everything happen. After all, I lie in my box and lie, and the audience, the public - that’s who makes the work of art - they decide everything for me. It's like when a cat vomits. She looks at you with huge eyes and asks for your help. Because she is terribly scared and does not understand what is happening to her. She coughs, something spews out of her, you stand nearby and do not help.

I couldn’t not make “Foundling” - I had to send these messages to the world.
The difference between an actor and a performance artist is this: once you take on this mission, that’s it. Well, like Pyotr Pavlensky. In fact, he atones for the sins of other people by accepting martyrdom. But not all performance artists suffer! Many simply perform difficult manipulations or perform complex meanings. In general, performance is the closest form of art to religion. First of all, this is all serious. Secondly, it is obedience, vows, severity and order, suffering in the name of the highest. Thirdly, this is interaction with some concepts and phenomena that you yourself are not able to understand, but you must go for it. And theater can also be close to religion. As in the case of Jerzy Grotowski or Anatoly Vasiliev.

- Would you say that your ideal actor is a performance artist?

No, there is no way to say that. The ideal actor is completely subordinate to the will of the director. A performance artist is never subordinate to anyone's will. In my case, the actor is basically a puppet. What am I doing? I take and show voices, gestures, I demonstrate and explain everything myself, I generally have a completely idiotic way of rehearsing. Apparently because I never learned this anywhere. Then the actor repeats it, then masters it, and everything he has mastered sticks to him. And then I cut off the conditional ropes on which the actor is suspended, like a puppet, and what remains is his own mastery of the role.

"Old Women" at the Golden Mask festival. Moscow, 2009.

- Do you follow what is happening in the modern cultural context in Russia? About creation "Russian Art Union" "Russian artistic union"- a new ambitious association, which included writer Zakhar Prilepin, producer Eduard Boyakov, musician Alexander F. Sklyar and others. The manifesto openly supports the president’s policies and proclaims the need to strengthen and develop everything patriotic and Orthodox in the territory of modern culture and art. what do you think?

There is absolutely no time to keep track of all this. What difference does it make what people say and write, who in three years will still change and will write and say some different, completely different words. Why remember what is happening now? These days are simply a tough era. At the moment when they again say some pleasant and understandable things, we will probably become closer to them again. These are all waves, it seems to me.

- In the theater you almost always work with texts by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya. Were any of them written at your request?

- Yes, sure. “Tango Square” is a text that she wrote at my request. I then brought this text to Galina Borisovna Volchek, there was an idea to stage it with Liya Akhedzhakova. Leah did not dare to play the text, it seemed too radical to her, and nothing worked out with Sovremennik, but as a result, I staged this text at the Center for Cinematography with my regular actresses. She wrote several different things at my request. We are, of course, very close. We fight a lot, and it’s not easy for us. We are unlucky that we have a family connection (Lyudmila Petrushevskaya is the mother of Fyodor Pavlov-Andreevich. - Note ed.). For me, there are two ideal authors whom I hear and understand. Petrushevskaya and Kharms. I am very lucky that I am not related to Kharms.

- It is known about “Yelena” that this is a play based on Petrushevskaya’s story “The New Adventures of Elena the Beautiful” and that the only role is played by the actress from “Dmitry Brusnikin’s Workshop” Alina Nasibullina. All other information is updated almost daily. What happens at your rehearsals there?

At rehearsals, we talk with Alina about who she is here: an actress or a performance artist. After much thought, we realized that here she is still a theater actress and that at least in this we will be conventional. Having abandoned the idea of two performances, Alina and I breathed freely - each for our own reason - and now we understand that “Yelena” (emphasis on the first syllable) is still a theater, even if it has a hanger and all that. It’s just post-dramaticism of some other type, the value of which we ourselves have yet to evaluate.

- Have you ever thought about a large theatrical form?

I thought a lot about this, but, unfortunately, the hour has not yet come when a line of directors will line up for me opera houses with different offers. Yes, I really want to do an opera. Because this is a format where there are restrictions at every step, and I like that. And further opera singers often very bad actors, this is also good, they can be de-energized and asked to be a function. And then there is the orchestra, which is nowhere to be found and which makes the singers completely distant from the audience. That's why I'm terribly interested. And I'm also thinking about the big dramatic scene. It seems to me that I am internally completely ready for it. And the fact that I always do something small for 50 or maximum 250 people is due to my reputation as a chamber avant-garde artist. But I am very humble about this and, most likely, evaluate myself sensibly. Although it would be much easier for me to work with 50 actors than with one. Energetically, you can speak out much more sharply and stun. It is very difficult to be stunned by one actor. But when there are a lot of them, it’s easy to immediately throw thunder and lightning.

- Now you have a premiere in Praktika. What then?

In addition to what I have already mentioned, I am starting to do a project called “Super-Obelisks”. I hang myself on a construction crane above the tallest obelisks in the world, with my feet on top of the obelisk, and hang over each one for seven hours. I have a terrible fear of heights, so this includes working with my phobias and limits. I just hung for 7 hours at a height of 40 meters above the MAC building in Sao Paulo, where my exhibition was opening, to draw attention to the topic of racism, which is so pressing in Brazil. It was scary in the first two hours, then it was cool. As for the obelisks, the story here is like a joke. A man comes to the doctor, and he has a toad sitting on his head. The doctor says: “What are you complaining about?” And suddenly the toad answers: “Well, there’s something stuck to my ass.” So the question occupies me: what comes first - the obelisk or the human body that perched on it and froze? That's it in a nutshell.

- Do you have a dream project? An obsessive idea that cannot be implemented?

Certainly! I rise into the air several times a week in my sleep, I have a certain device built in the area of the seventh cervical vertebra that helps me soar, I control the speed and scale. The dimensions of my body vary - I can be the size of a fist or the size of a huge building. I have been dreaming about this so annoyingly for a couple of years now that I think: everything is not in vain and something may change soon. But in which direction and how, it’s not for me to guess.

Fedor Pavlov-Andreevich

“It’s time to say it loudly - as of this Monday I am no longer the director State Gallery on Solyanka.

Actually, I never intended to be one. It didn’t seem to me at all, even in those still relatively prosperous times, that an artist should work for the state. At that moment I was busy with an exciting thing: I was packing my bags to move to my favorite country starting with the letter Br. But when my father, Boris Pavlov, accidentally died - and this happened in the fall of 2009 - then Romuald Krylov, then the head of the Department of Culture of the Central District of Moscow, who started a lot of interesting things in the Moscow center - for example, became godfather Museum of Olya Sviblova, called and said: well, Fedya, if it’s not you, then I can’t vouch for anything. It was important for me that my father’s work continued. And I realized that yes. This is how our new Solyanka appeared.

It was always interesting. Still, from the very beginning I said that I would make an artist-run space - a space under the control of an artist - a story in which I would not have to lie to myself or do projects that were completely alien to my nature. Another question is that finding money for something that was close to my nature turned out to be an almost impossible task. And so, having complicated my fate to the limit, but at the same time protecting myself from endless photo exhibitions of children of deputies, paintings of mistresses of oligarchs and exhibitions of the parish drawing “Our region through the eyes of the flock,” I began to think in horror what to do. However, everything happened somehow right. Later, Shulgin’s “Electromuseum” and a couple of other good museum projects invented by artists appeared, but, as far as I understand, Solyanka was the first to work in this direction.

Already in 2011, Solyanka became what it remains to this day - with Marina Abramovich as the patroness, with Norstein as a locally revered saint and with Sigalit Landau in the image of Demeter, who came to us to celebrate the harvest of pickled fruits of the Dead Sea. Pyrfyr was born - both as a school and as an Endless performance festival, and retrospectives of Tarkovsky, Parajanov and Bill Plympton and about 50 other exhibitions, about which we are still not the least bit ashamed, became the foundation of Solyanka, already quite an institution - with its own audience and meaning - and we were very proud of it. A series of exhibitions of Russian performance art “The Brave Seven” became separate subject pride: when we did the first one in 2011, the Russian performance scene was empty, Kulik was no longer in the performance, and no one new appeared, so Liza Morozova and Lena Kovylina and I had to more or less exist alone. I had to persuade friends from neighboring media to come and become performance artists for a while. This is how, for example, Galya Solodovnikova had an excellent debut in live art, but when they collected the last one, “The Artist in the Paddock,” about nudity in performance, there was already someone to choose from—the Russian scene revived.

Yolanda Jansen. Performance as part of the exhibition “Touching a Ring,” May 2017

Image courtesy of Solyanka VPA press service

Pyrfyr is a completely heroic project. Collecting any money from people who want to become performance artists is a daunting task. Everyone understands that it is impossible to make money from this. But we tried as hard as we could, and probably graduated five or six streams of students. About seven of them are engaged in performance constantly, and many return to this passion from time to time.

Seeing people who were previously dentists, programmers or fashion designers suddenly open a completely unexpected door within themselves and enter without looking back - this is a real thrill. I'll follow, of course. And I try to call them when I supervise group projects related to performance and recommend them to other people. But in general, such a school should live on grants, and not try to pay for itself. And grants should be handled by a team of professionals. But the problem is that my work as the director of Solyanka was entirely about running around the world’s environs with an outstretched hand. It was completely impossible to extend a second hand to ask for more money for school. So school is over for now. But I believe that her time will come. The experience we have accumulated is excellent; Liza Morozova and I and other colleagues know well who is worth something as a teacher, so one day we will return to this. There is a reason for this - after all, wonderful flowers bloomed in this garden.

Solyanka became the first Russian institution to decide to work every day until 10 pm, and on Fridays until midnight. And in this she remains the only one. After similar graph made the Garage, and even later the Jewish Museum, and the rest slowly and rustily began to turn to face the visitor. In some London or Paris, everything is still terrible in this sense. Everything closes at six. I’m just wondering why they don’t do theaters at three o’clock in the afternoon on weekdays? It's about the same idea. Complete idiocy, to be honest. Night director and night curator are also our story, which many now practice in one form or another. But it’s unlikely that any of the other directors will regularly start dressing up as caretaker Lyudmila Nikolaevna and greeting visitors at the reception (Alas, the real Lyudmila Nikolaevna passed away last year). But I don't insist. Some things should remain only on Solyanka.

Image courtesy of Solyanka VPA press service

In fact, I've been thinking about leaving for a couple of years now. But here many reasons came into play at once. In 2019 I have two big projects in New York, a museum exhibition in London and several group stories around the world, not to mention two new plays, one in Moscow and one in London. I simply physically would not have survived Solyanka. And I’m not acting entirely honestly, accepting the rules of the state’s game - I don’t know what my next job in performance will be and whether my government bosses will have to explain to their bosses why they need this a strange man in a position in a controlled department. And taxpayers - do they need this? No, I don’t even want to think about it. Fortunately, there is private money and space, the owners of which do not need to be convinced - they themselves want to work. It’s just a pity that it won’t be in Russia.

This old videotape needs to be rewinded a few years ago. Then Vladimir Filippov appeared in the Moscow Department of Culture, a man who brought the right meaning and calm confidence - it is he who should be thanked for last years Solyanki and much more in Moscow culture - he amazingly managed to hear and be heard. In November he left for another job. But even earlier, in September of this year, Rita Osepyan, the main curator of Solyanka and in general the curator with whom we thought up and talked most about the state of performance (not only in Moscow, but also, for example, in Sao Paulo) had a meeting with recent years - so, we were not able to open one important exhibition, just invented by Katya Nenasheva. There were reasons for this, I still don’t want to talk about them, but it became clear: my time on Solyanka had thinned out, burst, it was time. Then I started thinking about how best to do this. And he began to persuade the only person in the world, capable of leading Solyanka further, getting down to business. Katya Bochavar, probably my main accomplice and the person by whom I set my watches in my work for more than ten years, agreed to move to Solyanka from the north of Moscow (as she once agreed to move to Moscow from New York), continuing , what we did, and what she herself did in the last four years on the Ground.

I am very happy with how everything was resolved - people who loved Solyanka and did not miss the exhibitions there will definitely be very interested. But I’m not going anywhere and will help - a little more from afar than before, heading Solyanka’s board of trustees and continuing to return from time to time with individual projects, including some of those that have already become a tradition at Solyanka.”