The state of "Archstoyanie": what will surprise the festival in "Nikola-Lenivets"
Walking along the "Seine River", finding a homeless house, discussing pressing problems with pines and birches, looking into a personal limbo and leaving a message in the "Elf Tower" is only a small part of the route of the festival of contemporary art and architecture "Archstoyanie". From July 23 to 26, Nikola-Lenivets Park will become a space for art experiments, self-discovery and communication with nature for the 21st time, involving all the senses of visitors. The details are in the Izvestia report.
The route has been rebuilt
On the last weekend of July, Nikola-Lenivets resembles an autonomous republic. Several thousand people voluntarily leave the city to a place where the Internet works worse than intuition, and their own feet become the main means of transportation. No one is in much of a hurry here, but everyone is constantly on the move.
The theme of the year is "The route has been rebuilt." The phrase, familiar to every car enthusiast, here, on the 300 hectares of the festival park, suddenly acquires a meditative meaning. This is no longer just the name of the program, but an instruction for action: forget the usual ways, because they are no longer there.
This year, the festival finally refused to be an open-air museum. Instead of a set of objects, the viewer was offered a journey — a big performance where it is impossible to separate a work of art from the road to it. You're constantly walking, taking the wrong turn, coming back, finding yourself in an unexpected place. And gradually you realize that getting lost here means getting exactly where you need to go. This was the curatorial idea of "Archstoy-2026".
— It is difficult to build long-term strategies now. A Chinese proverb says, "God forbid to live in an era of change." This is exactly the time we live in. Everything is being rebuilt, the pillars are slipping away, professions are changing, something is rapidly becoming a thing of the past, something is emerging," Anton Kochurkin, curator of the Archstoyaniya Festival, architect of the Nikola-Lenivets Art Park, told Izvestia.
Instead of long curated texts, it's a feeling. Instead of concepts, it's a physical experience. This year, more than 15 art projects will appear in the park. Some are hidden in the depths of the forest, others are floating along the swampy Ugra River, and others cover gigantic areas. There is even a gastronomic experience restaurant "Blazing". Some of the objects are hidden in the depths of the park, and they can only be found with a map or on a whim. Others, like the river channel near the Rotunda, open immediately after disembarking from the transfer.
Versailles made of hay and a house made of tulle
The "Seine River" by the architectural bureau Manipulazione Internazionale is the largest project of this "Archstoy". By the will of the artists, a real Versailles suddenly grew up in the middle of the Russian forest with fountains, statues of Louis and a canal. Of course, it's an image. In addition, the French Seine is very similar to the Russian seine. And there's nowhere in the village without him. It is on the multi-meter sheaves that the figures wrapped in white canvases stand. They're kind of fountains here. Hay also frames a 77-meter-long waterway that reaches the famous Rotunda of Alexander Brodsky, which appeared on the Archstoy back in 2009.
If you walk a little way, a glass tree will grow in front of your eyes. It is also the "Elf Tower" by architect Alexei Ilyin. Another curtsy to Paris and the famous Gustave Eiffel building. The structure is assembled from 1,900 empty wine bottles. There are small leaves and pens nearby. Anyone can leave their message to humanity, put a package in a bottle and wait for the solemn launch of a rocket into space — with large-scale fireworks and splashes of champagne.
After a few hundred meters, the park changes its mood again. Walking past the developing canvases of Victoria Chernyshova's "Personal Limb" and the talking birches of the milkh and decorburo creative tandem, you stumble upon Irina Korina's two-story airy house, the long-term building of this "Archstoy".
From a distance, it resembles a cottage familiar to everyone — with fragments of wooden architecture, colored details, and random outbuildings, as if assembled from the memories of several generations at once. But the closer you get, the stronger the feeling that memory is starting to play with you. Korina puts this pavilion together from collective memory — fragments of childhood, everyday images and cultural quotations, turning the familiar suburban architecture into a real maze of memories.
Compositionally, the art park consists of two layers: the upper one, open and communicative, and the lower one, unsociable and hidden from people. Down here, the warm and blooming river Ugra flows, tree roots stick out of the ground, and art objects are hidden behind the forest.
One of the most picturesque creations is "Autonomous Paradise" by Sergey Katran. He took tropical plants that could not survive in Russian latitudes and placed them in giant balloons. They float along the river like bubbles on the water after a summer rain. And if, according to the artist's idea, this is a kind of paradise, then on the other side of the wooden bridge is purgatory, which is a slowly rotating island with dead birches.
From forest solitude to techno-rave
Going back into the forest, you suddenly come across a small house made up of picturesque landscapes. The artist Pavel Suslov will live and work in it for a whole month. All the time at the festival and after it ends, he will continue to improve his bomjdom, while simultaneously recording the changes around him.
— I got a stove, a wind turbine. There was an attempt to make a sewer system, collect water, so as not to carry around a lot of bottles. This is my 25th canvas house. There was a floating version and a winter one. Every time I paint the landscapes that surround me. These are mountains, the sea, the city, anything," the painter shared with Izvestia.
It is impossible to get acquainted with all the projects in one day, and even a few days of the festival are hardly enough to see everything. In addition to static art, the organizers have conceived dozens of performances, musical events, practices, lectures and theatrical performances. As last year, "100 bonfires" will be lit in the park. This is a large-scale collective performance by Danila Kholodkov, drummer of the band Shortparis, and choreographer Vladimir Varnava. Composer Gleb Andrianov will launch the "Endless Music Machine", and on the Beryozki stage, ethno-folk, hip-hop and Soviet jazz fusion will replace lyrical raves from morning to morning.
Over two decades, "Archstoyanie" has formed a special habit among viewers — to walk several kilometers for an object that can be viewed on a phone screen in five seconds. And it turned out that the point is not at all in the figure itself, the house or the intricate design. The meaning is in the path.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
