TATLIN NEWS №39

there was the first visit to Russia – and specifically to Ekaterinburg – of a well-known Dutch artist Ulay and the event called «Complete Concrete – 2». The «Complete Concrete – 2», which was a logical continuation of the project started two years ago, took place on a site near the «Ural» Culture and Arts centre closed for reconstruction. The space under reconstruction was adapted by graffiti, installation, performance and video artists as well as dancers and musicians, followers of popular movements and trends in contemporary art. Viewers were offered to feel, dance, paint, sense, express, play concrete, and let it go eventually. Artists looked for symbolic meanings in everything – in the location itself and in the fountain in front of the Palace. The motive of purification and creation of new life has been focused and reinvented by artists in their projects. The source of water giving life was reflected in them in some way or another, since the fountain was identified with a source of knowledge, both emotional and aesthetic. The experience people are receiving through all their senses is that the viewers feel they are on the borderline – on ruins, but with a source of new life. The authors investigated the potential of endurance, innocence, and perception. Vladimir Seleznyov in his project «Faces in Concrete» presented a series of masks from his own face and faces of his friends that virtually grew out of the slabs on the ground. The viewers by habit treated the art at their feet respectively – they stepped shamelessly on human faces, testing the strength of art and their own strength, too. In connection to this project «Six Experiments with Life and Death» are brought back to memory. They were presented at the Forum of Art Initiatives in 2006 in Moscow and devoted to natural manifestations of human qualities inmen– viewers were offered to kill a goldfish by simply pressing a button of a blender. You get the same feeling about the «Faces in Concrete» – are you ready to step on the human face, be it only a mask? Dan Marino’s «Industrial Signs» project was less radical – warning signs

taken off the walls at construction sites and fences by an artist’s careful hand were put on one of the walls, and it was a sort of a subtle game with life and death. Dance projects with complex twists of the story illustrated the impossibility of people understanding and accepting each other and among those there was a project of the «Reaction of Support» dancing group that looked more like a performance. Use of an image of the megalopolis, the »concrete jungle», turned out to suit very well, since there has been much discussion about the absence of microspace in the city. In these works as well as in project of many other artists – Artyom Shatunov and Elizaveta Shirokova, Sergey Laushkin and others – a new space is created, which does not correspond to reality, but is quite powerful in its metaphysics. Portfolio We are used to the fact that such countries as the Netherlands, England, Germany, France, Japan and the USA are the world outposts of contemporary architecture. But we should pay attention to other countries, too; to Slovenia for example, where a young bureau bevk perovi ć arhitekti works successfully and fruitfully. The architects – their names are Matija Bevk and Vasa Perovi ć – are 35 and 42 years old respectively. Recently they have been implementing their projects one after another (mostly in Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia) and gather prestigious prizes both in their home country and abroad (Mies van der Rohe Award 2007 in particular). They think clearly and finely and try to focus on the main architectural expression in each object and bring it to the elegant and expressive solution. They produce architecture of the highest quality, like the best of their colleagues in the countries mentioned above do.

sea gate of the British Empire. Three dozens of authors from all around the world have been invited by the international curator headquarters to create special projects on twenty outer and inner sites of the city centre. As a result in autumn 2006 «archipuncture» of regeneration of an imagined urban body was marked out with the help of various artistic technologies, and the visitors of the biennale were involved into an intriguing journey around it. We should think that one of the most profound and expressive art- interventions was the «untitled» installation in St. Luke’s church damaged in bombardment in 1941. In the open air under the sky supported by gothic walls on the ashy bed 56 boats, 5 meters each, rested. Green and almost bionic fleshliness fills the floor level, illuminating sombre ruins with its inner light. Raised volumes, lying close to each other upside down, remind of a rookery of some large sea animals. Or a magic backyard with giant squash. Anyhow, what we see is the new life on the ashes. A young Slovenian artist Matej Vogrincic chose the site himself, being inspired by a spontaneous monument of the Second World War, which still produces sacral vibrations. He constantly supplies his artistic practice with impulses of spatial architectonics. And he is quite popular in that regard, having done major works in Italy, Australia, New Zealand and the USA. The main tool of the artist is ready-made objects placed in large quantities on horizontal and vertical surfaces. His subject is a multiple set, which counts thousands of objects – of toy cars, umbrellas or watering cans. At the Venice biennale of 1999 Vogrincic totally covered a two-storey house on the square with old clothes gladly brought by local residents. Since then he has been referred to as «Tailor for houses». The artist found a nontrivial identity of Liverpool in the history of relations of the city and the sea. He was captivated with the subject of migration in Merceyside, population of which left home for better future in the New World.

We would not be able to guess that objects we see in the photographs are located in Slovenia in particular. This can be referred to as globalization, and globalization evidently has both positive and negative sides. Another thing is that it probably is natural and inevitable. Young Slovenian architecture is certainly international (or non-national), but it is not commonplace and impersonal. The buildings are constructed in a specific place for a specific customer; and just as a dress is tailored with new measurements and curves, real architecture is formed under the influence of its surroundings (and later starts influencing them itself). Bevk perovi ć arhitekti always manage to accurately fit into the scale of the situation, in which the object exists, and this is their favourite subject. All their projects have been created for Slovenia, a small Balkan country with a lot of mountains and a small part of the Adriatic Sea. Slovenia has quite recently gained freedom and independence, having split off from Yugoslavia and miraculously managing to avoid the Civil War. And today bevk perovi ć arhitekti are creating the image of this young and dynamically developing country. ShiP liturgy object: «untitled» Author: Matej Andraz Vogrincic Place: liverpool, St luke’s church text: Sergey Kovalevsky English Liverpool dynamically develops its physical and symbolic space, heading into 2008, when this city will become the European Capital of Culture. Both large- scale town-planning programs and targeted artistic events have been implemented here for several years. One of such efficient projects of forming a creative climate was the Fourth Liverpool biennale of contemporary arts dedicated to «reverse colonization» of former

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ТАТЛИН_NEWS №3(39)46_2007 119