TATLIN NEWS #41

scanning and refracting various aspects of social context in their works. It can also be done through direct intrusion into the urban body – and both installations and campaigns which have recently multiplied in number can be mentioned here. Such a peculiar kind of art as graffiti belongs to that group – it is sometimes referred to as anti-art. Every person living in a large city and continuously plying its environment runs into various graffiti drawings made on planes and surfaces of the landscape, resulting from activities of street artists, placing anonymous messages and signs, complete and self-contained. Many of these artists represent the graffiti culture, which has formed an independent subculture in the West and has reached a status of an alternative form of contemporary art. But quite a large group of Russian citizens tends to see the graffiti culture as an asocial phenomenon, a heritage of criminal «black» America of the seventies and the eighties. Moreover, the mass mentality thinks of graffiti entirely as vandalism. Meanwhile, the majority of European street artists have long abandoned such practice, having directed their potential energy to the realm of free art. The residents of the city themselves could experience this potential with the help of the project entitled «Colour Moscow», which was in turn initiated by curators of «Rozamira’07» Carnival. They have defined this action as a real festival of contemporary art; it has hosted many events on the junction of genres and trends. Even though the curator extensively uses the verb «entertain» in various combinations in his manifest, teams of artists who came to Moscow to draw graffiti on walls of houses in Losinoostrovsky District hardly treated their works in the same way. Yes, they used only bright colours in their drawings (this has been agreed upon with the curators), and the subjects of drawings, both according to the curators and the authors, had to be positive. But this is not hopscotch on the asphalt road – these are serious independent works, and as the author of one of the many

articles describing the event calls them, «creations of contemporary monumental painting». So it would be wrong to speak of them on the level of «likes» and «dislikes», as residents of one of the buildings did; they did not like the new image of their house. One should probably speak of a persistent trend to interdisciplinarity, which finally has come to Russia, too. Nevertheless, the project inMoscow was the first one. Though the large- scale «Long Stories» painted on concrete fences around permanent construction sites in Ekaterinburg follow the same trend. The social implication of graffiti is enormous – not only does it express the artist’s perception, the same way an easel painting can be attributed to its artist; it also constitutes a process of certain marginalization of both such perception and the urban environment, which becomes inhabited and settled into. But in this trend it is not the drawing itself that is of major importance, but the signature. And graffiti in its current meaning emerged in late sixties, when a teenage courier TAKI started to leave his signatures on walls of buildings and underground stations. And as the most well-known graffiti artist Banxy once said, «You say the city belongs to you? Then how come it has MY name written all over it?» That is, graffiti has more serious cultural roots that it is commonly thought, and in many European countries it is treated as a kind of legitimate art. In Russia a gradual bilateral process of wiping off the border between high and street art is taking place; the former is trying to go beyond the borders of gallery space in search for new expressive means, the latter, on the contrary, penetrates that space, trying to be an object of cultural and critical research. Bright «paintings» onwalls have been made by artists from Russia, the Netherlands, the USA, Brazil and Island. Among participants of the project were Avaf Projects, Kwasten met de Gasten, Sabotage,

310 squard, Pain Brakaz, Zukclub, Influx, More Dead Toyz and David Orn Halldorson. Vitaly OrekhOV’s stadium in krasnOyarsk: new FOrm FOr the new era OF spOrt Facilities Object: the central stadium on the Ostrov Otdykha in krasnoyarsk for 30 thousand viewers construction started: 1965 construction completed: 1968 client: the capital construction department, krasnoyarsk regional committee of the communist party of the soviet union architect: V.V. Orekhov engineers: y.s. yaroslavsky, a.i. Grishin, y.a. isayev, V.s. simonov, a.B. kudryashev text: anastasia sysoyeva, alexander slabukha in the sixties, erection of such an object as the Central Stadium could be compared to construction of underground network. The project was agreed upon on the level of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Moscow, and it took several years to come to such an agreement. The construction site for the stadium that would have 30,000 seats was allocated in 1960. Construction works were started in 1965. Thanks to the location of the stadium the viewer could see both banks of Yenisei in Krasnoyarsk, the square at the end of the bridge on the right bank of the river and the Communal Bridge built in 1961. Later many objects have been hidden from view because of the trees that have grown up high. The basis that gives shape to the stadium is the open-air field and stands. The object was oval in layout, made of reinforced For a relatively small regional centre, which Krasnoyarsk was

concrete, without inner and outer finishing that would be of particular interest, and it seemed to have nothing to distinguish it among similar constructions built in the Soviet Union in the sixties. But its character made people talk about no less than of the start of a new era in the architecture of sport facilities both in the USSR and the world. This Soviet stadium followed the trend of sport arenas built in Malme and Goteborge (Sweden) in 1948 and 1958 respectively. Vitaly Orekhov, a twenty-eight year old graduate of Leningrad Institute of Civil Engineering, became the chief architect of the project. After the successful presentation of his thesis paper «Stadium with 100,000 seats» with an «excellent» mark he was invited to Krasnoyarsk to design a similar building and developed a typical design for a stadium in 1960 (this design was not implemented). Five years after, Moscow agreed on financing the construction of a stadium with 25–30,000 seats in Krasnoyarsk. Krasnoyarsk GorStroyProject received a government commission, and the institute held a contest for this project. Candidates were given 2 weeks to prepare, since the construction had to be started in the nearest future, and the standard project has already been developed. Architects working in the institute presented several designs. Project by Vitaly Orekhov was chosen to be the winner. In two weeks the architect managed to create a 1:500 model of the stadium, prepare its layout, sections, ink in the drawings of facades, and make a photomontage of the night view. The winning project was approved by the Krasnoyarsk Region Committee of the Communist Party. According to the author, by the time of commission the image of the stadium had already formed in his mind, so he only had to put it on paper and prepare a presentation. During five years after his arrival to Krasnoyarsk Vitaly Orekhov came to the conclusion that predetermined his success in many ways, mainly without consciously working on that and without direct exposure to sport facilities design.With support of research done in the thirties by

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