What is a Turn? zine

turn ?

4th, What is a

Contributors Felicity Allen Pavel Arseniev Alina Belishkina Kseniya Butuzova Giada Dalla Bontà Janna Graham Alexander Ivanov Olga Jitlina Adel Kim Anastasia Kolesnikova Alexandra Khazina Maria Kramar Anton Lapov Elizabeth Larison Joana Monbaron Paul O’Neill Marion von Osten Mercè Santos Mir Mateusz Adam Sapija Victoria Sarangova Sona Stepanyan Laura Tammen Alisa Taezhnaya Olga Vad Marina Vinnik Mick Wilson Tatiana Zaidal Alexander Zhuravlev Tirdad Zolghadr Dobrynia Ivanov and Svitlana Libet

Proposal on possible ways of reeding this publication try to look at this publication through the eyes of of:

— a young promising artist from Saratov who has moved to Moscow half a year ago — a Moscow based film-critic in his 30s — his grandma — Viktoria Michelson — a fly who set on a page of the zine — a curator of the Museum of Modern art in New York — a nymph in a Rococo painting — a student of the next year of Moscow Curatorial School coming from Soul — an Uzbeck cleaner who had been cleaning the building in course of three weeks of the school — a group of 30 people, survivors of World WarIII who finds this publication which is the only peace of text which had remained on planet Earth.

— a piece of writing from the folder “Andrey Monastirskiy” which is standing next to the folder with this publication — Vladimir Medinskiy — a chocolate produced in the Krupskaya factory — a worker who had worked from 39 years and fired one year before her pension — the statue of Lenin being demolished in Kharkiv — your favourite artist — the next page’s second word

Study for a Monument to the (Known and) Unkown Reproductive Workers of the vac Curatorial Summer School

Workers: Maria Mkrtycheva, Elza Abdulkhakova, Aizhan (housekeeper at Kadashevka Hotel), Roxana Fabius. Drew Hamilton, Nicolas Vass, Pip Vass, Alina Belishkina, Kseniya Butuzova, Giada Dalla Bontà, Alexander Ivanov, Adel Kim, Anastasia Kolesnikova, Alexandra Khazina, Maria Kramar, Anton Lapov, Elizabeth Larison, Joana Monbaron, Mercè Santos Mir, Mateusz Adam Sapija, Victoria Sarangova, Sona Stepanyan, Laura Tammen, Alisa Taezhnaya, Olga Vad, Marina Vinnik, Alexander Zhuravlev, Tatiana Zaidal, Dobrynia Ivanov and Svitlana Libet, Sasha Zaytseva, Anna Tafintseva, all of the reception, housekeeping and restaurant staff of the Kadashevka Hotel.

Monument Design Leah Martha Graham Vass (aka Pip), 2015 NOTE: Reproductive Work is the complex of activities and services that re-produce human beings starting with child-care, housework, sex work and elder care, both in the form of waged and unwaged labour. Felicity Allen in her presentation in day one of week three of the summer school described campaigns in the women’s movement of the 1970s, the most famous of which Wages for Housework - that rejected the common assumptions that domestic/care work is a personal service or a pre-capitalist form of labor, redefining it, instead, as a key aspect of social reproduction in capitalist society and value-creation. Current conversations within many social movements suggest that looking deeper into reproductive work and how it is organized is not only important for feminists but for how we challenge capitalism in its current manifestations.

From http://www.commoner.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/01-introduction.pdf

What is a turn?

The answer to this question can probably be only as vague as the word itself. Usually the one who wants to understand the meaning of a word, goes to its roots and potentiality of use.

The word turn comes from a word tĂłrnos (gr. lathe, tool for drawing circles). Ignoring the circularity of the original meaning, turn very often means a decisive moment. Often dramatic. Often of historic value. Interestingly, sticking to ancient Greek vocabulary, more accurate term in this case is the word krisis (gr. judgment, result of a trial, selection) used

by Hippocrates and Galen to describe a ‘turning point in a disease.’ You can be turned on by someone/something, especially in the summer. Someone/something can be turned into someone/something else, or nothing.

One can turn around something/someone. Usually pointlessly. At some point, turning around might lead to turning away. Someone/something can turn to be someone/something else. Finally, and importantly to what will follow, people tend to turn against each other.

Many of the above suggest turning to work by Panos Sklavenitis, titled The poem begins with the unloving sun.

The video is a work that is an effect of research and action done

by Panos Sklavenitis on the topic of the internet hatred and xenophobia. Sklavenitis says: ‘While I am selecting websites without (visible) nationalistic orientation for this informal survey, my first conclusion (which I guess will unfortunately not cause any surprise) is the tremendous boom of unprecedented racist (lack of) reasoning, which now appears to be entirely legitimized, in contrast to, say, ten years ago.’

In April 2014 Panos contacted the editor popular Greek magazine LIFO, asking him to write a provocative article about the Greek sun. The journalist responded with the article entitled ‘Donald Tusk : ‘The Greeks can stick their sun where it doesn’t shine.’ Even though the article was published on a day of the April’s Fool, it quickly caused an internet rampage. The Facebook page of the article had 268 shares, 272 comments and several right-wing websites and publications shared it as a real news. This way the artist was able to manoeuvre the internet society and create the comments for his own purpose. The project is a work in progress, currently consisting of video, in which the choreographer and dancer Medie Megas performs a compilation of texts consisting mainly of readers’ comments on the LIFO article and the action itself.

(Mateusz Sapija)

1 Donald Tusk - former Prime Minister of Poland and the current President of the European Council

Screening of the work accompanies the launch of the third zine published by 4th Moscow Curatorial School.

Until 01.08 the video will be available online @ https://vimeo.com/134305405

Who can we turn to?

Within the art world’s discussions of neoliberalism, precarity and educational-cultural institutional frameworks, there is relatively modest discussion of social stratification; class; reproduction of social hierarchy, privilege and exclusion; and the systemic distribution of class poitions / class fractions etc. This is partly to do with a perceived failure of class as a category of social and cultural analysis – a sense that it is long established that ”class” is an outmoded, and critically-compromised analytic. There is instead an impressionistic mobilisation of social analytical categories such as precarity, a mobilisation which seems at times to propose a simple equivalence or inevitable solidarity and congruence between the insecure working conditions of the cleaners, attendants and menial service workers at museums and universities and the educators, artists and designers occasionally employed or commissioned to provide content and other services for these same institutions. Zizek, has rather clumsily gestured at the idea of ”Bourgeois revolt” in describing the class profile of the protest movements of recent years.

However, there has been relatively little focus on the downgrading of (broadly - i.e., I gesture clumsily here also) ”middle-class” social, political, cultural and economic power / capital / status / entitlement (such as good prospects for secure and upwardly mobile employment opportunities on successful completion of higher education) as an engine of social and professional mobilisation that is not yet about forging such solidarities, but could potentially become this.

Could an analytic of class be mobilised which did not propose a privileged or authentic subject of the world historical process, but simply asked for political programme and consequent solidarities to be elaborated in conjunction with emergent political postures? Could the flourishing of the (albeit highly reductive and limited) political programmes of acquisitive neoliberal regimes, xenophobic rightwings, and populist centrist-right capitalists, across the continents in recent decades be a strong indication that the affective, social, discursive, educational, psychoanlaytic, deconstructive, postcolonial, speculative and other turns (that ”we” on the - again broadly and clumsily - cultural and intellectual ”left” have pursued in various guises) have not really turned out so well for us, just yet? Maybe turning things round and round is simply making us dizzy and we risk falling down. This is not a suggestion that we should turn against our ideas, our traditions of critique and our history of debates, rather that we might turn to face up to so many woeful defeats in recent decades – defeats we have lost to those who orchestrate systemic inequity as a core credo. Can we stop spinning-in-one-spot, retain the insights built and wisdom acquired, but frame shared pathways, not lines of flight but lines of advance, and in wider solidarities strategise ways through all these defeats to other ”better” places?

Mick Wilson

Sona Stepanyan and Giada Dalla BontĂ

From ‘Elegy’ in Begin Again Chronicles Felicity Allen Discomfort in the room, institutional superiority and defensiveness. (Headhunters’ emails: directors putting your name forward to lose you, she says. Had someone put her up to this? Insecurity, a mould through the ear into wet warm brain.) She said, Now we’re in new offices hotdesking. No lockable drawers, nothing personal on the desks, desks cleared daily. The psychological relationship to the employer, the consultant had told me on a Leadership course seven years earlier, has to change. Cognitives suggest erasure. They say, Don’t go back. Stay solutions-focussed. Track the document. Straddle the chart. Don’t look down.

Thwack. Redundancy. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.

I am informed that this evaluation framework aims to encourage me to constantly monitor my performance and find appropriate mechanisms for improvement and development. Track the document! Straddle the chart! He’d sat throughout the meeting pretending to himself that he was invisible; he put his senses on sleep. No skeleton or musculature. A limp piece of paper. Flimsy. To make a carbon copy.

I heard the blackbird in the garden and she noted the police helicopter: I hate that, she said.

The sadness and frailty around the eyes reminded me so much of my mother; I know those eyes, they’re not just mine, you know. I often think there’s a lot to be said for the invisibility of middle age, there is a freedom to not being looked at. He asked my age. His mother is taking early retirement.

••••• When Claire MacDonald described John Cage’s compulsive listing of names, who’s in, who’s out, as ‘creating a past to which he could be heir,’ I commented that that was impossible if you felt yourself to be an orphan.

••••• I used to think you were wild. In my sketchbook I wrestle to accommodate the mid-C20 self I arrived as into this person alive now. A present. (Loss: people, public sector, nation state etc, collective.) LCC, I read aloud from the cover of the school exercise book.

‘What’s LCC, Mum?’ She explains that it’s London County Council, which organises the schools, and that we elect councillors to run things. (Loss: my dead mother banging home the loss. My mind. Her values. Seized.) I used to think you were wild.

••••• An artist is mentioned. But hasn’t her star rather fallen? And dropped. As we were leaving the opening I introduced myself. ‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I’ve got a picture of yours.’ 30 years ago he bought it. She says, younger artist friends distance themselves professionally, not wanting their brands compromised. As you get older as an artist there’s not as much doubt, you trust your intuition more. I’m talking rubbish.

••••• I say, I look at sitters as if they’re perfect, as if I’ve found them after losing them. We looked together at the portrait. She said, ‘When I look at that I can feel my face.’ I can remember being looked at and the fire and it being not quite warm enough but almost.

••••• ‘I have been wanting to apologise for the time you came to stay with me.’ It was 20 years ago. I started thinking about how your face is in relation to how your face was when I first met you, and then I, I couldn’t do that because you are just you.

We had a really nice lunch in your garden. The only time you really look at faces like that is, you look at your lover’s face when they’re sleeping. Or you look at your baby. A neuroscientist slicing the brain is so compelling. A slice of meat, after I’m dead – telling my story, revealing who I am.

You’re creating the illusion that it’s momentary.

••••• It’s like a face emerging out of something: it seems to be interrogating the whole process, the whole notion of power itself. I spent a lot of time watching the leaves of the tree, let me feel like I’m inside this tree. When we work together before we don’t have time to see each other. Now I find your personal face.

••••• We’re a kind of raw material. You need to be quite careful with that, I think. What one does at work and how far one’s personality is suppressed through work. I was suddenly softened by looking at your paintings. Institutions make you much more intellectually staccato. Actually, being reduced to an object is fabulous because you yourself can wander out of it and leave the object, the flesh object to look after itself. (Watercolour & the diary; provisional, short-lived; ambivalent about exposure.) I like the idea that your painting of me exists but I wouldn’t ever want to see it particularly.

EQUALITY TURNS ME ON! “WHATEVER” TURNS ME OFF What happens to our bodies when we get turned on sexually? Answering this question is important for several reasons. First, it’s always a good idea to have an understanding of how your own body works, including the sexual parts. That way, you can be comfortable with the way your body responds as you get sexually excited. Second, while no two people are exactly the same in the way they respond sexually, knowing what happens to the male and female body during the process of sexual arousal and orgasm will give you some idea of how a sexual partner’s body responds when he or she is sexually excited.

Having a basic understanding of your own body’s sexual response and your partner’s sexual response can be an important building block for a mutually satisfying sexual relationship. Don’t forget that there is something about equality, dialogue and respect that turns me on, that turns everybody on.

Sexual arousal usually begins in the brain. So when people from aside are communicating with you, interested and curious and willing to listen, you can feel unusual sexual arousal. That is, your brain responds to a sexy thought or image, or having a feeling of closeness or affection toward a partner, or the touch of a partner by sending signals to the rest of your body, especially the genital area. For both men and women, one of the major components of physical sexual arousal is increased blood flow to the genital area causing the clitoris to swell and harden in women and the penis to become erect in men. Thoughts about equality can be really hot and intriguing and you may feel changes in body temperature and breath regularity when you meet equal attitude towards you.

For women, a number of things happen as sexual arousal triggered in the brain increases blood flow to the genital area. The vagina becomes lubricated with fluid that seeps through the walls of the vagina. Due to the increased blood flow, the clitoris swells slightly and hardens, becoming more visible and sensitive to touch. As sexual arousal continues and increases, the outer third of the vagina tightens and the opening becomes a little smaller. As a women gets close to having an orgasm, the clitoris retracts, becoming a little less visible.

For most women, having an orgasm requires some form of stimulation of the clitoris or clitoral area. But sometimes even thoughts about being treated with tenderness, respect and attention are substitutional for the orgasmic reaction.

The orgasm consists of a series of 3 to 15 contractions of the muscles around the vagina. The first few contractions are the most intense, coming about a second apart, and then they becomes weaker and farther apart. During the orgasm, the woman’s uterus and anus may also rhythmically contract.

The most obvious physical sign of sexual arousal in men is erection of the penis. Personal feelings about equality and freedom of self-expression out of the limitations of classic dominant male stereotype can also cause erection. The increased blood flow into the penis causes it to stiffen. As the spongy tissue inside becomes filled with blood, pressure is put on the veins inside the penis which prevents blood from flowing out which helps to keep the penis hard. As the process of sexual arousal continues, the penis may become even harder and the head (tip) a little larger. Once the penis has become erect, a few drops of clear non-urinary fluid may come out of the urethra where urine comes out.

The testicles move closer to the body.

For men, orgasm occurs in two basic stages. In the first stage, seminal fluid (semen) flows to an area near the base of the penis called the urethral bulb.

Once this happens, the man usually has a feeling that he is about to ejaculate.

This is sometimes called “the point of no return” because once the semen has reached this area, the man will not be able to stop himself from ejaculating.

The first few contractions are stronger and are about one second apart. During orgasm, a man’s body may stiffen up or he may have mild muscle contractions.

Once he has finished ejaculation, his body will relax and the penis goes back to its usual size.

But when one of the participants starts to “whatever”, it immediately can turn off the rest. When you nevermind, just don’t be there.

It’s about turn It’s about turn when you finally feel that something is wrong though you are not sure what.

Usually it’s about boredom and tiredness towards common repetitive things you do every day and rituals of being in society.

Why do you get so little from people surrounding you and from fulfilling your usual social and business functions?

The turn doesn’s happen there, but the reflection does.

The first moment of doubt of your own goals and achievements is the moment you start to listen to yourself as if you are a stranger.

You will be surprised to find expressions of power in your gestures, postures and intonations. You will feel the unease of this stranger not being there all the time and snobbing those and that seems not interesting and original enough.

You will realize to which extent the ability to foresee and make judgement beforehand is characteristic to the person you pretend not to know.

Then you will make a turn that is mechanic, difficult and forced in the usual surroundings of your everyday behavioral patterns. Sitting in a circle, paying

attention to other people reactions, mirroring their gestures and voice tones.

Wasting time in your usual hierarchy of values. Drawning in tons of unoriginality of common experience. Asking questions, discussing issues that really bother you and are not just subjects for a small talk. Replacing a small talk with a big talk without a fear sounding pathetic or crazy. Enjoying an awful lot of connections and responsibilities you have even if you are single, childless or parentless because everyone in your nearest circle doesn’t mind having a piece of you and sharing a piece of themselves. Breathing out the idea of being effective. Listening and rehearsing dialogues within your head and in reality trying to be many people at the same time instead of being the only one you know too good already. Finding out that reading and speaking are revolutionary instead of autistic digital masturbation you devote your time to.

It’s too good to be true, right? You may say I’m a dreamer but I’m not the only one. I have a dream. Of turn that is possible. Especially for those who are luckier than others. But it’s only about turn, the real turn we can’t even forecast.

Not to be able to forecast the things that you can also dislike is a courage of radicalism.

CONTEMPORARY IS STUFFY ISN’T IT? IT SHOULD BREATHE A LITTLE BIT MORE

An oak is a tree. A rose is a flower. A deer is an animal. A sparrow is a bird. Russia is our fatherland.

Death is inevitable. — P. Smirnovski, A Textbook of Russian Grammar (from The Gift by Vladimir Nabokov)

Dictionary article Turn against - Stop liking and start disliking We are turning against curating Turn around - Make something successful or profitable that has been doing badly _____________________ - Produce or complete work We’ve turned around the zine.

- React negatively _________________________ Turn away - Not allow someone to enter a place _________________________ Turn down - Reduce volume, temperature, etc. _________________________ - Reject an offer, invitation, etc.

We’ve turned down collaboration.

- Fold the top covers of a bed down to make it ready for someone to go to sleep _________________________ Turn in - Go to bed To turn in is everything we truly want.

- Hand in, submit _________________________ Turn into - Become What we are turning into we can’t capture.

Turn off - Stop a machine It is good to turn off the light.

Turn on - Cause someone to feel attraction or pleasure Curating is turning me on.

- Start a machine It is good to turn on the light.

- Attack _________________________ Turn out - Produce Are we capable of tuning anything out?

- Produce an unexpected result _________________________ - Stop a light _________________________ - Attend _________________________ Turn over - Give to the authorities We have never turned over.

Turn to - Try to get help _________________________ - Take up a habit _________________________ Turn up - Appear _________________________ - Increase volume, temperature, etc. _________________________ Try to find your own examples of correct usage the phrasal verb to turn.

condition: this all is entre nous Alina Belishkina, Joana Monbaron, Tatiana Zaydal

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In October 1960 Yves Klein made a performance “Leap into the Void“. It’s arguable, however, wether what he did can really be called a performance, since the photograph serving as a performance documentation is known to be a photo-montage, so, one can rightfully suggest that the picture we’re looking at is a document of something that did not in fact happen.

Klein surely did perform a sort of a leap, yet his performance was not an autonomous event in itself, rather it was an act, which had been staged in order to be documented and manipulated.

Thus, there’re effectively two leaps here: the one that was manifested as such, yet did not happen in reality and another one “performed” in (and through) a fictitious domain of the image.

The initial event was not a performance in a strict sense, since it had no audience (i.e. those who were aware of themselves as such). It can be said thought, that those co-present to Klein’s manifestation were if not the viewers, but witnesses of his gesture, of his failure to actually leap into the void.

Now, looking at this document, this fictitious formation, the urgent questions are: what void we’re actually talking about? how and through what exact mechanisms this enactment of the utopian leap is actually taking place?

With Yves Klein, levitation becomes a veritable revolutionary program; in his 1959 manifesto Overcoming the Problematics of Art, the artist proclaims: “We shall thus become aerial men. We shall know the forces that pull us upwards to the heavens, to space, to what is both nowhere and everywhere. The terrestrial force of attraction thus mastered, we shall literally levitate into a complete physical and spiritual freedom!”, Yves Klein, “Overcoming the Problematics of Art,” in Overcoming the Problematics of Art, trans. Klaus Ottmann (Putnam, CT: Spring Publications, 2007), p. 64.

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What if there is another story to be told about Lenin? What if Lenin’s greatness lied in his decision to risk to repeat the revolution in this catastrophic in-between situation form February 1917, when the first revolution abolished tsarism and installed a democratic regime, to the second revolution in October? What if Lenin’s essential lesson lies in his stubborn insistence to concretize the revolution not as an actual turn, but as a repetition? What if, as argued by Slavoj Zizek, the very space of Lenin’s unique intervention is in fact the gap, not simply the gap between form and content, but also the halfway gap, both fleeting and sustained? What if his greatness lied in the fact that he wasn’t afraid to succeed? At that moment Lenin’s risky action can be compared to the artist’s audacious plunge announcing the dawn of a new era, an epoch in which revolution and life merged in a blissful union.

After Lenin’s condition deteriorated in 1922, he was isolated by the party leadership from the political world while his voice was effectively censored. Simultaneously, a process of canonising Lenin’s public image was engaged by the politburo. At that moment, Lenin the political figure was doubled—into one Lenin banished from the political world, and another Lenin canonised within it. It was not just ‘‘Lenin’s immortality’’—his cult status— that preceded his death, as Nina Tumarkin suggests, but rather the substitution of Lenin with ‘‘Leninism’’ that went on through the simultaneous canonisation of the ideal and banishment of the man. On January 21, 1924, the banished Lenin and the canonised Lenin were reunited in one dead body, and the dual process by which Lenin was transformed into “Leninism” became crucial to the final decision to preserve the man’s body for posterity.

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In his “April Theses”, 1917 Lenin declared the Augenblick, the unique opportunity to start a revolution. Augenblick (from german “auge” (eye) and “blick” (glance)) stands for the moment, the blink of an eye. An “I”-eye opening precedes a new reality: prepares a place where the name of the subject emerges. The whole world disappears in a split of a second. But the blick it is also an action, a process unfolding in time. In February 1917 Lenin took the opportunity to cut 13 days of history and put a capitalist social order into the resulting gap, like corn in the ground. This burial was supposed to ensure a revolutionary jump from a feudal social order to a communist one. The Revolution took place on these days. Hanna Arendt wrote “Seen from the viewpoint of man, who always lives in the interval between past and future, time is not a continuum, a flow of uninterrupted succession; it is broken in the middle, at the point where “he” stands; and “his” standpoint is not the present as we

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usually understand it but rather a gap in time which “his” constant fighting, “his” making a stand against past and future, keeps in existence. Only because man is inserted into time and only to the extent that he stands his ground does the flow of indifferent time break up into tenses; it is this insertion the beginning of a beginning, to put it into Augustinian terms which splits up the time continuum into forces which then, because they are focused on the particle or body that gives them their direction, begin fighting with each other and acting upon man in the way Kafka describes.” Lenin was the man who stood against these forces by himself. “In other words, the gap where between Past and Future “he” stands is, potentially at least, no simple interval but resembles what the physicists call a parallelogram of forces.”

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When attempting to draw attention to the way art proactively creates and consolidates a subject position, I like to refer to the theoretical picture of the “Ashkdan”, which is a tearcatcher from the Iranian Qajar period. At least one of which is currently on display at the NY Metropolitan Museum of Art. This uncanny object supposedly served as a receptacle for the tears of women for their husbands, who were on the road for some reason or other. Let us set aside, for a moment, the likelihood that these were tears of joy and laughter, and take the object as seriously as possible. Writing within a Palestinian context, it’s the aestheticization of suffering that is interesting, the ornamental display of empathy.

The suffering we’re talking about, however, is not a psychological reality so much as an abstract, symbolic matter, given that your average homo sapiens would be utterly incapable of filling even a fraction of this 40cm crystal Kleenex with tearwater. In terms of the viewing subject, meanwhile, object can help the NY public, for one, sympathize with a faraway, suffering brown woman, as it is indeed never tired of doing. In this case, the curvy jug even caters to a fantasy of the voluptuous Orientesse, now filled with tears: suffering embodied.

On the other hand, New Yorkers aside, the vase, as it stands on a shelf in some 19th century Iranian living room, may well have been capable of creating a viewing subject of another sort, by reminding the viewer, however surreptitiously, subliminally or ironically, of what the ideal housewife can and should be. Thus the tearcatcher elegantly conveys the notion of showing as a form of doing, or of showing being necessarily part and parcel of something that is done - beyond the showing alone. Contemporary art produces the audience it purports to cater to; this is its main source of agency. Representation will always have some measure of impact, but the latter will never compare to the traction art enjoys in terms of sparking a theoretical persona.

Tirdad Zolghadr

Pavel Arseniev

In the space of the exhibition this is formalized as an system of objects, marking the events, initiatives and communities, which took place during and within the Street University, - either through the “interpretative” material metaphors, either in photo- and video-elements. Relations and connections between these objects have interactive and communicative nature: depiction of the objects is provided by their detailed narrative history and pieces from media archive, but at the same time saves the free space for supplementing it by recepients during the project and the events held on it. Such a variable elements are “interpretative repertoire” of some network of artistic-educational iniatives, which is developping through the exhibition and a program of public events on it.

The task of the discoursive exhibition project «Street University.

Interpretative repertoire for the streets» is a reconstruction of a history of Street University - informal artistic and student association, whose meetings, discussions and actions took place weekly on the streets of Saint Petersburg in 2008-2012 and were oriented to the creation of a network of self-educational initiatives, as well as to the production of public space in post-soviet city. Mapping of the latter institutional trajectories of its members is combined in the project with the planning of the future forms of self-education and development of the artistic community.

Street University. Interpretative repertoire for the streets

since 1967 and the linguistic turn there have been many TURNS in humanities and social sciences, which underline a shift in perspectives of research as an interdisciplinary approach. the cultural turn focuses on culture, environment, history and materiality. within the cultural turn we find many “sub”-turns or even “counter”- and “post”turns. the educational turn is one of them, embedded within and connected with other TURNs. we have observed that a TURN can turn, that there can be revivals of TURNS and that cultural turns always rely on the beholder’s context.

CULTURAL TURNs (since 1980/1990s): INTERPRETIVE TURN, PERFORMATIVE TURN, REFLEXIVE TURN, POSTCOLONIAL TURN, GENDER TURN, BODY TURN, FEMINIST TURN, QUEER TURN, EDUCATIONAL TURN, TRANSLATIONAL TURN, PICTORIAL / ICONIC TURN, SPATIAL TURN, COGNITIVE TURN, COMMUNICATIVE TURN, DISCURSIVE TURN, SOCIAL TURN, DEMOCRATIC TURN, DIGITAL TURN, HUMAN TURN / NON-HUMAN TURN, ETHICAL TURN, BIOPOLITICAL TURN / NECROPOLITICAL TURN, XXX-TURN...XXXTURN...XXX-TURN...

...a TURN can mean REVOLUTION... ...a TURN is situated BETWEEN PAST AND FUTURE... some of the TURNS within education, art institution / art system, postcolonial and gender art and finally the TURN of the black square during MCSS#4:

what if

turn does not necessary mean a change/ a development/ a movement toward something new? think about 360° turn. a long turn could become a loop, a running knot or a noose. then it becomes an eternal movement with no stop and no destination. this movement itself becomes a goal. where could it lead? should any turn be considered consciously in order not to come back to the previous positions after running a loop?

— one of the oldest conception in philosophy of history is the idea of cycled time. it is based on observation of natural cycles of death, birth, seasons. one thing that has happened before is designated to happen again, therefore there are no turns but only returns.

— in taoism, yin and yang are complementary contradictions that exist only in constant process of replacing of each other.

— buddhism considers samsara as an endless cycle of human’s birth, death and rebirth. however, the liberation from this cycle is possible with practicing noble eightfold path.

English Curator (n.)

Mid-14c., from Latin curator “overseer, manager, guardian”. Originally of those put in charge of minors, lunatics, etc.

1660’s., meaning “officer in charge of a museum, library, etc.”

Spanish (Spain) Comisario, -ria (n.)

Person who carries out a position or a special function by assignment or delegation of a higher authority: Commissioner war; commissioner of the United Nations.

Police officer who is the highest authority of a police station and is responsible for public order of a district or area.

See also: comisario artístico or comisario de arte.

Proper function of the museum, art exhibitions and art collecting. Sometimes anglicized curador, translated directly from English word curator (especially in South American Spanish speaking countries). This definition is not included in the DRAE (Diccionario de la Real Academia Española) and should not be confused with the functions of conservation and restoration of works of art.

Language This is a reflection on the idea that language moves beyond semantics and that our choice on how we use language can turn the meaning of words. As observed above curator in English originally means "to care" but in Spanish the word translates to comisario -a police officer in a position of power and authority. So is a curator someone who takes care of exhibitions? Someone who has power and responsibility towards them? Or both?

Semantics and language –in the context of this summer school in Moscow, made me think of how words are constructed. They are formed by letters that form part of an alphabet. At a first glance this seems simple enough but things get complicated when you have more than one alphabet to choose from. The Glagolitic and Cyrillic alphabets are the oldest known th Slavic alphabets, and were created in the 9 century by Cyril and Methodius –two missionary brothers, in order to translate texts from Greek into the Slavic languages.

Below you can see a monument erected in Moscow in 1992 in Lubyansky Street in memory of Saints Cyril and Methodius. The Glagolitic alphabet is represented on the scroll held by th one of the brothers. In the 12 century Glagolitic lost its dominance under the influence of Cyrillic, as preferred alphabet to represent Slavic languages.

Procession Exercise in exploration of spatial-political relations Aim: to turn politically constructed space into referential map which could provide basis for problematizing discussion (e.g. reconsideration of so¬cial-political issues) Technique: walk through the city as cognizant ritual Actions order: 1) choose two geographical points (start/end) that mark places of histori¬cally consecutive events.

2) define trajectory of procession 3) explore public space (e.g. think about possibilities of appropriation of public space, “right for the city”, urban dynamics and shifts) 4) choose your way of documentation of process 5) conclude the whole process by discussion (beyond final point)

Walk (procession) resembles commemorative practice as a setting for issues of claiming public space in Moscow/Russia and re-actualizing of alternative imaginary political horizon.

Starting from formalistic approach, imperative of art production and bringing particular internal intentions in process of realizing of project, we gradually came to the idea of critical potential of walk (procession) as an educational spatial activity. The entry point of enquiry was our personal intention predetermined by social-political and historical issues, tendencies of external vs. internal ethical judgments and the particulari¬ties of our own artistic practice, different from each other. We decided to walk from monument of victims of Putsch in 1991 to grassroots memorial at the place of assassination of Boris Nemtsov. During this journey audio field recordings and photo/video fixations were made at some arbitrary points.

However, in the process of discussion that took place after walk all the preconditions mentioned above turned into critique of subjective stance and its relevance to political (spatial) concerns.

These are some references of such critique: - personal intentions and interests provoked idea of this project - personal relation to political issues - problem of left discourse and Ukrainian specific (maidan, right-wing rhetoric) - turn left or turn right?

- what is left and what is right today - social-political issues of Kalmykia - post-colonialism/decolonial turn - borders relations Thus, by expanding specifications of this project after its formal ending through inevitable discussion, it was possible for us to realize Procession as a specific method of education.

We should mention that such practice that encompasses both spatial ex¬ploration and dialogic process could be considered in domain of ancient Greek education - in particular, peripatetikos - empirical spatial observa¬tion and knowledge production. Another relevant notion may be Psychogeography. Such change in perspective from production of knowledge to self-discov¬ery of new method of establishing a dialogue was the Turn itself.

Anton Lapov and Victoria Sarangova

SCHOOL DRAWINGS How does pedagogy make their objects of study visible? How does visual culture ‘act ‘ in the mediation context, the school, the university, the museum, the art gallery and other social fields? These two very fundamental questions were issues of the publication „Das Erziehungsbild. Zur visuellen Kultur des Pädagogischen“, that I have edited together with the art historian Tom Holert at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, a time when I was re-modeling the department for Art Education and Tom established a practice based PHD program.

Paradoxes of this engagements and an obvious educational turn in culture production and curating has led us to publish the book. Subconsciously it might have also been driven by our own pedagogical experiences as pupils and students in West Germany in the 1960 ties -1980 ties. The installation “Educational Complex” from 1995 by Mike Kelley was thus a work of art of high relevance for me. Realized from memory, Kelley had created drawings and a model of all the schools he attended. The blind spots of the model represent forgotten zones, and are interpreted as symbolic places of “institutional” abuse.

In the workshop this Wednesday I proposed to take Mike Kelley’s work as a blueprint and asked us all to memorized the School and University buildings we passed, its spatial arrangements, atmospheres and environments as well as to remember the first exhibition we saw in a museum or gallery.

Marion von Osten

Jokes & Anecdotes, Krupskaya & Lenin, Sex & Power, Man & Woman, Wife & Revolution, Oppression & Emancipation, Image of woman & Image of man, Nadezhda Konstantinovna & Naden’ka, Soviet education & Libraries, Hopes & Fears. *** Art gallery, excursion. Guide: - This painting is called “Lenin in Smolny”. Here you can see two pairs of bare feet. One belongs to Krupskaya, another one to Dzerzhinsky (nicknamed Iron Felix was a Soviet statesman of Polish descent and a prominent member of revolutionary movements. Later he was a member of the Soviet government heading several commissariats, while being the chief of the Soviet secret police. The Cheka soon became notorious for mass summary executions, performed especially during the Red Terror and the Russian Civil war) - But where is Lenin?

- I have said that Lenin is at Smolny (The building in Sant-Petersburg. Prior to the revolutionary events of 1917, the building was vacated by the institute and was taken over by Soviets. It was here that on November 7, 1917, that Vladimir Lenin declared that his Bolshevik faction of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party had usurped power in Russia from the Provisional Government (which had assumed power following the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II earlier that year). Lenin and his government worked in the building, and he also lived there with his wife, until the government moved to safety from the fronts of the Russian Civil War and World War I to Moscow in 1918 (effectively transferring the capital from St. Petersburg to Moscow).

*** - Nadia (small name for Nadezhda Konstantinovna), I have a request for you! When I will die – I want you to cut of my penis and bury it separately!

- What a strange request, Volodya (small name for Vladimir Il’ich)?

- Martov (Julius Martov or L. Martov (real name Yuliy Osipovich Tsederbaum) November 24, 1873 – April 4, 1923, was a Russian politician who became the leader of the Menshaviks in early twentieth century Russia) will say: “Lenin is dead – so fuck him (in Russian there is untranslatable expression “Nu i huy s nim” literary “So his dick with him” which means, that the death of this men and the whole his life and achievements are unimportant and stupid) - And will be, as always, totally wrong!

*** Night. Krupskaya’s apartment: - Volodya (small name for Vladimir Il’ich), let’s do it once more!

- No, Nadia (small name for Nadezhda Konstantinovna), I’m tired, I can not do it anymore.

- Just one more time! I waited all day !!!

- Well, let’s do it but quiet, because our neighbors can hear us ...

Silence. And then, they start singing “The International”: - Stand up, damned of the Earth Stand up, prisoners of starvation Reason thunders in its volcano This is the eruption of the end.

Of the past let us make a clean slate Enslaved masses, stand up, stand up.

The world is about to change its foundation We are nothing, let us be all. : This is the final struggle Let us group together, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be the human race.

There are no supreme saviours

Neither God, nor Caesar, nor tribune.

Producers, let us save ourselves, Decree the common salvation.

So that the thief expires, So that the spirit be pulled from its prison, Let us fan our forge ourselves Strike the iron while it is hot. : This is the final struggle Let us group together, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be the human race.

The State oppresses and the law cheats.

Tax bleeds the unfortunate.

No duty is imposed on the rich;

The rights of the poor is an empty phrase.

Enough languishing in custody!

Equality wants other laws: No rights without duties, she says, Equally, no duties without rights. : This is the final struggle Let us group together, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be the human race.

Hideous in their apotheosis The kings of the mine and of the rail.

Have they ever done anything other Than steal work?

Inside the safeboxes of the gang, What work had created melted.

By ordering that they give it back, The people want only their due. : This is the final struggle Let us group together, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be the human race.

The kings made us drunk with fumes, Peace among us, war to the tyrants!

Let the armies go on strike, Stocks in the air, and break ranks.

If they insist, these cannibals On making heroes of us, They will know soon that our bullets Are for our own generals. : This is the final struggle Let us group together, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be the human race.

Workers, peasants, we are The great party of labourers.

The earth belongs only to men; The idle will go to reside elsewhere.

How much of our flesh have they consumed?

But if these ravens, these vultures Disappear one of these days, The sun will shine forever. : This is the final struggle Let us group together, and tomorrow The Internationale Will be the human race.

Protocol for Turning (in Moscow) Ultra-red Ultra-red is a 12 person collective based in three countries, that has been making sound work in the contexts of social movements for more than twenty years. As individuals and collectives we commit ourselves to long-term struggles in social housing, migration and anti-racism and public health. Within these contexts we use practices of collective listening to reflect, clarify, analyse, make audible and act upon answers to the question ‘What did we hear?’ We use the term protocol to name the processes we use to organise collective listening. Not all protocols are followed to the letter, and many are re-worked by those who participate, but they represent a starting point for our discussions.

In the vac school there was very little time to use these practices of listening together. Nonetheless, the following is a protocol in two parts: A. Reading Together, and B. Walking and Listening Together

A. Protocol for Reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed together 1.

2.

3.

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Read Chapter III of the Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire One person in the group researches and introduces the text Divide into four groups, each focusing on a single section of the text Each group maps the argument and suggested action of that section of the chapter Come back together to teach the others what you have learned, focusing on what is useful and what is not in a contemporary context Discuss and identify contradictions between your condition and what the text suggests.

Note: In our discussion in the summer school, a number of issues were brought up related to the language of humanism used and what was perceived to be a patronizing and overly forceful tone. A central limitsituation however, existed in the fact that – though many of us admitted that we find ourselves as facilitators, teachers, researchers or conveners of education in arts and culture events - we found ourselves disliking the aspects of the text that referred to these positions as points of departure for thinking through emancipatory education. With this limit in mind, to what process might be turn?

B. Protocol for Sound-walk A soundwalk is a group movement to specific sites that link to the limit-situations experienced by people with a relationship to that site. At each sites the group listens: to the sounds of the environment, to the descriptions of the people presenting the limits they experience. After each session the group answers the question, What did you hear? Soundwalks can be recorded or unrecorded depending on the will of the group.

1.

2.

3.

4.

5.

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Through a practice of listening: reading together, community meeting, listening session etc, identify a limit-situation. In Freire’s problem-posing education, a limit-situation is problem that needs to be turned or changed.

Group members with a relationship to the place plot a route for the group to follow. They use the limits they have developed as a guide thinking about where they can be heard in the city through their own knowledge and experience.

At each stop on the route the group stops and listens in silence for a set period of time (to be determined by the organisers). This listening period may be accompanied by testimony from one or more of those with a relationship to that place.

After the agreed upon time is up, a facilitator or group member asks the question, What did you hear?, inviting group members to respond to the question.

After the sound walk return to a quiet space to reflect on what was heard across the sites in answer to the question, What did you hear? . If recordings were made, it is possible to also listen to these, answering after each, the question, what did you hear? A note-taker should be identified to record this process.

From the notes you have gathered, what contradictions can be read? What was heard and what remained unheard? How does what was heard and unheard shed light on the original limit? Have new terms or themes emerged? What, if anything about them could be acted upon?

Prioritise which of these terms or themes requires further analysis and research related to possible actions. Create working groups to further analyse them, reporting back.

Note: These steps outline the beginning of a process for collective investigation into a problem to which group members are committed and of which they have some experience. Terms and themes produced are developed with the intention to act upon them. Though we got through only a few of these steps in our Moscow sound walk, we observed quickly that many sound repeated themselves: wind, traffic, footsteps, people talking on phones, our own ideas. These were very different than the sounds heard in testimonials: about police, the hierarchies of the art world, the use of key figures of education in contemporary propaganda, the mysterious processes of public institutions. Bringing these together to further our analysis and identify terms and themes, would constitute a next step.

Brief notes and questions on what’s been said applied to the local context (postcard to everyone)

Are we a periphery?

(Is there a center and a periphery or it’s just another colonial type of thinking?)

5th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art emphasizing discussions and public conferences because of lack of funding (is this and educational turn?)

How is it to be a curator in the country where doing anything is already something? (+ doing anything without stealing money, doing anything with stealing just a little money… By the way, is Pussy Riot’s dance in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior - art?)

(Can/should we critique Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, for example?)

What about capitalism? And the institutional critique?

Isn’t russian capitalism too young and too pervert for being critiqued ?

Marxists’ initiatives as an Open University in Saint-Petersburg stayed popular only in a particular «intellectual» cirles of two cities. How can we critique school (in a large sense) as a neocapitalist mechanism if it just doesn’t work? Seems like the first reaction on what’s going on is, on the contrary, aspiring to the better wester-like institutions that would work. (#coppuption, #test-like exams #unaccessibility of information #soviet type of thinking with a consideration of a russian context only #old materials). The MFA-not MFA USC scenario looks impossible here. Another form of the critique of capitalism is Kremlin’s opposition of Russia and the western world… (and it makes thing even more complicated. Can I critique western capitalism without becoming automatically pro-Kremlin?)

What is about guerrilla curatorial practices/ parainsisutional initiatives?

Why the Calvert Forum campagn of supporting «сreative industries» is seen as an absolute blessing? Maybe it is?

What is about alternative education initiatives here? Their ideological basis is not about making something absolutely new but rather responding to the absence of something. Upsala-circus invites young adolescents

to work on theatrical practices making an «alternative for their life on the streets» (с). Summercamps (as «Kamtchatka», «Polytech») aim to show that «another life is possible» (they make kids taste democracy, horizontal relation, dialogical education etc). Such things as Montessori schools exist but are seen mostly as something very marginal.

«Moral» education is part of and obligatory school curriculum (one of the options to fulfill this demand from the Ministry of Education is going to museums with kids). As the closest museum to my school was the Museum of Ethnography I spent 3 years learning how to paint russian folk ornaments. I hated it but there were no other options : it was obligatory). What can museums do?

And, by the way, art institutions do not consider community and neighbourhood.

Should they?

And what about art education? World history, foreign litterature and philosophy are not part of obligatory school curriculum. Some schools find their way to teach it and being in such a school is already a big priviledge. So what can be possible in terms of art education? Only filling on these enormous gaps in intellectual background, not a dialogue? (Hermitage school of art history presenting art in a very conventional way, Garage’s lectures, Pushkin museum’s lectures etc… ).

But when we think about these gaps made by years and years of Soviet Powet, aren’t we victimising ourselves? What is this objective truth that we need to learn in order to be on the same page with our foreign colleagues (and is it even possible?).

And again, are the open lectures education or not? Are they helpful?

Why Hermitage XX-XI is presenting its curatoirial choice as «contemporary art classics» (so that russians and Hermitage’s own exhibitions curriculim fill their gaps in contemporary art history), should they speak with such a snobbery? What is another way of acting in a country where every exhibition can be closed if someone sees in it a «homosexual propaganda» or

an «offence to the feelings religious people» © In a place where, when you express a sympathy for the feminism, you should expect to be called lesbian or at least «unsatisfied».

In 1919 Vladimir Lenin signed the Decree of the Soviet government “On eradication of illiteracy among the population of RSFSR” (aka Likbez).

According to this decree, all people from 8 to 50 years old were required to become literate in their native language. Even if the Likbez capaign ended in 1930, the word have survived. Because likbez is always with us.

Where should I go if I want to learn more?

What happens in art schools?

How can I find another schools-unschools?

What I was supposed to expect applying to V-A-C curatorial school and did I have the right to be dissapointed when we started our 1 week by writing the text from the point of view of the air and the dust and drawing a black square on the wall?

Also, how can we even possibly think about unlearning in such a context?

Do you have a question too?

Speaking about the turn, can turn be a re-turn?

With a good respect of culinary metaphors, notion of «discoursivity-ivity», feeling of nostalgia, hundreds of questions, a wish to learn more, share more and create «spaces for collective weirdness and joy» with «love, humility and faith in humankind», I want to launch series of Russian-based bruches so that we could return, read, speak and stay together.

So again is it an educational turn (since we are curators) or I just love good food and great people?

Details soon on : https://www.facebook.com/groups/4curatorial/ Love and thanks to everyone. It was a great and a very inspirational time for me, really.

Alexandra Khazina alekhazina@gmail.com

Maidan Open University

In a Turn, we turn away from something or someone, towards something else or around the other, it is we who are in motion, not it or them, to speak of a Turn can be reductive, and exclusive, but also generative and differentiating.

A ‘curatorialisation’ of education is more than a mere turn. This refers us both to a complete re-orientation of practice through the widespread adoption of discursivity as a mode of ‘production’ and the convergence of various rhetorics of process, emergence and non-instrumentalism from both critical curating and critical pedagogies. Central to this re-orientation is a re-distribution of the sensory and interpretive economy whereby moments of production and relay are no longer positioned according to the logic of radical separation between moments of experience, consumption, reflection, interpretation, critique, action, agency and so forth.

From Moscow With Love & Power An interview with Mateusz Sapija by Maria Kramar I want to start from my little explanation about my personal educational turn because it was a challenge for me to show you, to involve you in some participatory practices that are well-known for me, traditional, Russian, religious, famous, academic. It is a really complicated issue for young generation of Russians because of state propaganda and church propaganda, thus we have such attitude, or at least I have such attitude to avoid it. It was not basically my main goal or agenda but after 3 weeks I realised I did share with you some local experience and I want to discuss the educational turn to check your feedback and impressions and to set even my own perception. So first of all, what was from all places I’ve showed you the most extraordinary, impressive, striking (any places, not only museums)?

I think in general, the sculpture museum. Tsereteli Museum is a very unique institution like celebration of megalomania, and it is bigger than The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts with impressionist and post-impressionist collection. This place in general I was very impressed by what they have there. I think there are many places in Moscow that impressed me or I was curious about.

The VDNKH park (at least the park which I’ve seen where the Museum of Astronautics is), the Lenin’s Mausoleum even though it was your first time as well.

I think I never participate in sort of political para religious ritual.

And you know there is a free entrance, do you? I just found out on it today. So all my life I thought they are about making money from that museum.

I think they are loosing a lot of money on it. I mean thats kinda icon of Moscow, isn’t it? Or Russia in general, at least for western point of view, let’s say so. I mean as a polish person maybe everyone has it and sometimes it is stronger, sometimes it is weaker - you come with the certain baggage of expectations and knowledge when you go to Russia. Is this satisfied answer? The Tsereteli museum was the best. His persona and everything that you said about him and his story and connections and projects in general, this is mind-blowing.

Or actually there is another place - the Christopher Columbus- Peter the First.

That statue is probably one of my favorite in Moscow.

Why? Because the story is hilarious man. And then you told me about Tsereteli himself.

And the Peter-Columbus we’ve seen in first day and Tsereteli museum was at the last day, so you started from Tsereteli and finished by him as well. Also, at very beginning I showed you the bas-reliefs on the front of The Cathedral of Christ the Saviour that was made also by Zurab Tsereteli. I heard that original bas-reliefs were made from plastic.

Yeah. I wonder what is happened with those plastic.

Maybe it is in special floor in Tsereteli museum?

Special museum for the VIP. The National Museum in Doha is the only in the world I know that has landing platform for helicopters and I think this should be Tsereteli next move. Host the viewers. Imagine, Tsereteli propose one of his projects to the government, I would love to be here. “This hand is 10 meters.

And big like this. This is just a nail.”

Man you won’t believe that. Guess who, guess where and guess what.

The biggest statue of Christ. In my hometown Vladivostok. By Himself.

Sorry to inform you, but the highest statue of christ on earth is OURS (Świebodzin).

It was. But wait for the King’s move. It is in progress and will be the largest. But nice try.

What about Jewish museum man? Were the 5D-history of Holy Land and Holocaust on iPads impressive?

I think it is very interesting and funny that we have the same museum in Warsaw.

Is it commercial or state?

It is like non-government organisation, foundation of this museum was created

by Polish and international Jewish community. But I think they implied the same version of museums and I wouldn’t be surprised if there would be another one

looking kinda the same.

So you’ve seen this exhibition before?

Yeah. Now it is happening in Russia but there is additional activity 5D installation. In Warsaw the building itself is nice and big, and for the exhibition itself you need at least three hours to go there. That was interesting. And at the night this part of Moscow of Moscow as well.

What part of Moscow?

You showed me the Dostoevsky Hospital and told me the story about Napoleon troops in there. We’ve seen the square, the star-shape theatre. I would like to go there.

Theatre of Soviet Army. Yeah, it wasn’t in my curatorial discursive programme, accidental night walking though. The Tretyakov gallery for me was sort of challenge as well because I’ve been there like 6 or 7 times and that was very solid visiting, so I tried to find something new for myself there, some unexplored content, some hidden parts etc. So, what I’ve researched is basically similar images made by international students of 4th Moscow Summer School. The interesting fact about Tretyakov gallery is that you took the same photo as I did, moreover you did the same image as Laura Tammen, even two photos as her. This is nice, I’m going to show this photos with the interview.

This is fuckin unbelivielable. This is blowing my mind. I don’t even want to talk about this, this connection man. I will never look at her the same in my all life.

And you can take a sound from in front of this picture from Anton as well. The Tretyakov gallery is great. Great collection.

So I was looking for some stuff that I’m thinking about regarding a project that I’m doing. Probably the part of the museum which was most interesting for me is the period between 1950-s, half 1950-s - 1970-s -80-s. Or that was something that I didn’t know and I find it is very interesting - general the notion of Cosmos, Cold War, certain things. The story that Alisa Taezhnaya told us that on one of that paintings with Stalin and his friend there is a missing part of banister. This is interesting, did you see that? And obviously social realism appears in Polish art quite strongly but here it takes longer, uptill now probably, propaganda traditions. Another interesting thing for me was that shop you showed me that sells Stalin stuff, the small busts of Stalin and you have to

know it is against the law to have this in Poland.

The next cultural spot is the Museum of Astronautics. What did you find there?

In general I’m interested in space conquer and also the rhetoric about it, so I think Russia is one of the most interesting places obviously. So I went to the Cosmonautics museum. It was nice. Lots of people. Lots of rockets. The documentation most in Russian. There lots of stuff about people who actually stood behind this programme and I think I would like to know more about that.

What about the dog you told me they lied about? So Belka and Strelka came back alive, it is true but Laika didn’t.

They did kind of lie. It was sort of misunderstanding. Yeah, after 73 dogs as you told me 2 managed to survive, what about other 71 dog? Why the story is not there? This is really upsetting, they were far from volunteering. What I can imagine most of the people who went to the Space and even died doing those missions were kinda volunteers. And I strongly believe that dogs are not so much into space missions.

That was experimental programme man.

Yeah I understand that knowledge was not so developed, they had to sacrifice someone but we are on stage when we can openly acknowledge the fact, and also their contribution to the history. So that upset me. Laika has a monument, somewhere in Russia, i know that. Maybe other animals should be there listed somehow. That could be interesting to explain it properly because museum itself is not only about the rocket we had sent first, but now we can think about it in more critical way.

Maria Kramar image from Tretyakov gallery

Mateusz Sapija images from Tretyakov Gallery and Museum of Astronautics

Laura Tammen images from Tretyakov Gallery and Museum of Astronautics

4th Moscow Curatorial Summer School