Art-Ovrag 2012. Tower

In 2012 the Vyksa festival of a new culture Art-Ovrag united artists, musicians, dancers and other performers in the public areas, converting the town into a unique open art-space. As a catalyzer of creative energy, the upcoming festival aims at forming a new attitude towards the known things which is achieved trough transformation of urban environment, combination of various art-forms and creation of inspiring information-saturated atmosphere.

The curators of the new public-art project focused on changing the urban appearance by creating specific art-objects at the background of the unique architecture of the town.

The town of Vyksa, known as historic centre where Vladimir Shukhov, one of the leading avant-garde architects used to work, is now a powerful range for creative activity. The water-tower, built by Shukhov for the Vyksa Metallurgic Plant (VMZ), represents the design and construction methods, which have been developed in the works of such widely-known architects, as Buckminster Fuller, Norman Foster, Ken Shuttlewoth, Michael Hopkins.

Thus, the Shukhov Tower becomes the symbol of the new festival, which attracts both well-known and young artists who will present their own mock-ups and designs to incorporate the structure of Tower as a site-specific art-object into the urban environment.

Alongside with architectural projects, the festival will present works by various art genres and trends, as well as a serious of art labs and workshops. Among the presenters of the master-classes there will be well-known artists, architects, video- and sound- artists and art-scientists.

Apart from the experimental architecture objects in urban space, public-art installations and modern sculpture, video-art and video-mapping, the festival will feature the works by street-art painters, musicians and dancers. Another novelty of the festival Art-Ovrag 2012 will be a separate block, dedicated to the street-fashion art.

The idea the festival was conceived by its curators as a ground for artistic fusion of the two artistic processes – the time of the Russian avant-garde of the early 1900-s and contemporary actual art of the beginning of the XXI century. Proceeding from the terms of the Decree №1 by Russian futurists Vladimir Mayakovsky, Vassily Kamensky and David Burluk, published in the “Futurists’ Journal” in 1918, the organizers of the festival seek to create a cultural dialogue between these two periods, which have so much in common.

Concept

Decree #1 on the Democratization of Art (the hoarding of literature and the painting on streets) Comrades and citizens, we, the leaders of Russian futurism – the revolutionary art of youth – declare:

1. From this day forward, with the abolition of tsardom, the domicile of art in the closets and sheds of human genius – palaces, galleries, salons, libraries, theaters — is abrogated.

2. In the name of the great march of equality for all, as far as culture is concerned, let the Free Word of creative personality be written on the corners of walls, fences, roofs, the streets of our cities and villages, on the backs of automobiles, carriages, streetcars, and on the clothes of all citizens.

3. Let pictures (colors) be thrown, like colored rainbows, across streets and squares, from house to house, delighting, ennobling the eye (taste) of the passer-by. Artists and writers have the immediate duty to get hold of their pots of paint and, with their masterly brushes, to illuminate, to paint all the sides, foreheads, and chests of cities, railway stations, and the evergalloping herds of railway carriages.

From now on, let the citizen walking down the street enjoy at every moment the depths of thought of his great contemporaries, let him absorb the flowery gaudiness of this day’s beautiful joy, let him listen to music — the melody, the roar, the buzz — of excellent composers everywhere. Let the streets be a feast of art for all.

And if all this comes to pass, in accordance with our word, everyone who goes out into the street will grow to be a giant and in wisdom, contemplating beauty instead of the present-day streets with their iron books (signboards), where every page has been written on their signs by greed, the lust for mammon, calculated meanness and low obtuseness, all of which soil the soul and offend the eye. “All art—to all the people!” The initial pasting up of the poems and hanging of pictures will take place in Moscow on the day our journal is published,

Mayakovsky, Kamensky, Burlluk. (from the “Futurists’ Journal”. — М., march 15, 1918)

The futurists’ slogan “Let the streets be a feast of art for all” clearly overlaps with the slogan of the new festival “Make Art out of your Street”. The festival of a new culture Art-Ovrah 2012 unite young street-artist with the key-figures of the Russian avant-garde – Shukhov, Mayakovsky and the others. The fusion of the two huge creative streams will find itself in the new street-poetry and daring creations of young architects, who have draw inspiration from the works of great Masters of Constructivism. Alongside with the works of contemporary street-artists, the site of the festival will feature art-projects by the Masters of contemporary architecture Lorennzo Fernandez-Ordonez, Olga Frindlyandt, Peter Franck and Dimitry Alexeev, as well as the artists Dmitry Parkhunov, Alexander Lysov, Yanina Chenikh and others. Some conferences and workshops by famous foreign architects Peter Cook, Thomas Nugent and other street- art experts, art historians and representatives of Moscow art institutions will also take place at the site of the festival, as part of educational program.