Norilsk Substance 2015-2019
Biomorphic, perforated with a myriad of holes and cuts, and with a heart pierced by a different sort of active material, it is an elastic dark substance composed of numerous figures of people. Its movements are similar to the inching along of an earthworm, segments of which stretch and elongate or compress into folded wrinkles.
The tens of thousands of prisoners sent to harness Norilsk's deposits, as well as the several generations of paid staff working there today, have dug endless labyrinths of underground mines. The scale is staggering. The manmade machinery and production systems permeating the entire city and many kilometers below it compel the imagination to build everything visible into an enormous three-dimensional substance, a living mixture of industrial and organic elements.
The installation's upper part is a solid transparent surface, out of which come bright streams of colored liquid. They spread out and then merge downward, turning into a dirty liquid that drenches the lower layers.
This essentially absurd and tragic cycle of forces and materials never stops, not even for a minute. At the level of everyday thinking, we all understand that we are built into a single system of material relationships. But within our involvement with the series of daily events we see that this is only a representation of an abstract fantasy. Being in such a giant mechanism that feeds our "reality" with the life-giving milk of precious metals, you feel how monstrous and uniquely beautiful this utopia is.
Kawarga
The tens of thousands of prisoners sent to harness Norilsk's deposits, as well as the several generations of paid staff working there today, have dug endless labyrinths of underground mines. The scale is staggering. The manmade machinery and production systems permeating the entire city and many kilometers below it compel the imagination to build everything visible into an enormous three-dimensional substance, a living mixture of industrial and organic elements.
The installation's upper part is a solid transparent surface, out of which come bright streams of colored liquid. They spread out and then merge downward, turning into a dirty liquid that drenches the lower layers.
This essentially absurd and tragic cycle of forces and materials never stops, not even for a minute. At the level of everyday thinking, we all understand that we are built into a single system of material relationships. But within our involvement with the series of daily events we see that this is only a representation of an abstract fantasy. Being in such a giant mechanism that feeds our "reality" with the life-giving milk of precious metals, you feel how monstrous and uniquely beautiful this utopia is.
Kawarga
Gerda Széplaky
NORILSK.
The title of Dmitry Kawarga`s installation refers to one of the most uninhabitable cities of the world. Norilsk and the road leading to the city was build between 1935 and 1956 costing the life of more than 17.000 people - sent to Gulag; the concentration camp being operated until 1979. Moreover the city was built on permafrost: the buildings are producing a lot of heat that fastens the erosion, of which victims become themselves, many houses beeing abandoned in life threatening condition. The weather conditions are unbearable in this panel city of Siberia, beyond the northern arctic circle, being covered with snow for more than 250 days per year, there are even minus 50 degrees, and for more than six weeks a year the sun does not rise, this two month-long night is ousted by UV lamps and solariums.
In addition Norilsk is one of the most polluted cities of the world: a smog composed by dust and very fine radioactive isotopes settles for about 42 times a year above the city, in the meantime there are around 20-28 times a year acid rains and gas clouds forming upon the city and its inhabitants.
NORILSK.
The title of Dmitry Kawarga`s installation refers to one of the most uninhabitable cities of the world. Norilsk and the road leading to the city was build between 1935 and 1956 costing the life of more than 17.000 people - sent to Gulag; the concentration camp being operated until 1979. Moreover the city was built on permafrost: the buildings are producing a lot of heat that fastens the erosion, of which victims become themselves, many houses beeing abandoned in life threatening condition. The weather conditions are unbearable in this panel city of Siberia, beyond the northern arctic circle, being covered with snow for more than 250 days per year, there are even minus 50 degrees, and for more than six weeks a year the sun does not rise, this two month-long night is ousted by UV lamps and solariums.
In addition Norilsk is one of the most polluted cities of the world: a smog composed by dust and very fine radioactive isotopes settles for about 42 times a year above the city, in the meantime there are around 20-28 times a year acid rains and gas clouds forming upon the city and its inhabitants.
Thus more than 100,000 people live here, despite the serious pollution, that causes death rate of respiratory diseases 15,8% higher, of canser diseases 37% higher, of spontaneous miscarriage and early infant death 21,6% higher than in other regions of Russia. For all these there is one explanation, the profit: as Norilsk has the biggest raw material site of the world.
The biggest employer of the city, Norilsk Nickel is among the richest 50 companies of the world; under the kingdom of the eternal ice there is a precious metal property valued up to 2 billion tons. From the Russian city and its surroundings comes the 38% of all palladium production of the world, 22% of all nickel and platinum, besides the company extracts gold, silver, cobalt and iridium, too. Thanks to the huge raw material content and profit the Norilsk Nickel is paying three times the average Russian wage and is giving 95 days of paid leave - it is true that this on cost of the death of 40 miners per year. In 2001 Moscow has declared the city a forbidden zone for foreigners.
MONUMENT OF DISTRUCTION
Introduction
The work of the Moscow based artist is introducing us the symbol of distruction, the forbidden zone, Norilsk, commemorating the people who died here, the bodies and buildings in corrosion, the poisoned environment. More precisely he is not commemorating them, but rather is showing us a place, that is in the center of our contamporary human civilization, although it was established on the periphery, on the borders beyond impossible. This city is the symptom of the idea of capitalism, that is exploiting as complete as possible the resources, not bearing responsability neither for the environment, or in a bigger perspective for the survival of the Earth, nor for the direct lives of the people.
Introduction
The work of the Moscow based artist is introducing us the symbol of distruction, the forbidden zone, Norilsk, commemorating the people who died here, the bodies and buildings in corrosion, the poisoned environment. More precisely he is not commemorating them, but rather is showing us a place, that is in the center of our contamporary human civilization, although it was established on the periphery, on the borders beyond impossible. This city is the symptom of the idea of capitalism, that is exploiting as complete as possible the resources, not bearing responsability neither for the environment, or in a bigger perspective for the survival of the Earth, nor for the direct lives of the people.
Dmitry Kawarga is a well known figure of the Russian contemporary art, at the same time he is one of the most important representative of ecologically committed art. In this work he draws attention to the disaster that can be expected by the humankind, and that commonly is called as climate change. Kawarga steps out of the generality of abstract discourse when he is indicating a concrete cause and its consequences. However his pointing is made by so powerful artistic gestures, that inavitably a more general sensation of threat is unfolding for the viewer. Many works of Kawarga are speaking about the environmental pollution as a poison emitted by the technological civilization itself. The objects produced by 3D print of the Toxicity-series are all "utopian monuments" of an ecoapocalypse. Monuments, that are on the one hand archives of the accumulation, and as such they are carrying - crumpled and amassed as garbage - the tangible and human relics of a dying culture; on the other hand they are drawing up the vision of a future civilization, that goes beyond human. Peter Sloterdijk, a German philosopher is calling 'Anthropocene era' the era that started with the industrial revolution, that first exceeds, then destroys the human values.
The works of Kawarga are the most unsettling artistic reflections of the Anthropocene: in his nonform compositions we can observe a continuous transition between organic forms (mostly human heads and distorted body parts), futuristic geometrical forms that express the technological transition, as well as inhuman forms without humans, more precisely biomorf diformity. With his vision of posthuman turn the Russian artist does not predict the end of the world, but another threatening world, in which humans can appear only as ghosts.
The Norilsk Substance kinetic installation can be conceived as science art as well as biogenic art or just as a sculpture - by the multiple use of materials and techniques it is on the verge of genres. But more important than classification is its narrative written by performative spectacle: the dark gray, moving substance does not form a single stone block, its surface is fragmented by cuts and hollows. Inside it evoces not just a simple cave but rather am excavated, devastated, eroded, hollowed structure of the Earth, we see splitted spurs, on top of them forms that remind us of human figures - "traces of memories" of people who sacrificed their lives, engravings of suffering, pain, destruction. The plastic sheet above the moving stone block can be interpreted as a protecting shield of the ozone layer, but this sheet is also broken: the liquids ejected from the inside of the stone block, which indicate to poisons because of their vivid colours, are penetrating the sheet, are melting down, scrolling off, and are slowly covering everything.
The work of Kawarga represents the end of the human civilization. More precisely - using the term of Timothy Morton - it represents the dark ecology, in which life is already distructing itself, and in which human is just debris. Although life is present in this dark ecology, it has nothing to do with human values, culture, with forms of thinking, with any organic forms that could be identified with the biological existence and the human ecosphere. The landscape object of distruction, the essence of Norilsk is not only witnessing the horrid homelessness, but the complete absence of the notion of home, human feelings, desires and any forms of knowledge.
«Nadezhda – The Hope Principle»
Artistic perspectives on Russian industrial cities
Curators: Simon Mraz (Austrian Cultural Forum Moscow), Nicolaus Schafhausen (Kunsthalle Wien)
Artistic perspectives on Russian industrial cities
Curators: Simon Mraz (Austrian Cultural Forum Moscow), Nicolaus Schafhausen (Kunsthalle Wien)
Norilsk Substance 2015
On June 25, 1935, the people's commissar for internal affairs, Genrikh Yagoda, signed a secret edict, number 00239, to commission the construction of a nickel factory in Norilsk and, for this purpose, ordered the establishment of an associated prison labor camp, Norillag.
Norilsk's first open-pit mine, Coal Creek, was opened in 1940, and at the Minor Metallurgical Plant the first matte – an intermediate in the production of non-ferrous metals – was obtained and in 1942 the first nickel.
Norillag was closed upon an order by the Soviet Union's Ministry of Internal Affairs on August 22, 1956. Approximately 300,000 prisoners had been to the camp. Today the population of Norilsk is about 176,600.
The mines at the Talnakhskoye deposit extend for 12 kilometers, but the total area of development exceeds 450 kilometers, some 150 kilometers longer than the Moscow subway system.
From the local ores, the enterprises of Norilsk Nickel extract nickel, copper, cobalt, gold, silver, platinum, iridium, selenium, palladium, ruthenium, osmium and tellurium. The October mine is the largest in the country and accounts for 40 percent of the total volume of the concern's extracted ore. More than 150 million tons of ore have been extracted at the mine.
The mine's planned work force comprises about 3,000 people and its workable depth exceeds 1,200 meters. Norilsk Nickel's production volume of nickel in the first half of 2015 was more than 130,000 tons, palladium – 1.35 million ounces, and platinum – 339,000 ounces.
Norilsk's first open-pit mine, Coal Creek, was opened in 1940, and at the Minor Metallurgical Plant the first matte – an intermediate in the production of non-ferrous metals – was obtained and in 1942 the first nickel.
Norillag was closed upon an order by the Soviet Union's Ministry of Internal Affairs on August 22, 1956. Approximately 300,000 prisoners had been to the camp. Today the population of Norilsk is about 176,600.
The mines at the Talnakhskoye deposit extend for 12 kilometers, but the total area of development exceeds 450 kilometers, some 150 kilometers longer than the Moscow subway system.
From the local ores, the enterprises of Norilsk Nickel extract nickel, copper, cobalt, gold, silver, platinum, iridium, selenium, palladium, ruthenium, osmium and tellurium. The October mine is the largest in the country and accounts for 40 percent of the total volume of the concern's extracted ore. More than 150 million tons of ore have been extracted at the mine.
The mine's planned work force comprises about 3,000 people and its workable depth exceeds 1,200 meters. Norilsk Nickel's production volume of nickel in the first half of 2015 was more than 130,000 tons, palladium – 1.35 million ounces, and platinum – 339,000 ounces.
The work of Kawarga represents the end of the human civilization. More precisely - using the term of Timothy Morton - it represents the dark ecology, in which life is already distructing itself, and in which human is just debris. Although life is present in this dark ecology, it has nothing to do with human values, culture, with forms of thinking, with any organic forms that could be identified with the biological existence and the human ecosphere. The landscape object of distruction, the essence of Norilsk is not only witnessing the horrid homelessness, but the complete absence of the notion of home, human feelings, desires and any forms of knowledge.
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BAZIS contemporary CENTRUL DE INTERES
Fabricii de Chibrituri 9/A, 4th floor, Cluj-Napoca
I finally twigged that the show's Nadezhda title was sarcastic, and that Mraz was targeting the hopelessness of Russia's industrialized excess. Dominating the hall was Norilsk Substance by Dmitry Kawarga: a grungy mass of twisted grey and black rags and tubing, symbolizing the 280 miles of tunnelling at Norilsk in northern Siberia – a 'closed city' until as recently as 2001 whose mine, as Kawarga specified in an accompanying note, was worked by 300,000 Gulag inmates. Kawarga's shambling monstrosity, about the size of a small car, was topped by a whimsical plastic roof and lent unusual colour by orange wire and turquoise rods.
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A MOSCOW MIRED IN MEMORIES
Simon Hewitt, reports on the Russian Contemporary Art scene in the wake of his recent visit to the Moscow and Ural Biennales November 12 2015 (eng)
Культурный атташе посольства Австрии Симон Мраз и директор венского Кунстхалле Николаус Шафхаузен (по совместительству — сокуратор нынешней биеннале в Москве) сделали выставку о семи индустриальных центрах современной России. В каждый город отправлялась делегация наших и западных художников.
Славна история советского завода, много в ней нюансов — и принудительный труд заключенных, и рекордные сроки, и попытки с нуля организовать инфраструктуру для трудящихся. В вопросах пропаганды советское строительство первых пятилеток тоже достигло исключительных высот. Легендарная книга 1939 года про Беломорканал начинается со статьи Горького о перевоспитании обитателей Белбалтлага. Это изумительно подробный аргумент в пользу принудительного труда, и суть его в том, чтобы взять масштаб покрупнее.
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Славна история советского завода, много в ней нюансов — и принудительный труд заключенных, и рекордные сроки, и попытки с нуля организовать инфраструктуру для трудящихся. В вопросах пропаганды советское строительство первых пятилеток тоже достигло исключительных высот. Легендарная книга 1939 года про Беломорканал начинается со статьи Горького о перевоспитании обитателей Белбалтлага. Это изумительно подробный аргумент в пользу принудительного труда, и суть его в том, чтобы взять масштаб покрупнее.
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Заводы вне себя
"Надежда" на Трехгорной мануфактуре
Логика экспозиции развивается между двумя полюсами, обозначенными двумя значительными скульптурными объектами — Ирины Кориной на авансцене выставочного пространства и Дмитрия Каварги в его глубине. Первый, выполненный, как всегда у Кориной, из подручных, дешевых материалов вроде профнастила, рождает ассоциации с советской монументальной пластикой конца 1960-х (равно как и острое желание немедленно выставить рядом пионерский почетный караул), при этом оказывается странно близок стилистике ар-деко. Второй — характерная для Каварги биоформа, руинированная и разъеденная сочащейся из нее ядовито-зеленой и алой жидкостями. Так символически поданы начало и конец надежды. Чтобы пройти между этими двумя полюсами «Надежды», зрителю надо совершить путь по коридорам и череде комнат...
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Два полюса «Надежды»
Художники исследуют феномен российских индустриальных городов
