still from The Mirror (1975) dir. Andrey Tarkovsky

Excerpt from a letter, from a daughter who had just recently seen the film, to her mother:

‘ . . . How many words does a person know?’ she asks her mother.

‘How many does he use in his everyday vocabulary? One hundred, two, three? We wrap our feelings up in words, try to express in words sorrow and joy and any sort of emotion, the very things that can’t in fact be expressed. Romeo uttered beautiful words to Juliet, vivid, expressive words, but they surely didn’t say even half of what made his heart feel as if it was ready to jump out of his chest, and stopped him breathing, and made Juliet forget everything except her love?

‘There’s another kind of language, another form of communication: by means of feeling, and images. That is the contact that stops people being separated from each other, that brings down barriers. Will, feeling, emotion—these remove obstacles from between people who otherwise stand on opposite sides of a mirror, on opposite sides of a door. . . . The frames of the screen move out, and the world which used to be partitioned off comes into us, becomes something real . . . And this doesn’t happen through little Audrey, it’s Tarkovsky himself addressing the audience directly, as they sit on the other side of the screen. There’s no death, there is immortality. Time is one and undivided, as it says in one of the poems. “At the table are great-grandfathers and grandchildren . . .”Actually Mum, I’ve taken the film entirely from an emotional angle, but I’m sure there could be a different way of looking at it. What about you? Do write and tell me please . . .’

from Sculpting in Time by Andrey Tarkovsky

As researchers, academics, para-academics, teachers and artists, we rarely have time to meet and share our experiences, talk shop and compare notes about what we are working on, especially the tricky projects that are not easily classified as one sort of activity. This is why I was motivated to organize a get together with some of my favorite researchers, artists and geographers, next week in London. I can’t wait to see what everyone has to share!

Archiving the City is coming to London!

From February 26 – 28, The University of Westminster School of Architecture and the Built Environment is hosting a conference called: Within the Limits of Scarcity: Rethinking Space, City and Practices.

The conference is organized as part of a new multi-university initiative called Scarcity and Creativity in the Built Environment (SCIBE), and is focused on bringing together thinkers from around the world to explore how conditions of scarcity in urban areas might prompt creative responses from designers, architects, planners and how “design-led actions” might improve the conditions of living in cities.

Keynote speakers are Jeremy Till, Ole Bouman, Camillo Boano, Pier Vittorio Aureli, Erik Swyngedouw & Ana Paula Baltazar.

I will be presenting a paper on Wednesday, Feb 28, called “We must begin to build for ourselves a city in which we want to live.” Most of the Wednesday program focuses on design & urbanism in Eastern Europe during the socialist and post-socialist eras, and also features interesting papers from Christina E. Crawford, Michael Klein, Mejrema Zatric and Sante Simone.

The full conference program, is now available. The conference is free and open to the public, and you may register online. 

During the winter and spring of 2011-12 residents of Moscow and Saint Petersburg went into the streets en masse for the first time in 20 years, demanding change in the regime of political and social inequality associated with the great imbalances of wealth in their country. As a response to the massive movements in the streets and on the Internet, the Russian government, in the form of the security forces and the parliament, began a brutal crackdown on all dissent. New laws criminalizing almost any public gathering as unauthorized political rallies and increasing the fines for participation in such gatherings 150-fold, along with parliamentary proposals to monitor and shut down internet service providers delivering ‘offensive’ content, are all intended to freeze movement and quell political unrest. However, there are unintended results of such inequitable uses of power: instead of freezing any specific movement, the entire field of action is activated. In such a tense, electrified field, one small action can precipitate lighting strikes in response.

It was into this newly electrified field that I arrived in October 2011, invited to Moscow and Saint Petersburg to collaborate with architects, sociologists, and activists committed to DIY methods for reclaiming urban development at the grassroots level. In Russia, as I soon discovered, discussion of urban development, architectural preservation and ‘community building’ are often the aesthetic surrogates for more dangerous political arguments. Wealth and political inequality are more than ever expressed in the ability to control these discussions. In fact, in a turn eerily reminiscent of life during the Soviet era, inequality in Russian cities is often evidenced by the (in)ability to simply go out of one’s home and gather together with fellow citizens.

In collaboration with a group of Moscow-based “urban hacktivists,” Partizaning.org, I developed a concept for working with the new momentum for grassroots-level change in both cities. Operating on the principle that change begins in small movements, with simple communion between strangers, I asked: Could people, barred from meeting outside, claim as public the intimate space of the home? Working in urban districts in which residents feared the loss of their homes to new regimes of luxury real estate development, I organized Sociological Party Marathons. Strangers from different parts of the city met at a predetermined point. Bringing food and drink, these strangers asked to enter the homes of local residents, to sit, have a party, and learn intimate aspects of their relationship with the area. What emerged among participants in these gatherings and subsequent workshops was a new understanding of how people perceive inequality between neighbors. The form of the party-marathon suggested both the fun and freedom of the carnival and the structured exhaustion and euphoria of an athletic race through a city. The concept demanded a great deal of trust between strangers, and courage to make public the most restricted spaces in Russian cities. As one participant who balked at the prospect of ringing a stranger’s doorbell remarked: “this boundary is the most important in a Russian’s life.”

In a recent article about the international contemporary art exhibition dOCUMENTA (13), which features artistic projects that employ research methodology, artist and sociologist, Hakan Topal, asks:

How is so-called artistic research different than an ethnographic account by an anthropologist who employs visual research tools? Can art practice address urgent socio-political topics successfully?

He goes on to explain what he believes is the value of artistic research:

In contrast to any scientific model that aims to either explain, or interpret social or natural phenomena, the outcome of artistic research can be best measured by its ability to engage with seemingly unrelated matters, things and concepts, and in return with its ability to generate some forms of intelligible affects.

Topal also points out an important aspect of artistic research practice: the practical use of intuition.

When an artist enters into a social realm to conduct research, intuition allows her/him to generate in-situ knowledge, therefore a particularly practical intellectual opening. In this regard, in artistic research, more so than any other scientific exploration, intuition is utilized as a method to identify a wide range of modalities.

Check out the complete article here.

Moscow may be a land-locked city, but it is flooded with waterways, which have played an important historical role. For example, the waterways acted as natural barriers against siege, and isolated some sections of the city from others. Traditionally, as the city expanded, new settlements sprung up along waterways. Today waterways are not often used in most residents’ everyday lives, yet they continue to mark the city’s psychic boundaries.

As part of the project, “City of Islands within Islands,” I decided to draw a map of Mosocw’s secret waterways as a kind of layered treasure map. The goal was to draw out some of the city’s psychic boundaries.

Drawing became an important part of my research process in Moscow, and not only because I was working with architects, who draw quite a bit. In his recent book concerning drawings he made in his fieldwork notebooks, anthropologist Michael Taussig discusses what drawing might mean for the researcher:

To draw is to apply pen to paper. But to draw is also to pull on some thread, pulling it out of its knotted tangle of skein, and we also speak of drawing water from a well… Drawing is thus a depicting, a hauling, an unravelling, and being impelled toward something or somebody.

The map is created in two layers and techniques. The top layer is a pencil drawing on tracing paper, and the second layer is a collage, made from appropriated comic books. The collage-comic is drawn as a conversation between an anthropologist and an artist. The work describes my art/research process, and the challenge of entering into a completely foreign city. How to find the secret language of a city in which one is stranger?

For me, the process of drawing became necessary to address the issue that social scientists often keep hidden, even from themselves, namely: the sneaking suspicion that ‘objects’ as complex, and all-consuming as ‘the city’ can never be actually ‘known,’ fully captured, apprehended or comprehended–especially not by our relatively weak methods.  As Taussig goes on to suggest:

The drawings come across as fragments that are suggestive of a world that does not have to be explicitly recorded and is in fact all the more “complete” because it cannot be completed.

The winter of 2011-2012 marked a tense and exciting period in Moscow. For the first time since 1991, people entered the streets en masse to demand change in their government. During this period, I went for walks in the streets of the city with its residents. “City of Islands within Islands,” a ‘samizdat’ (Soviet-era ‘do-it-yourself’ pamphlet for the clandestine distribution of prohibited texts) , contains written ‘images’ which act as a record of those walks. Each English language text contains its Russian mirror.

The samizdat was produced in a series of 15 folders like the one pictured above.  Each folder contains 28 sheets of paper. English text is printed in black on white paper and Russian text is printed in black on translucent tracing paper. All English to Russian translations were done by Valentina Moskaleva.

You can read samples of these texts here and here.

Lunch in the mezzanine gallery of a bar long past its prime, free to rest in its memories of the wild nineteen nighties: Ruben’s hand elegantly holding a cigarette, his upturned chin pointing away from the table to exhale, as he speaks to us out of the side of his mouth. He tells the story of a scar on his leg, a mark of an attack only narrowly survived. At fifteen this architect’s son is beaten and stabbed on a walk with a friend through his own neighborhood by two men: one recently released from prison and the other, a veteran of the Chechen war. The men do not rob the boys, and only this small indentation in his leg remains. It is hard to see this scar, so I look at the smoke escaping his lips, as he smoothes his impeccable sweater.

Life in Moscow is fragile, I say in my imitation Russian accent: I feel myself here very close to death. Ruben laughs and nods.

Кризис

Ланч в галерее бара начинался, сопровождаемый воспоминаниями о диких 90х годах: рука Рубена элегантно держала сигарету, его опущенный подбородок не был обращен к столу и он почти шептал, разговаривая с нами. Он рассказывал историю появления шрама на своей ноге, единственно выжившей отметине о нападении на него. Когда ему было 15, он, сын архитектора, вместе со своим другом  был побит и исполосован ножом собственными соседями, двумя мужчинами, один из которых недавно вышел из тюрьмы а второй оказался ветераном чеченской войны. Мужчины не ограбили мальчиков, оставив лишь небольшое напоминание о себе на ноге. Было трудно увидеть этот шрам, поэтому я смотрела как дым выходит из его рта,в то время как он поглаживал свой безукоризненный свитер.

Жизнь в Москве такая хрупкая, сказала я, имитируя русский акцент: здесь я чувствую себя очень близко к смерти. Рубен смеётся и кивает.

The mid-day ride from the airport is long, Moscow’s infamous traffic jams trapping us in a spiral crawl towards the center. The small taxi carries me and Carlos, Dan, our enthusiastic local guide, the portly driver, almost toothless, looking a decade older than his likely middle age and as much luggage as our flight from New York would allow. As we slide into the side streets of the city center leading to our new home, our car confronts a larger, sleeker black vehicle, approaching from the opposite direction. There is some confusion about who has the right of way in the narrow street. The cars cannot pass each other, and yet the larger car continues to approach, rain trickling down its tinted windshield. Our driver stops with a shrug, refusing to budge. Three men exit the car approaching our taxi in ‘>’ formation. They have wide faces, laced with menace of a natural kind—a set of jaw and brow impossible to gain without a deep experience of violence.  The leader, dressed all in black walks to our driver’s window. He is holding a large gun, a sawed-off shotgun, butt-end up, with the barrel partly covered in a black fabric sheath. A few quiet words are exchanged, and our car begins to back slowly out of the block, followed closely on foot by one of the gunman’s colleagues who locks eyes with our driver, waving us back with languid flicks of his wrist.

In this moment I am very quiet. Dan is quiet and as Carlos moves to speak, Oh my God, did you see–, I silence him. There is nothing to say.

Полуденная поездка из аэропорта  невыносимо долгая, печально известные московские пробки поймали нас в свои сети где-то около центра. Маленькое такси везёт меня и Карлоса, Дэна, нашего местного энтузиаста-гида, дородного водителя, почти беззубого, выглядящего на 10 лет старше своего предположительно среднего возраста и столько багажа, сколько позволили нам взять с собой в полет в аэропорту Нью-Йорка. Скользя по переулкам центра города, ведущим нас к нашему дому,  наше такси столкнулась с большой блестящей автомашиной, которая появилась на встречной полосе. Так как мы ехали по узкой улице, у нас было определённого плана преимущества на дорогу, поэтому мы немного удивились.  Машины не могли проехать мимо друг друга, и пока бОльшая по размеру машина приближалась, дождь стекал по её тонированному лобовому стеклу. Наш водитель, пожав плечами, остановился, отказываясь пропускать машину и двигаться в сторону. Три человека, выйдя из машины, подошли к нашему такси в ‘>’ построении. У них были широкие лица, на которых выражалась настоящая угроза – их челюсти и брови отражали большой опыт в жестокости своих хозяев. Главный, одетый во всё черное, подошел к окну нашего водителя. В руке он держал большую пушку с обрезанным стволом и винтовочным прикладом: часть ствола  было частично завёрнута в тканевый футляр. Они  тихо обменялись несколькими словами,  и наша машина начала медленно пятится назад, чуть не проехавшись по ноге одного из людей в черном, который встретился взглядом с нашим водителем и помахал нам слабым взмахом кулака.

В этот момент я сижу очень тихо, Дэн тоже, и когда Карлос дёрнулся что-то сказать О боже, вы видели-я затыкаю его. Нечего говорить.

**English to Russian translation by Valentina Moskaleva**