Art Takes a Village

The road to Europe’s largest land-art park is an adventure in and of itself. We whiz through the first 200 kilometers from Moscow along a perfectly pleasant (by Russian standards) highway. But then we turn off onto a side road and the final 20 kilometers of the route take nearly an hour, our car weaving, dodging, and bouncing over a “road” that is as much asphalt as it is pothole. It looks like Swiss cheese.

But even this road is a godsend, and without it Nikola-Lenivets might have been lost to the world. Instead, despite the challenging terrain, each summer some ten thousand visitors descend on this tiny village, hidden amid the forests and swamps of Kaluga Oblast. The majority of them are coming to see the International Festival of Landscape Design, Arkhstoyanie.

Our entry point for Arkhstoyanie, to which our little car miraculously hopped its way, is the village of Zvizzhi. The name has a strange resonance even to a Russian ear; it’s not easy to say, even sober. It sounds a bit like the noise a rusty violin makes, or the un-oiled hinge of a heavy gate. Or the cry of a piglet being slaughtered.

There is a legend about the origin of the town’s disharmonious name. Apparently, somewhere near here in 1480 there was a rather significant event: the Great Standoff on the Ugra River.* Mongol troops gathered on one side of the river, Russians on the other. The Mongols were trying to make the point that they expected the prompt payment of tribute. The Russians felt that they had been paying said tribute for 250 years, and that it was time to end that sort of thing.

There was no battle. The troops faced off against one another for several days, exchanging random salvos, then disbursed. It is generally believed that the Russians won the stand-off, helping to bring the Mongol Yoke to an end and paving the way toward their own independent state.

That is where history ends and legend begins. Apparently, during the Standoff, a Russian knight on the high banks of the river used his sword to slowly execute a pig, from which resounded such a horrendous squeal that it put the fear of God into the enemy. And it was this sound that gave rise to the name Zvizzhi.

This legend, however, is probably apocryphal, for in reality said Standoff on the Ugra took place some 25 kilometers away.

Yet Zvizzhi, a village of just three streets and about 50 homes, would nonetheless make its mark in history, thanks to the fact that it adjoins the tiny village of Nikola-Lenivets, birthplace of Arkhstoyanie. They are separated by a mere five-minute drive along a dirt road that is smoother than many paved Russian roads.

The name of the second village is also rather colorful, literally translating as “Nicholas the Idler.” It is said that, in time before memory, some enemy approached the village with the usual goals: plundering and murdering. The locals took to their heels and fled the town, then waited until the raiders were good and drunk before they launched their counter-attack.

The event took place on the eve of the Day of St. Nicholas, the same saint who in the West was transformed into Santa Claus. And thus the town’s name was inspired by both the saint and the “lazy” military strategy the village’s residents used so successfully.

Nikola-Lenivets is truly postcard Russia: beautiful, enchanted, and unfamiliar to the majority of urban and even rural Russians. Forests, meadows and swamps, all rinsed by summer thunderstorms, thrum with clouds of gadflies and smell of wild honeybees. Strong, well-built homes choked by greenery loiter along trails through grassy slopes. On the outskirts of town there is a church of red, pock-marked bricks. The bell was long ago stripped from its bell-tower, its frescoes demolished, its altar plundered. Yet, even desecrated, the church is unbelievably beautiful; from it, one has a heart-wrenching view of the gleaming, elastic bends of the Ugra River; an endless sea of forest stretches to the horizon.

Around the demise of the USSR, in 1989, a few young architects and artists sought out and fell in love with this place. Prior to that, all of three people lived in Nikola-Lenivets, so the arriving intelligentsia immediately doubled the local population. They lived here, from time to time tapping into their sources of spiritual power and inspiration to create modest masterpieces.

A decade passed. And then, in the winter of 2000, the painter Nikolai Polissky went out onto a snow-covered hill that ran down to the frozen river and thought something like, “What beauty! And so much snow – a cheap material that could be used to sculpt something or other.” And so he busied himself with a traditional Russian winter pastime: rolling the snow into balls and filling the hill with snowmen.

Polissky’s idea exceeded his physical capabilities. The artist, whom everyone knew simply as Uncle Kolya, hired locals and set up a snowman production line, paying piece-work rates: 10 rubles per snowman “sculpture.” Not such a miserly sum in 2000, as back then one could buy a decent pack of cigarettes and a loaf of bread for 10 rubles.

Together they sculpted almost 300 snowmen. It was an enchanting spectacle: hundreds of lopsided and stooped snow figures descending down the hill to the river. Polissky’s friends told him that this snowy procession would be his Swan Song as an artist. Polissky took several photos and began to show them to his colleagues. People liked it.

Come spring, the Laws of Nature had their way: the work of art (if that’s what it was) melted. But the idea of a new artistic undertaking was born: the snowmen had been transformed into water, which irrigated the hill, which grew lush with grasses. These grasses would be cut and gathered into a haystack, then used to feed cows, who would then be milked. A haystack is a recognizable symbol of Russian style, made of natural and (more importantly) free materials.

Polissky consulted with local farmers: “How high can you make a haystack?” “Five meters, no higher,” they answered. The artist, who had earned the right to call himself a sculptor, declared “It shall be ten!”

The haystack was arranged in the form of a ziggurat, with hay stacked on top of hay in a spiral pattern. But it turned out to be a bit like a black hole: the more hay they stacked, the lower the stack sunk under its own weight. The free hay on the slope was used up, and the project was on the verge of failure, so the sculptor began to purchase hay from neighboring fields. Through the joint effort of 100 people, they succeeded, finally, in raising the haystack to the artist’s desired height. And everyone who contributed even a single bundle of grass was credited by Uncle Kolya as a co-artist.

Yet taking the project to its logical conclusion, in the form of milk, was not to be, because the overloaded hay began to spoil. So the artist decided to transform the installation into a performance. The haystack burned well and hot.

The tower sagged, but the enchanting history of its construction remained, as did photographs. Polissky began to be noticed and was invited to exhibitions, including in Europe. He became an original and distinctive artist, working fruitfully in the genre, little known inside Russia, of land-art, as well as a specialist in Eco-Design. For the next several years, in Europe and Russia, Polissky installed a series of monumental creations and sculptures made of natural materials: logs, twigs, willow branches, hay, snow and icicles.

For example, in 2004, on the now familiar hillside running down to the river, where snowmen once trod and the haystack burned, Polissky and craftspeople from Nikola-Lenivets jointly constructed The Lighthouse. This majestic structure, made of tree trunks and thick, bent branches, looks a bit like a tornado rising from the earth, twisted into a motionless whirlwind. The tower is crowned with a pointed onion dome made of those same branches that resembles the cupola of an Orthodox church.

“They’ll burn it down,” sarcastically remarked those who came to view the Lighthouse, as well as those who happened upon it. They were alluding to the notion that poor, ill-natured, uneducated folk in villages don’t allow such structures to stand for long. But this year The Lighthouse celebrated its 12th year unharmed. The locals love it as much as those who come to see it, and they won’t let anyone touch it.

The Lighthouse was one of the main works on display at the first Arkhstoyanie Festival, which took place in July 2006. The festival was the brainchild of several talented and famous artists and architects. That year, Nikola’s Ear – a huge, wooden sculpture resembling a seashell set up on its end – appeared on the approaches to Nikola-Lenivets (in Russian, the word for seashell is also used for the outer ear). The Ear was like a radar tower “listening” to the river and the green expanse beyond. In a grove not far off they built The Hut, a major construction project whose walls are mottled with thousands of holes. At night, lit from within, The Hut was transformed into a prodigious lantern.

About 500 people showed up for the first Arkhstoyanie. Locals schooled urban visitors in the art of building firewood piles, haystacks, forest shelters, and wattle-fences made of birch branches. The following year, Arkhstoyanie attracted 1,500 people. The famous Dutch landscape architect Adriaan Geuze worked alongside Russian artisans, and even now, in the thick, shady forests near Nikola-Lenivets one can still view his minimalist pavilion: four rather high walls made of pinecones shelter an inner courtyard, where pine trees grow.

Over the ensuing decade, new works have been continually installed, perhaps 150 in all, in an eight-square-kilometer area in the fields between Nikola-Lenivets and Zvizzhi. Several of the more monumental and hardy structures were permanently installed in the park and have been ripened by the wind, rain, frost and sun. Created primarily from natural materials, their colors and textures have evolved; certain less durable details have faded away. Other structures that were more mobile left their birthplaces after the festivals ended. A third category, the most delicate and temporary, have decomposed naturally and once again become a part of the landscape from which they arose.

In 2014-15 nearly ten thousand visitors showed up for Arkhstoyanie. Organizers built several small eco-hotels, hostels and campgrounds; temporary cafes were opened; food courts, paid parking, and bicycle rental services popped up. And the festival expanded to include not just land-art, but performances, lectures, and musical and multimedia shows.

Locals also got busy organizing homespun cafeterias and learning to trade in rubber boots (these were hot items, as the city folk coming here to acquaint themselves with modern art did not want to plough through village mud in their expensive shoes).

The festival draws a rather diverse crowd, one normally rather far removed from modern art, but not averse to hanging out and partying. This didn’t sit so well with the original founders of Arkhstoyanie, who saw their festival as an event of high culture.

Then last year Arkhstoyanie’s main sponsor – a millionaire and co-owner of a large Russian chain of mobile phone stores – jumped ship. The sponsor may not have appreciated the festival’s long-term prospects (“I’m just throwing money into a hole here,” he once commented), or perhaps the endeavor was costing more than he anticipated, or perhaps he had been hurt by the most recent financial crisis.

Whatever the reason, in 2016 ticket prices at Arkhstoyanie rose, and the number of visitors fell precipitously, to just 6,000. These several thousand visitors were so dispersed about the gigantic park that their numbers did not particularly disturb the natural harmony of the surroundings.

It is not possible to visit all the Arkhstoyanie installations in a single day, unless one simply runs from one to the other, barely stopping to take in the surroundings or enjoy each piece. What is more, even if one has a map showing the location of all the art, it is not always possible to find every display amid the bosom of the virginal thickets and swamps. It is rather easy to get lost and be eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Prior to the start of this year’s festival, heavy, protracted thunderstorms wreaked havoc on the roads through fields that connected the art installations, drowning them in impassible swamps. The forest paths were further churned into a muddy mire by the thousands of feet traipsing hither and yon. Botflies swarmed, mercilessly attacking the city folk’s tender skin.

The crowd was primarily young, mainly consisting of comfortably-clad hipsters, not excessively pampered, and usually happy to pitch a tent on the outskirts of Arkhstoyanie. As it turns out, the long-forgotten pastime of camping in the wild has been a growing trend of late. Of course, now it is easy to put one’s ultralight tent and blow-up beds in the back of a comfortable car and drive right to one’s campsite. But the guitar and songs around a campfire have been replaced by board games and a hookah pipe. And instead of “a tourist’s breakfast”* from a warmed up mess-tin, there are smoothies and falafal at a food court set up in the depths of a bright grove.

You have to pass by the food court, filled with its relaxed, satisfied visitors, to get to the newest section of Arkhstoyanie, populated with this year’s works. The section is located in a bit of low-lying land alongside a swamp filled with snakes and frogs. During a recent rain, a mud slide flowed down the hill in the direction of the exhibits. Now it is the path to The Inhabited Substance.

Sculptors Yelena and Dmitry Kavarga, who created this behemoth, are a bit shy of visitors. The white, biomorphic something or other is creepier than a horror film. It looks a bit like a thin, wilted, sick elephant. Or like a stomach that has been torn from a body yet still twitches with digestive cramps. In short, a rather vile thing. Yet, at the same time, it is inexplicably attractive, like something living and familiar, a part of one’s own body.

It is made from materials that are unusual for the normally wood-focused Arkhstoyanie: fiberglass and polyester resin. The same thing they use to make car bumpers and boats. Working with the material can be deadly. Liquid resin is exceptionally poisonous, and its fumes are not to be inhaled. Dmitry Kavarga knows this but still goes inside his creation with a bucket of resin and no respirator. He says he limits his exposure and that he has even become accustomed to the fumes.

The married sculptors worked on the piece for four months, then brought it to the forest in parts but were not able to complete it before the festival’s start, due to rain. Not all the seams had been sealed up, and the cavity inside the work was not completed. The cavity is in response to the theme of this year’s Arkhstoyanie: “Refuge.”* Inside the sculpture it should be smooth and beautiful, there should be lighting and music. But for now there are muddy footprints and a rather bad chemical smell. After a few moments, Dmitry exits his sculpture with the words, “A botfly just flew into the creature’s womb and immediately died.”

The Kavargas do not see themselves as artists but as “biological instruments” bringing their creation to life. They say that the ultimate goal of their art is to mix with the polymers. In principle, this may be already happening, as they have been breathing in their fumes for several years.

In contrast to The Inhabited Substance, which will never collapse and decay and could in theory stand in the forest for eternity (assuming some millionaire does not purchase it), the Head House of the Homeless (see cover image) will be taken apart and relocated in the fall. Pavel Suslov always does this with his works, and this is his fifteenth.

The four-meter-high Head sits in the middle of a sunny clearing, with a guard always on duty in the shrubbery nearby. This creation is indeed a head, yet it is constructed of some 250 bits of canvas, stretched across frames. The canvases are of varying sizes and shapes and Suslov is taking them down one at a time and painting plein air images of Nikola-Lenivets and Arkhstoyanie on each before putting them back on the head. When all the paintings are completed, in the fall, the head will be taken down.

The refuge theme of this year’s festival is expressed in the fact that Suslov is actually living inside his Head. The first floor includes an antechamber and storage; the second contains a kitchen and living room, the third a bedroom. Everything is in miniature, but highly functional, even considering that rain drips in from multiple apertures between the paintings.

The House of the Homeless part of the Head’s title harkens back to the artist’s 14 previous works, each of which had its own unique shape. The founding piece in the series was a cube that stood in Crimea and was so unattractive that Suslov’s colleagues dubbed his temporary home House of the Homeless.

Few visitors know that the artist is living inside his work of art. The artist knows this, because he has heard many people saying all sorts of things about the work while he was resting inside. Yet the majority nonetheless react favorably to the work since, after all, canvas paintings are easier to understand than, for instance, a cube made of pine cones.

During a talk he gave at the lecture pavilion, Suslov let slip that anyone who wanted to could visit him in his Head. And a continuous flood of visitors began stopping by, such that the door to the Head came off its hinges.

“I want to paint mud. You know, like in the film Hard to Be a God,” Suslov says in answer to a question about his future plans. “A flowing, omnipresent mud, constant rain, that’s what awaits me.” The weekend when the festival took place was warm and sunny, but the rains that battered the park in the days leading up to it were a significant trial for all of the artists, sculptors and architects. The impassable mud, apparently, made an impression on everyone.

One rather muddy spectacle was staged toward the festival’s conclusion. It was not on the Arkhstoyanie program, but many guessed it would happen and showed up to watch. A Mercedes G-500 SUV was pulled from its burial site by a crane. It was the same model of SUV that not long before the festival played a role in a notorious incident, when graduates of the academy that trains members of the FSB security services drove through Moscow in a convoy of luxury Mercedes SUVs. The convoy was filmed and caused an outcry on social media.

The SUV had been buried in the grove a few days before, then covered with turf and sod. People were able to climb inside the vehicle through a birch-lined entry hole (aligned to the car’s sunroof), turn the wheel, honk the horn, and turn on the music. They could also look at the clods of fresh earth covering all the windows. Rumor had it that one young woman had a panic attack when she was trapped inside.

Few people saw them bury the SUV. But many came to see it exhumed. It was apparently interesting to see what a six-and-a-half-million-ruble vehicle looked like after spending several days in an improvised burial vault.

“Should we give them our Lada?” a young onlooker joked. “We’ll give it to them for nothing. Let it be buried here forever.” RL