MIHCK

POTEMKINCITY

4

MaHlEr IN THE NaTIONal lIbrarY

The National Library is as well-guarded as the National Bank. There is no way to get around the security guards. They snap at me in Russian, which I don’t understand. Finally they call in another guard from the third floor who speaks English. This seems to be a welcome change for him. He shows me the lockers in the basement and in answer to my question (can I take a camera into the library) he advises me to smuggle it through the security gates under my clothes. When this is done, he invites me to visit him on the third floor during my tour through the library.

I wander through the archive, have a look through the index cards in the wooden boxes and browse the online archive, which consists of scans of the old index cards. Arriving at the third floor, the security guard leads me to a hall where an exhibition of paintings made by mentally challenged people is on show. The artists are present. They all wear the same bright orange plastic jackets. Social workers guide them out through the swinging doors and then the hall is deserted. The guard tells me that he is actually a composer and sits down at the black piano in the corner. «Gustav Mahler» he announces and starts to tickle the piano keys. After two pieces he abruptly closes the piano lid, saying he has to go back to work and then disappears through the swinging door. The hall is deserted for the second time. Later, when I search for the guard, in order to thank him for the little concert, and to say goodbye, he is about to guide an elderly Polish couple through the library corridors. «Good luck» he says. Again, I squeeze my camera under my clothes and make my way to the exit.

12

PEOPlE’s PalaCEs

The idea of the City of Sun is the dream of a happy and fair society, the utopia of an ideal society. There are many forms and interpretations of this idea, and it appeared as a strange experiment in the Soviet Union. Minsk can be seen as a monument to this idea. Yet the result of this idea was not a happy society but the creation of a style representative of this idea, an ideal architecture, a decoration for the masses, where everyone was under this structure. Every city in the former-Soviet Union had fragments of this idea, but only in Minsk was this idea realized as a huge central urban project. Today, it seems that countries in Western Europe, with more developed structures of society, are closer to the idea of creating a harmonious society and thus approaching the status of an ideal society, than countries in Eastern Europe.

Notes from a conversation with Artur Klinau

Minsk, August 2009

The people’s palaces are simply signs that symbolise palaces. This is what makes them so unique. The edifices actually make an illusion of palaces, where the sumptuous facade decorations are artificially fastened to constructivist walls. As if drawn on one side of a sheet, the decadent splendour is gone once you turn the page over. The infinite rows of flat palaces, which are actually nothing other than scenery for some grand performance, make a fascinating surreal sight. But as soon as you step sideways, you find yourself in a completely different reality. The Corinthian and Ionic orders, imposing cornices and monumental arches exaporate in a wink of an eye. What remains is grey unplastered walls, piteous balconies with laundry hanging on the washing lines and monotonous barracks-like black windows. This is what the naked truth is all about. Some people, who resemble Brueghel’s characters rather than happy residents of the Sun City of Dreams are trudging through there, burdened with their little dramas. Among these backyard parks the dramas sound louder than on the other side of the wall, where they are muffled by the march of the Roman columns, Egyptian obelisks, Greek urns and vases and some stone divinities of the communist mythology, which proclaimed general happiness.

No utopia can become real. So the project to build an Ideal City of Communist Happiness in fact has turned into the Sun City of Dreams, flat scenery for a pastoral play in absurdist style. But this may have been exactly what the playwrights intended to do. After all, the true Sun City of Dreams was to be constructed further eastwards, in Moscow, as the imperial center. Miensk was only its front gate. The audience that the splendid scenery was designed for could not have noticed it was all imitation.

26

I CaME, I saw, I wENT awaY

I know this bench. The back had I came, I saw, I went away inscribed a while ago. I kissed with Svetka here. I can’t recall how we met, as if it is cut off. I do remember a pile of other details. The way the stairs looked – only the lower half of the walls were painted with green oil paint; it smelled of whitewash and cats. And I remember the door with the fake leather upholstering. As well as the apartment number. And the painting, in the bedroom, of a huge melted-candle on a blue background. Because of this painting, her Mother wanted, to send her to the psychiatric dispensary.

But how we met slipped from my memory. She worked in a project institute, and sat at a Kuhlman drafting table, drawing. I used to shudder when I entered her department. Curious faces would stick out from behind the other desks. Svetka would stand up nervously and go out to the hallway. We smoked by the window and made peace. She had small breasts, large arms, wore metallic bracelets on her wrists, and had sad eyes. She was nearsighted, but didn’t like to wear glasses. She thought the frames made her look like a school teacher. Her hair colour changed constantly (she experimented) from creamy pink to raven black. Our relationship went through similar changes. It was totally wild: a cocktail of poems, seventy-two proof spirits, and testosterone. Occasionally, lightening sprang between us. We didn’t want to concede a centimetre to each other. “Tired with all these” —I screamed in a lifeless yard at 2 am— “for restful death I cried*…” Cats jumped out of dumpsters. Neighbours called the police, we ran away through the kindergarten, jumped over a high fence, fell down in a ditch and lay there holding our breaths, like stalkers in “the zone”. The patrol car soon drove away. We were drenched in water, laughed our brains out and kissed – a union of two neurasthenics. We broke up in a strange way. “You chose to love me,” she said. My head was lying on her knees, “it means that you are ready to suffer.” The sky was black, cast with rain-clouds. I didn’t want to suffer. I didn’t call the next day. I suffered horribly. It became easier on the second day. In a week it became ease itself. Now some guys are sitting on the bench. Somebody calls out to me, “Hello, sir”. The guys are drinking straight from the bottle, and passing a cigarette around. I see tattooed shoulders, dirty brown hair, worn out slippers blue gym pants with stretched out knees. I speed up my steps. Thick voices are aimed at my back: “I came, I saw, I went away…”

The End.

* Sonet 66, William Shakespeare

Пришёл, увидел и ушёл

Я знаю эту скамейку. На спинке когда-то было нацарапано «Пришёл, увидел и ушёл». Cо Светкой здесь целовался. Не помню, как с ней познакомился, как отрезало. Кучу других деталей помню. Как выглядел подъезд, до половины выкрашенный зеленой масляной краской, как пахло побелкой и кошками. И дверь, обитую коричневым дерматином, помню. И номер квартиры. И картину в спальне - огромный огарок свечи на синем фоне. Мама хотела её из-за этой картины в психдиспансер сдать.

А как мы познакомились - выпало из памяти. Она работала в проектном институте, сидела за кульманом, чертила. Вздрагивала, когда я заглядывал в отдел. Из-за других досок тут же высовывались заинтересованные лица. Светка нервно вставала и шла в коридор. Мы курили на подоконнике и мирились. У неё была маленькая грудь, крупные кисти, металлические браслеты на запястьях и печальные глаза. Она была близорука, не любила носить очки. Считала, что оправы делают похожей на школьную учительницу. Цвет её волос постоянно менялся (она экспериментировала) от нежно розового до жгуче черного. Так же менялись и наши отношения. Дикие совершенно. Коктейль из стихов, семьдесят второго портвейна и тестостерона. Между нами то и дело проскакивали молнии. Мы ни на сантиметр не желали уступать друг другу. “Зову я смерть!” —орал я в пустом дворе в два часа ночи,— “мне видеть невтерпеж*…” Кошки испуганно выскакивали из мусорных баков. Соседи вызвали милицию, мы удирали через детский сад, прыгая через невысокий забор, свалились в лужу и там лежали затаив дыхание, словно сталкеры в зоне. Патрульная машина быстро уехала, мы мокрые хохотали до упада и целовались. Союз двух неврастеников. Расстались странно. “Ты выбрал меня любить,” сказал она. Моя голова лежала у неё на коленях, небо было черным, затянутым тучами, - значит готов страдать. Я страдать не хотел. На следующий день не позвонил. Мучился страшно. На второй день было легче. А через неделю стало совсем легко. Сейчас на этой скамейке сидят мужики. Кто-то мне кричит: “Здравствуй уважаемый.” Мужики пьют из горлышка, курят. Сигарету передают друг другу. Татуировки на плече, грязные коричневые волосы, стоптанные домашние тапочки, синие физкультурные штаны, вытянутые на коленях. Я ускоряю шаг. Хриплый голос ударяет в спину: “Пришёл, увидел и ушёл…” Всё.

*66 сонет Шекспира

In August I spent four weeks in Minsk, roaming the city, meeting people, talking about their life in Belarus, their opinions and other things. I took the metro and buses to different places in the city, walking through courtyards, fields, along prospects and up and down all the many underground passages.

—Mirjam Wirz, 2009

*Potekmin VillagePotemkin Villages were purpor-tedly fake settlements erected at the direction of Russian minister Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin to fool Empresss Catherine II during her visit to Crimea in 1787. According to this story, Potem-kin, who led the Crimean military campaign, had hollow facades of villages constructed along the desolate banks of the Dniepr River in order to impress the mo-narch and her travel party with the value of her new conquests, thus enhancing his standing in the empress’s eyes.

Index of images and texts:

p. 2 text by Mirjam Wirz

p. 3 Lithuanian/Belarusian border

p. 4 top: photo studio, Minsk

bottom: Belarus Film Studios, Minsk

p. 7 top: in the train from Vilnius to Minsk

bottom: Shtanovitse Market

(aka mystic field), Minsk

p. 9 on Prospekt Nezavisimosti, Minsk

p. 10 extract from the book: The Sun City

of Dreams, by Artur Klinau,

published in Suhrkamp, 2006

p. 11 Belarus Film Studios, Minsk

p. 13 Belarusian Actress, found postcard

p. 15 top: Oxana at the kitchen table

bottom: National Art Museum, Minsk

p. 16 left: outside the National Art

Museum, filming of a WW II movie;

right: Garib B. Hemmaly, Libyan

Army Official

p. 17 Palace of Culture, Minsk

p. 18 October Square, Minsk

p. 20 top: Ministry, Minsk

bottom: outskirts of Minsk

p. 21 Andrei Kudinenko, director, Minsk

p. 23 top: at Shtanovitse Market, Minsk

bottom: National Museum of

History and Culture, Minsk

p. 24 text by Evgeny Lipkovich, translated

by Ilya Haliashevich

Produced for:

Vilnius COOP: gaps, fictions and practices

Curated by Vera Lauf and Ula Tornau

part of “Urban Stories”, X Baltic Triennial

of International Art, Vilnius 2009

Thanks to:

Alexander Adamyants

Dima Belush

Tatjana Bembel

Julya Bergel

Alexander Bogdanov

Enira and Andrej

Anna Chistoserdova

Andre de Habsbourg-Lorraine

Ilya Haliashevich

Oxana Jguirovskaja

Dzmitry Karenka

Valentina Kiselyova

Artur Klinau

Evgeny and Olga Lipkovich

Andrei Liankevich

Buzz Maeschi

Victor Martinovich

Ina Matsyenka

Irina Nalimova

Lyudmila Parymskaja

Alexej Pikulik

Svetlana Polishuk

Simon Rees

Alesja Serada

Olga Shparaga

Supported by:

Produced and published by the Flash Institut

www.flashinstitut.com

Printed in Lithuania

Print Project:

Joseph Miceli

MIHCK

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