MOTIVATION

—I am inspired by the moment when an idea is born, waiting to be realised. It is an orgastic ecstasy. After all, we are far from a traditional exhibition space: instead, we have a world to build, bit by bit. We find the means and get things done just because there is this fire burning inside us. Nikola-Lenivets is like the Zone in Tarkovsky’s Stalker: an immense area with a variety of different landscapes and natural conditions. What we offer is a mix of natural and artificial, an experimental self-discovery trip.

—We are making a city within a city, a place where we like to be ourselves, hoping that the others would like it as well. Life is made of small pleasures: warm bread for breakfast, well-kept streets and pretty hedges. It is a good and solid life that we are embroidering in the places we can reach. We are not using our kalach bread as bait: instead, we invite everyone over to the historical part of the city that has all sorts of attractions, like a stained glass box.

—We are trying to impress upon all our audiences that any statement, be it artistic or social, has a context which often defines its meaning. For us, the background is as relevant as the figures, and we like to set this approach against the impenetrable, stifling model of art representation that existed before. There is no way to explain what is in it for the people that see it, apart from sheer craft and technical brilliance. We have to expand the notion of art, especially since contemporary art is substantially transgressive and always redefining its boundaries. But while setting its new boundaries, it operates in a place, or in someone’s imagination. In a physical location or a chronological slot.

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I am always thrilled to create new and interesting things: game-changing ideas are often born at the intersection of different industries.

—My personal ambition is to help media, NGOs, and cultural institutions that are very much different from conventional business models learn to develop games and use them to make new meanings and attract new, broad audiences while contributing to their cause both ethically and financially. But life is too unpredictable.

—One of our ambitions is to hold an exhibition of Gulag artists in the Tretyakov Gallery or the Russian Museum, to make them get these works out from the depot. Because we believe as a phenomenon of Russian art they are worth discovering.