Each year the hole was a source of persistent temptation for many artists. This year the curator of the NordArt Wolfgang Gramm gave his blessing to me and I submerged into the depth of this industrial interior and started to develop it. My installation is called “Bunker”. The “Bunker” is a long-term project. Carrying on the dialogue with my countrymen artists Andrey Rudyev and Petr Shvetsov I occupy my corner in the hole where I create a model of comfortable existing in the artistic environment. We were invited to the Nord Art for the third time. This is the third summer in succession. Due to the regularity and appropriateness of the season of the year and of location of the place it do remind the summer holidays in a village cottage or in dacha. It makes possible to make a project “to be continued” amplifying, supplementing and transforming it later on. In 2009 I sat myself a task of maximal clearing of the room and making it accessible for the work on the “Communications” subject first presented at the Venice Biennale. The link between these two projects in Venice and Budelsdorf is very strong as they continue and amplify each other.
“Bunker” appeared as a result not of a simple alteration but transformation, not of an intrusion but a penetration, interchangeability and succession. Submerging into the hole and its accessibility for the spectators means the transition to the lower level of the space what is absolutely in tradition of the Nord Art where each year the new doors are opened and the boarders of the exhibitions are extended.
Overstraining as an essential part of the creative activity
To penetrate into the space is like to have it. It is a process hidden from the view of the public. I don’t think it is necessary to turn the technical part of the project into the performance. Just a few people know how this or that work was created. There are not so many people who witness the process of the preparation of the space before it becomes the work of art. Those who could estimate the artistic significance of this action do not observe it and do not think of its existence. Those who watch and know what I do could not take my activity as artistic. Lately I often feel the creative reflex while doing some absurd work not applying to the art during the preparation of the ground for the installation. Taking away a rubbish, painting walls, moving heavy loads, replanning are those conditions which help me to make up my mind what I’m doing. Every following time I need obstacles to become more difficult, the amount of the rubbish to be cleaned and the weigh of materials to increase. The preparation takes more and more time than the project to which it was meant. They always tell me: “Anya you will knock yourself up” but on my part I think that my activity is more important than unchangeable final result.
The project «Communications» is devoted to the links between all the parts of the Universe. It is about real world and invented world. It is about coexistence of art and everyday life which is not less interesting.