SPACEYARD, photo collages and media installation, 2010

A generally familiar thing, a 1960s rocket slide welded from metal rods, which could be seen until recently in any kids’ playground, did finally make it to the Moon in some fantastic way. Now this shell of the last Soviet generations’ fair dream of adventure in outer space stands all alone in an alien desert. The miracle did happen, but now it is of no interest to anyone: a forgotten rusty attraction somewhere in the backyard of the Universe. In our seemingly “intermediate” age, when art is blindly skidding and getting stuck in design, leaving no apparent opportunity for free and original gestures, the dangerous and hilarious limit of the unknown is still there, being, as always, very close, waiting for us beyond the threshold. In an absolutely real way the shadow of the playground rocket’s skeleton stretches out towards us “from the Moon”, from a photo, into the gallery space. It gives onlookers a thread, which they can pull, and recall the charm and power of “illusions” of our recent past.

In old St. Petersburg’s cultural ecology, subjected to greater destruction over the last 10 years than during the entire century before, children’s playgrounds had their own vital magic role to play. The late 1990s brought twilight to the “belle époque” of the playgrounds, squeezed out by “Eurostandard” constructions. Nadya Anfalova’s «SPACEYARD» aims to disturb the secret inner strings of all who spent their childhood in these pagan shrines, which were also zones of fairytale freedom.

Andrey Khlobystin“Art-project-2010 for the Anna Nova Gallery”, St. Petersburg.

Nominee, Kandinsky Prize 2011 (Media Art Project of the Year).

Displayed at the main project “Rewriting Worlds” curated by Peter Weibel, IV Moscow International Biennale

 

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