aesthetic of decay

2012-02-13T03:19:00.000+03:00

мои худшие опасения оправдались, и теперь надо быстро сообразить как дальше; уж коли происходит эта многонедельная ломка и впереди её заключительный этап.
на субботнюю вечеринку я впервые в жизни одела вещь со леопардовым принтом

всё это происходит в стране, которая не должна существовать

Jenny Holzer
Protect Me..., 1983-1985
Aluminum plaque
6 x 10 in. (15.2 x 25.4 cm)

2012-02-09T01:25:00.000+03:00

Вообще я это завела, чтобы писать о работе и Нидерландах. Но о проектах, что я делаю, мне рассказывать нельзя - ома конфиденшл, а о стране и не знаю что сказать, ничего не видела толком.

В новом выпуске журнала Interview интервью Даши Жуковой с Рэмом. Даша без конца кокетничает, смеется (о чём говорит обилие ремарок —Смеется.), а Рэм ну прям жентельмен в летах.

В моей квартире +12, за окном -12 и у меня начинается паранойя по поводу отопления. В её свете новые соседи — мои враги, т.к. включить батарею можно только в их комнате, она мне недоступна.

С моего рабочего места в ясную погоду видны небоскрёбы в Гааге и взлетающие в аэропорту Роттердама самолёты.

Сердце! Ты будь вожатаем моим,
И смерть с улыбкой наблюдай.Само устанешь,
Не вынесешь такой веселой жизни,
Какую я веду; такой любви
И ненависти люди не выносят,
Какую я в себе ношу.

АБ

winterse schaatstaferelen

2012-02-06T00:31:00.001+03:00

Таня и Вова уехали
но привезли с собой снег. Роттердам в снегу и мне лучше.
Мы ехали в Амстердам через эти брейгелевские и аверкамповские поля, чтобы пройти по льду на канале. Он был совсем тонкий, со вмёрзшими лодками;
и как мне пусто теперь, что они уехали.

В пятницу Фаусто спустился выпить со мной кофе и попросил у меня номер телефона.
Общественность во всё горло уверяет меня, что и он гей тоже. В это я просто уже не верю.

В среду у нас встреча с Рэмом, боязно
а в 17 мая в Роттердаме Perfume Genius. интересно, как всё сложится к этому времени.

по-русски она называется «Ледяной край». Это прекрасно. А Аверкамп от рождения был глухонемым.

Ice Scene (1610)

Hendrick Avercamp

located in Mauritshuis, The Hague

2012-02-02T02:20:00.000+03:00

I finally got my verblijfsdocument and bank account, so now I'm kinda settled. 2 months ago I had no idea how to manage it myself, now I have no idea why didn't I do it earlier.
It's quite cold lately, canals got frozen — I hope they'll stay like that on weekend I need to take a picture

Tanja and Vova are coming tonight; I hope it will help me to overcome these bitter feelings I've had this week.
And I haven't expected my english is so lame (I was given a friendly steer)
Meanwhile I'm so excited of the projects I'm involved in, so it even helps to work all these distractors out.

Almost.

2012-01-29T19:52:00.000+03:00

Rode a bike alone to Delfshaven just to sit nearby Martime School for an hour and gaze at cranes and ships
Helped Tolis and Katerina to move in
Watched 'Two Years at Sea' by Ben Rivers at IFFR
Watched 'Donnie Darko' thousand first time at home
Behaved like a bitch to some people who dont deserve it at all
oh.

March, 24 — Molly Nilsson plays in Rotterdam
Seems like I'm falling apart but somewhere in this town there's a bar where I can drown my broken heart

damn

2012-01-28T04:34:00.001+03:00

вчерашний вечер удался, сегодняшний вообще не удался
очень неуютно.
ничего, бывает.
damn I feel so shitty about my behavior tonight.

теперь я в АМО. и практически каждый день вижу Рэма, в дурацкой серой шапке, такого высокого и сурового.

another day cloudy memory
at this moment am I drawing to remember
..or to erase?

Kunsthal, Rotterdam

2012-01-24T01:49:00.003+03:00

только что меня осенило, что ваши-то контракты до начала марта
а сейчас уже 24 января
что же я буду делать, неужели работать?..
holy fuck

2012-01-22T21:34:00.000+03:00

уже третью неделю я обещаю себе начать бегать по выходным, но
не могу
потому что я с трудом прихожу домой к 7 утра
потом головы не поднять, какое тут бегать
и я знаю, почему я это делаю с собой
но вы четверо так чудесны, что я не жалею ни о чём
всё успеется

You're A Runner by Me And My Drummer from Sinnbus on Vimeo.

песня уикенда
kinda odd visual sequence but anyways

next weekend should be about nature

~

2012-01-19T02:18:00.001+03:00

By the gross to be smitten with smb is the best posture for my internal empire
Sehnsucht Unterwegs Gemütsbewegung Verliebtheit
anyway I'll be definitely ignored so
Lets try to get back to architecture, Masha!!!

On Monday I'm supposed to join a new project team. Unfortunately, that's all what I'm allowed to say about it. Ooh.

image credit Spencer Wohlrab

2012-01-18T02:15:00.000+03:00

I'd bury my dreams underground
As did I, we drink to die, we drink tonight

Far from home, elephant gun
Let's take them down one by one
We'll lay it down, it's not been found, it's not around

Пьер зовёт в Лондон на какие-нибудь выходные. ох как же это мучительно

2012-01-17T01:59:00.000+03:00

события вокруг меня не перестают повергать в культурологический и эстетический шок
но это полезно, да

позавчера я наблюдала закат европы: четвёртый присоединившийся к нам молодой человек приятной наружности мне пожал руку, а спутников моих поцеловал.

прекрасный мальчик по имени Фаусто этажом выше рисует для Прада
наверное, этажом ниже по нему кто-то тоже вздыхает

одни синяки заживают другие появляются
C'mon, c'mon no one can see you cry

this is what you get when you mess with us

2012-01-15T20:07:00.000+03:00

так хорошо провели выходные и каково же было узнать, что все вы, мои новые друзья, геи. я ничего против не имею, но как-то чисто по-женски обидно.
это так впечатлило и огорчило меня, что в 6 утра я спала на полу центрального вокзала Брюсселя, чтобы уехать домой в Роттердам первым поездом.

сижу в кровати под одеялом в комнате +11 ковыряю болячку на коленке и кручу карму полис

I've given all I can it's not enough

надеюсь завтра чувство гармонии вернётся ко мне

2012-01-06T02:56:00.001+03:00

ещё одно хорошее немецкое слово о моём существовании — "sehnsucht"
дождь идёт, не прекращаясь ни на час
ехала на велосипеде в офис и меня снесло ветром. теперь одно колено просто уничтожено

мне хочется леса, снега и жарко натопленного дома. При прочих прелестях, ничего из желаемого здесь нет.

William O'Brien Jr.

Twins: Houses in Five Parts

Upstate New York, 2009-2011

2012-01-02T03:53:00.000+03:00

Через 6 часов вставать на работу, но не спится совсем
буду читать с лэптопа Welcome to the machine.

where I've been what have I seen
photos right there >>>

2012-01-01T18:38:00.000+03:00

Prada a/w 10-11

интересно, доживу ли я до того момента, когда начну носить Prada.

back to R'dam

2011-12-30T02:29:00.001+03:00

я вернулась из Будапешта, где все 5 дней меня не покидало ощущение дежавю. Но об этом не будем.
Я переезжаю в новую комнату завтра окончательно, и впереди меня ждёт самый необычный новый год — я буду встречать его одна в не очень-то знакомом городе, да и наверняка с проливным дождём. Наверное, я просто лягу спать.

очень хочется снега

2011-12-21T02:13:00.001+03:00

SPIEGEL: Is it true that only 5 percent of your designs are actually built?
Koolhaas: Yes.
SPIEGEL: That must be frustrating.

Koolhaas: That’s our dirty secret. We architects are celebrated as heroes — but humiliation is part of our daily lives. The biggest part of our work for competitions and bid invitations disappears automatically. No other profession would accept such conditions. But you can’t look at these designs as waste. They’re ideas; they will survive in books.

<…>

SPIEGEL: Do you or don’t you like our building?
Koolhaas: You’ll get used to it. But I believe you have to conquer the lobby. Buy two rugs, sew the two rugs together, then buy a third one and declare the lobby occupied. Occupy SPIEGEL!
SPIEGEL: Mr. Koolhaas, thank you for this interview.

Сейчас станет посвободнее, я вооружусь камерой и напишу развернутый пост про студию с картинками. А после отправлюсь на несколько дней в Будапешт.

Meanwhile in Rotterdam

The first word from abroad

2011-12-11T02:02:00.003+03:00

So what. I'm here for a week almost. And because of home news it's so damn hard to concentrate on this life. But so many things were changed and even more are about to be. Thank god today everything passed well and I start my work on monday.
Meantime, after small protest again election fraud in Russia we walked to the seashore in The Hague. Just as I dreamt about. The next goal is Wadden sea and isles.
And some photos from today. Shame on me, I almost didn't make any shots those days and looked alike a sucked lemon. I think for a while this is my last note in english, I go on with my mother tongue. And from now it's gonna be alright.

2011-11-13T18:46:00.001+03:00

From this moment I have merely three weeks to conclude and finish everything, it gladdens and the same time scares. The very first issues are to repair my laptop and analog camera, and then a very tough selection of what goes to The Netherlands and what won't.
Besides I watch old soviet movies from 60s and 70s, listen to Kino, Motorama (yes again), Ytro and Trud a lot, and explore the northern russian regions in google maps.
The favourite of the day (close to the russian-norwegian border):

The Sense of Snow

2011-11-12T22:51:00.007+03:00

I tried to find the art I'd like to tell you now, or may be some pieces of architecture, but in vain.
I got my visa and lot of work.
But Jesus, why am I so smitten now?..

Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening
By Robert Frost

Whose woods these are I think I know.
His house is in the village though;
He will not see me stopping here
To watch his woods fill up with snow.
My little horse must think it queer
To stop without a farmhouse near
Between the woods and frozen lake
The darkest evening of the year.
He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound's the sweep
Of the easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep.

I give blood to jump now into a fluffy snowhill, ooh

between the Slavic and Nordic world

2011-11-06T23:15:00.000+03:00

This weekend was so damn wonderful, but today was the best. My Moscow friend Zhora and I were in Vyborg (which one can also name Viipuri in finnish, Viborg in swedish and Wiborg in german) — small town situated on the Karelian Isthmus and just 38 km to from Russia's border with Finland. And that's a real aesthetic of decay (what I should point all things here pertain more or less to this aesthetic), noble crouan, Monrepos (english landscape woodpark with french name) — delightful mixture of toponyms, actual poverty, cultural richness and elusive beauty.
We were to clean up our minds so explored the park most of the time. And it worked.
A lot of moss, national romanticism, Zhora and even me are below.

Before the train we visited best places of the passed weekend, laughed and walked and I felt I'm on a new level of confidence and credence for him. That means a lot. And gladdens.

Exodus

2011-10-30T14:29:00.003+03:00

As far as I have to bring back the S, M, L, XL to its owner (honestly, it pisses me off, how insistently she askes me for it, although the book was drowned in a dust before I took it), I decided to fix some info and pages scan here. The book is a hyper-density of information, I'm obsessed with the layout idea (done by Bruce Mau) and it's impossible to digitalize the whole one, so I'm concentrated on Exodus then.

The title of the project alludes to Cold War West Berlin, a restricted enclave encircled by a forbidding wall—in effect, a prison on the scale of a metropolis, and one in which people sought refuge voluntarily. Exodus proposes a walled city in a long strip, with tall barriers that cut through London's urban fabric—an intervention designed to create a new urban culture invigorated by architectural innovation and political subversion. Here collaborators use collage to create vivid scenes of life within these visionary urban confines. Animated by a text that reads as a simultaneously factual and fictional scenario for the contemporary metropolis, this dense pictographic storyboard reflects Koolhaas's earlier stints as a journalist and screenwriter.(MoMA website).

The graphics for Exodus are located in The Museum of Modern Art and the images here are the courtesy of MoMA indeed. Koolhaas completed a series of eighteen drawings, watercolors, and collages in his last year of study at the Architectural Association in London, a virtual incubator for radical architectural theory in the 1970s. Presented at his final thesis review, Exodus was a collaborative effort that was also submitted jointly to an Italian urban design competition and, ultimately, served as a catalyst for the formation of the Office for Metropolitan Architecture, in 1975.

There's a thought, that Rem organised his office according to this model. I reread the text and found out some proofs. The next step is to approve it myself. Here we go.

..The inhabitants of this architecture, those strong enough to love it, would become its Voluntary Prisoners, ecstatic in the freedom of their architectural confines.

..This will be an architecture that generates its own successors, miraculously curing architects of their masochism and self-hatred.

..On arrival a spectacular welcome is given to all.
The activities inside the Reception Area require minimal training for new arrivals, which is only accomplished be overwhelming previously undernourished senses.

..The sole concerns of the participants are the present and the future of the Strip: they propose architectural refinements, extensions, strategies. Excited groups elaborate proposals in special rooms. while others continuously modify the model. The most contradictory programs fuse without compromise.

..Life in building barracks at the Tip of the Strip can be hard, but the ongoing creation of this object leaves its builders exhausted with satisfaction.

2011-10-28T00:00:00.005+03:00

Kronstadt, little town located on Kotlin island, we went to couple of weeks ago. German name, Baltic Sea, splendid views, dramatic and live (mostly cloudy) sky, so on. I adore pier cranes.

I found a perfect german word for my current lifestyle — unterwegs — «entkommen und selbstbestimmt leben». So aptly.

Can't wait for start to count down the days. And no art or something today.

2011-10-16T23:16:00.002+03:00

This night, between October 16 and 17, The Rhizome was born. We four are now Rhizome group. Great hopes and expectations, oh Gods, bless us.

while away the time

2011-10-09T02:42:00.001+03:00

The most terrible insomnia I've ever had, mixed with apprehensions. Then sleep the day away. Holy fuck. I give myself one and a half month to recuperate and bring back to normal daily cycles.

Konstantin Melnikov's private house in Moscow, 1927-1929.

I visited this masterpiece last summer together with german students and made acquaintance with his family — granddaugther, her husband and great-granddaugther. We were kindly asked not to photograph, because, as Ekaterina said, none of photos can express the atmosphere and the spirit of the house. and I held on till the end, but then gave up (human-being, shame on me), opened my camera glass and did a random shot.

Perhaps it's too overproud, but seems I did it. At least my own perception.

Nordzee

2011-10-08T01:53:00.000+03:00

Despite I'm still waiting for the call from dutch consulate concerning my mvv visa process (just!!!) starting, I can't stop thinking about Nord Sea. What makes it especially desirable is fact that we'll see each other in winter and early spring. Umm, I already see myself at empty shore somewhere in The Hague.

image credit snoeziesterre flickr

Meantime, I get deeper and deeper to OMA projects and fascinated with them as I never could expect before. Hard to express how am I excited about that. That's how Rem makes his voluntary prisoners of architecture. Great deal, should say. Note for myself: use your dictionaries you dumb, improve the lexis!

Dutch Parliament Extension, The Hague, 1978 [13th century]; OMA’s first preservation project.
Watercolor by Madelon Vriesendorp.

Was it just a soap blob

2011-10-04T22:01:00.002+03:00

For many reasons I'd better write in my own, but let's treat it as an exercise before my time belts leap.
Instead of preparing my diploma content for annual review competition I rake up some memories and hesitate. Will it be a step ahead or backward. Ooh.

The favourites of last week are blobes and spheres of Tomás Saraceno. I got an opportunity to see them alive at Hamburger Bahnhof — and even more, to squeeze and enter one, and the feelings I had that moment were as light, clean and plain as they are. I don't write recensions (you better have a look here or there ), so let this be my expression.

friend of mine Liliya enjoying the surroundings

lovely clew

lovely moss

and some web photos.
.

one two one two

2011-10-04T02:09:00.000+03:00

I knew it will happen so it's happened now. As far as I move to another country (well for definite period but anyway) I move to another digital inland empire. Damn, I got so addicted to changes.

In a process of migrating Heinrich Heine‘s identity desintegrates in 5 steps:
«Here in France immediately on my arrival in Paris my German name "Heinrich" was translated into "Henri", and I had to adapt myself to it and had even so to style myself here in this country, for the word Heinrich is not pleasing to the Frenchman and the French do make everything in the world pleasant for themselves. Even the name "Henri Heine" they were unable to pronounce, and most of them called me Monsieur Enri Enn : Many contracted this to Enrienne and some called me Monsieur Un Rien.»
Heinrich Heine´s statement about losing his name and identity when moving to Paris is inscribed in the entrance halls of the station U9 Westhafen like a leitmotiv, or an ouverture: the loss of name, personality, then the loss of personal and human rights, and finally the loss of life and commemoration - annihilation.

The Human rights are seen through Heine‘s point of view. The texts use typographical styles which were rejected by the Nazis. The colors of the very large shapes and forms are Bauhaus‘ ones. Quotes of murdered people are written by hand on the walls. This art work was done by Inscire organisation, they care of human rights or something. Whatever they meant by it, these graphics and tiles just fascinate me.

Image credits essamo and reiner asscherman flickrs