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Land of Advices

When I first time found these concrete blocks, I almost immediately realized that they are arranged in a specific order, creating inside the object a specific rhythm.

The idea of the rhythm, a concept that exists in architecture and the visual arts and in music and poetry, gave me the idea to collaborate with person, who working with text professionally.

Alexander Vavilov – my friend and poet already known in Russia, and I encouraged him to consider this strange object as a canvas for one of his texts. After discussing a few poems, we stopped at the verse “The land of Advices”, which refers to war in Yugoslavia in the late 90s, and which in terms of rhythm and style seemed appropriate.

The challenge was that the poem structure is linear – it has one beginning and one end. The line should clearly follow the line, word by word, despite the fact that the found object is a tangled maze of concrete blocks that does not assume a single route within.

In this situation it was necessary to control the viewer’s attention so that he read the poem in the correct order and don’t lost anything.

It was important to fit the rhythmic pattern of the poem in the rhythm of the place that they match and complement each other, did not engage in dissonance and did not create disharmony.

I hope I succeeded, and now the random viewer, who decided to go to this godforsaken place, was not expecting to find himself inside a literary and visual art-project.

From the beginning I don’t want to put some political message in this project. For me, this poem is primarily self-talk, reflection on the theme of shared histories and arguments about future. The text seemed appropriate for this place, this city, this country, but it is written in Russian, and then turned to Russian-speaking audience. This is a conscious decision, a kind of reflection on the theme of cultural isolation of the Russian-speaking environment in Montenegro, practically working with local residents and does not locals.

Thanks

Natalie Nosova
Marat Gelman
Kovalev Andrey
Petar Ćuković

Kotor, Montenegro2016