# 15, may 2010 г.
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Editorial column
Even if some of you, or may be many, believe that they have finally grown up, it’s wrong. We have convinced in this while diligently trying to recollect, compose or make up tales and stories for new issue of Experiment. This issue came up, despite to all our efforts, fantastically non-fabulous: either reflective, representing clear surfaces, or at all distinctly realistic. Perhaps, this magical duality reveals its principal meaning: if you want to believe in miracle, you have to be careful and gentle, following the edge and knowing where to stop.
Tales often give us a sense of simplicity, leisurely explaining all “what’s” and “why’s”. We also made the same attempt. That’s why the issue you see now is similar to travelling into the miraculous forest: you peer and listen attentively to what’s going on around; awaking and going deep into the misty doze, yet not distinguishing dream and reality…
Now to your attention is our report about our expedition inside a fairy tale: notes, sketches and photos. We believe that they can tell you something new, or maybe even teach you something, same as a real fairy tale does.
Yours «terra incognita» and chief editor
Irina SOKOLOVA
CONTENTS
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Founder and Publisher
St. Petersburg State Polytechnical University
General Director:
Dmitry Arseniev
Deputy General Director:
Vladimir Ivanov
Managing Editor:
Boris Bozhkov
Editor-in-chief:
Irina Sokolova
General Designer:
Elizaveta Bandalet
Illustration on the cover
Kira Kustova
Editorial Board
B. Bozhkov, senior lecturer, T. Diodorova, senior lecturer, E. Borshchevskaya, associate professor, C. Zakharov, associate professor, A. Ivanov, director of publishing house of SPbSPU, I. Timmermanis, O. Baranova
Issue prepared by
Dmitry Garkavenko
Kira Kustova
Irina Mikhailova
Veronika Toroptsova
Anastasia Artemova
Maria Axelrod
Ksenia Baldycheva
Daria Rynnova
Pavel Golik
Viktorina Rodionova
Alexandra Solovieva
Taisia Strakholet
Tatiana Tulupenko
Alexandra Bogdanova
Katya Murysina
Kristina Haspekova
Filipp Filchenko
Elena Shvyrova
Panu Jansson (Finland)
Eetu Komsi (Finland)
Taras Shchetinin
Anna Kholina
Maria Baikova
Tarja Vilen (Finland)
Antonina Kovalchuk
Olga Chernyakova
Print
The Print House SBORKA
Circulation: 1000 copies
Editorial offices
Institute of International Educational Programs (IMOP), 195220, St. Petersburg, Grazhdansky pr. 28 Tel.: (812) 534-13-85 website www.ex-imop.org e-mail
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
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Digest of the main university events (january — may 2010)
Olga Baranova
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The Russian Museum. Status: on-line
Irina Sokolova
On March 4th 2010 a presentation of an informational and educational center “Russian Museum: virtual branch” was held in Polytechnic University. This center became the 63th project of the museum which not only allows to explore interactive cultural area of St Petersburg but also to apply these technologies to education. An access to the virtual branch is open in IIEP (Grazhdansky prospect 28A)
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Where does the fairytale go away?
Irina Sokolova
This photo project called “Where does the fairytale go away?” shows us pictures of old children’s playgrounds around our city. The majority of them is being reconstructed now, but it is still possible to find figures of stone or wood wich represent fairytale characters or magic animals of the past. You can discover a story of how they survive in the modern world by watching these photographs.
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Believe in what is uncorrected. Notes about dyslexia
Alexandra Solovieva, Irina Sokolova
This is a note about an experience in artistic representation of an illness which causes defections in reading and writing. This illness is called dyslexia. In his creations John Court has tried to change most common stereotypes about the illness by expressing his deeply personal reflections in a field of arts.
Learn more — http://www.johncourt.info
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No patios, no roofs, please!
Maria Axelrod, Irina Sokolova
It is an amazing journey to a drawn world of “student’s pathways” — the maps, which describe ways and stops of each character of the story. The point of the article is to open a door to the inner world of a human and his own vision of a city which is really different from common touristic paths.
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Business: pro & contra
Taisia Strakholet
This is a note about the Pro Business club which was founded in Polytechnic University in 2009. This club actively sponsors sessions with leaders and experts of various companies in St Petersburg. Popular political, economical and cultural topics of the city and country are being discussed during the sessions. Besides, the Pro Business club acts as a promising start for young students who are interested in an effective personal and professional development.
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Solar energy
Alexandra Bogdanova
The history of the team SHINE — a cheerleading team of IIEP consisting of 20 energetic young people who are passionate about life, positivity, friendship and healthy lifestyle.
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A palette of the world
Maria Axelrod, Ksenia Baldycheva, Daria Rynnova
You’re going to do a test. It is made on the results of an interview with international exchange students from different institutions of the city. We have queried these students about their colour preferences. This test will help you to find out which part of the world would be more comfortable for you to live in, basing on the colours you like most.
Test: which country is more comfortable for you?
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Ticket to the Show: build your own interview
Irina Mikhailova
This interview by musicians of the band Ticket to the Show is more than just a story about their creative life and philosophy. They will help us understand which tune is the best for every single person. To be more specific — they will help gather lines of each member of the band in one complete text.
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Views...
Katya Murysina
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“It’s like a fairytale”
Nika Toroptsova, Irina Sokolova
This photo project presents a sample of a unique vision of Russian folkloric fairy tales. Author leaves behind plot components and creates a subtle and romantic state which stays in reader’s mind after having read each story.
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Memory guards
Filipp Filchenko
This article tells a story of a monument devoted to events of the Great Patriotic War. This monument is called “For Heroic Defenders of Leningrad” and is located on Moskovsky Prospect. It meets eyes of dozens of city’s citizens and visitors every day. As a matter of fact this memorial terminates Moskovsky Prospect, however, judging ideologically and conceptually, it opens a gateway to the south of the city and brings us back to the happenings of 1941–1945.
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Views...
Elena Shvyrova
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Fairytale or not?
Irina Sokolova
Here are the pictures from India. They were made by two absolutely different people who appeared to have visited one of the southern cities located in the state Gokarne with a time difference in one week. Evidentally, each of them has their own fairytale which they brought back home and their own story of how India tells it.
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Another point of view
Maria Baikova
An article called “Another point of view” gives us interesting facts about life and creations of two writers — Lewis Carroll and Tove Jansson.These two had been writing stories we all have known since we were little kids. This detailed story about their characters and their own artistic style opens a door to their inner world, where were no such beautiful fantastic stories as in their books.
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Photo project «Face on the cover»
Irina Sokolova
This student photo-project called “Face on the cover” represents a sample of analysis of a glamour fashion magazine — one of the biggest parts of mass media. Studying a system of shapes and images in glamour, students have tried to reconstruct it with their own vision and with new artistic ideas.
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Alice: a journey from A to e
Kristina Haspekova
Everybody knows a magical story about a small girl Alice, who gets into unusual for a child circumstances. She has become a myth, which tells us not only about features of a modern world, but also acts as a source of new creative ideas. In this article you can find out who, where and how has presented us his own vision on Alice.
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Starting from this issue we begin to publish articles, written and composed specially for Experiment by our colleges from abroad. You may have also noticed that editorial board is making first steps towards bilateral, Russian-English format, which was the initial goal at the magazine’s foundation.
The materials you see here is a result of creative co-work of students and teaching staff from Aalto University, School of Art and Design in Helsinki. Finnish colleges present their experience in developing a student magazine and uncover not only their own understanding of the goals and tasks of journalism, but also timely points of view, bringing up topics of contemporary art and culture in a whole.
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Magazine journalism in Aalto University
Department of Media is a new entity at the Aalto University School of Art and Design (main building above). It brings together Photography, Graphic Design and Media Lab Helsinki — a new organization for a new University. Professor Maija Toyry teaches magazine journalism which is a new field of study in the University. Magazine journalism gathers around 15 most talented students from different Universities to study together for a year. In this minor subject all the students make their own magazine including planning, writing the articles and visual layout. Next two articles are from these magazines. www.taik.fi/en
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Bad Painting, Good Art
Tarja Vilén
Veera Tiainen is a bad painter and an anarchist, who is fixated to death cap mushrooms.
What is today’s life of an artist?
I am a hermit and an anarchist. As an artist it would be important to make connections to right people, but I don’t see the point in mingling and participating in all kinds of shows and gallery openings. I don’t belong to any circles or “society’s cream”, and I don’t want to belong to them. Most of the gallery openings are pointless and disgusting. There is no glamour in art world. The same people circle in every show and there are always the bums present, who are there just to enjoy the free drinks and food.
What has been the most important step in your career?
Being part of the artist society Gjutars in Vantaa. It has changed and influenced me greatly. Gjutars has been my safe place. I can always go there if I am in need of support and sparring. There I can always find the meaning to making art.
What is the attraction in making art?
You don’t need go to work every day, but you can do things just the way you like it. I don’t necessarily go to the workroom every day. I just circle around in different flea markets. With my colleagues I share the same set of values and connection. In the outside world I feel like an outsider but with my artist friends I am not a freak, but same as them.
How are you doing?
Right now I am living in a phase, where I have to check again why I have chosen this life. I try to find answers to what I want of the future. Since I graduated in 2002 I have had an art exhibition every year. The pace has been exhausting. From now on I honestly want to make art only for myself.
What kind of creative agony do you experience?
Some days are fucking hard and frustrating. I might just sit still in the workroom and stare at an unfinished painting for hours. If the painting doesn’t talk to me, I many times end up painting over it. I never sketch my paintings. I paint only through feeling and some thought.
What does art mean to the world?
I hate it when people try to emptify art with speaking. I don’t think one can change the world by doing art. My reason to paint is to say something that is not possible through words. If I have a meaning in my painting, I want to hide it. I don’t want to let the whole world see my diary. I am fixated by death cap mushrooms and I use them in many of my paintings. I often see dreams about death caps. I myself have been compared to a death cap. They are beautiful to see but poisonous.
Bad Painting is a style of crude, roughly drawn figurative painting. The exhibition “Bad Painting”, curated by Marcia Tucker at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in 1978, identified a trend for “bad” or “ugly” painting, in opposition to the canons of classical good taste.In 2008 an exhibition entitled “Bad Painting — good art” held at Vienna’s Museum of Modern Art provided, according to the museum’s director, “The first major historical overview of a phenomenon which has undeservedly received little attention to date”.
Veera Tiainen
Date of birth: 1980
Lives in Vantaa, Finland
Education: painter,
Academy of Pekka Halonen 2002
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Wrapped Around Each Other
Panu Jansson
South African Leora Farber combines art and research as a reflexive whole.
South African Leora Farber makes art trough herself and research trough her art. She is herself at the center point of installations called Dislocation/Re-location in which she explores the southafrican identity. Farber feels that her art gives inspiration to her research and vice versa. “Working in an integrated way, between practice and theory has always been very productive for me”, Farber says.
Farber’s art consists of installations, photography, sculptures and performance. Three Jewish women are in the center of Farber’s Dislocation/Re-location -installation and Farber takes the role of each woman: Bertha Marks, who moved to South Africa in the 19th century, represents the colonial Jewish identity, Leora’s own mother Freda Farber represents the Jewish immigrant women who came to country in the 1930’s and Leora herself is the example of Jewish woman in the post-colonial South Africa.
These three women are examples of different kind of dislocation from the southafrican mainstream culture. In her art Farber explores the differencies and likenesses between these three roles.
“At times placing myself in the center of my art feels bit narcissistic. You can get easily over it though when you place your work in a broader theoretical frame”, Farber explains.
In addition to being the artist and the subject of the art Farber is the project manager, in charge of the logistics, a fundraiser and the researcher. Therefore Dislocation/re-location is the perfect example practice lead research.
“In my opinion theory doesn’t have to validate practice nor practice the theory but they can enrich each other.”
Art works as a field where she can grasp to the questions which rise from the theory. Art also brings up new questions which can be then further explored trough research. Theoretical frames can clarify the objects of visual art but Farber knows exactly which is more important to her.
“Art is no doubt more important! I love the whole process: planning, conceptualising, work itself and taking the work to exhibitions.”
Project has this far produced research litterature in different forms. Art is in the centre giving ideas and perspectives to the textual outputs. Dislocation/Re-location has been a starting point for a number of research papers, conference speeches, panel discussions, a book, doctor’s thesis and now for this article.
Farber has adapted much of her techniques from finnish researchers from the School of Art and Design in Helsinki. One of the finnish forerunners in the practice lead research is professor Maarit Makela. She describes making the practice lead research as a tough process.
“The conventions of writing comes from the field of research and in addition you have to have an art production”, Makela says.
“It takes time and that is one of the reasons why it’s hard to find people who want to make practice lead research. Someone said that you have to ride two horses at the same time.”
Practice lead research produces information in two different levels. Artistic insight gives own kind of, emotional explanations and research gives scientific and cumulative information. The process turns subjective to objective and personal to general.
“The advantage is that when one is speaking from personal experience, one is also speaking about a subject he or she knows well and is familiar with, and therefore is not trying to ’speak for the others‘. The difficulty is that one is revealing a great deal of personal material, although how much one chooses to reveal is, of course, something that is under artist’s control.”
http://tm.uiah.fi/tutpor/AOR2009/Farber_paper.pdf
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Views...
Kira Kustova
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Think globally. Global modules will help you
Anna Kholina
Global modules is an international project which connects universities all over the world in order to develop relations and interactions between young adults. Its aim is also to involve students into discussions about serious problems of the contemporary world. In March 2010 this experiment for integration of this module into education was held in Polytechnic University
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