COS20MOS21: new art object, Gagarin in 360 format and "pavilion of the future"

The big program of the Cosmonautics Day began with the presentation of the monumental art object “Observer of Immense Space”. The ceremony was opened by the director of Zaryadye park, Ivan Demidov, and artist Valentin Korzhov, the author of the sculpture.

“60 years ago, a Russian man wrote a new chapter in the myth about the sky, the myth about space, and we, like the whole country, celebrate the day that has a hero — Yuri Gagarin, our first man in space. Meet him — “Observer of Immense Space” — said the director of the Zaryadye Park Ivan Demidov at the opening of the art object.

The three-meter-high installation inherits the traditions of classical sculpture, while at the same time it reinterprets the body of texts of the key figures of Russian cosmism. The artist created this work specially for Zaryadye Park.

“We are talking about such a striking phenomenon as cosmism, about Nikolai Fedorov, about Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. This pattern has certainly been picked up by culture and art. I am very glad that I was lucky enough to become a part of the Zaryadye team on this project. This object is like a tip of an iceberg, it hangs over the Media Center and invites you to become spectators of the entire program of the park”, said artist Valentin Korzhov.

The sculpture “Observer of Immense Space” will stay in the lobby of Media Center until the end of July.

After the opening of the art object, there was a presentation of Moskvich MAG magazine with a sculpture by Valentin Korzhov on the cover. The magazine went offline for the first time, and guests of the park received copies of the limited edition.

After that the premiere of the film “Gagarin. Lieutenant of the sky” took place.  The title of the film refers to the famous poem by Joseph Brodsky and the precise definition that the poet formulated in it (“I will twinkle in the sky wires lieutenant and hide in the cloud, hearing thunder...”). To recreate the historical flight as accurately as possible, the artists used the preserved audio recording of Yuri Gagarin’s radio communications with the MCC.

“We will never know what Yuri Alekseevich saw at the moment when he flew over the Earth. He took this secret with him, but we tried to offer our version. Before creating the film, we relied on two phrases where Gagarin twice mentions “the light of TV”. What TV? This is interesting, and with the help of a number of talented people we made a fragment of Yuri Gagarin’s flight”, said Ivan Demidov, the director of Zaryadye park.

The film was created by media artists Jan Kalnberzin and Yevgeny Afonin specially for Media Hall 360. The artists used neural networks and 3D graphics in the visual part of the film.

“There are a few very attractive moments in the film. We have tried to make it fun and interesting for you to be in this space, but all these moments are not meaningless, some data are hidden in them, which you will definitely feel or maybe understand”, says the artist Jan Kalnberzin.

“We've never done a 360 job projecting an image onto the floor. But on the other hand, we had more opportunities to create special effects”, says the artist Evgeny Afonin.

Spectators feel the radiation of sunlight in outer space, see the flight of the Vostok-1 spacecraft, and finally, hundreds of satellites that are launched into orbit. Not only the visual part, but also the music helps to create the full feeling of traveling into space together with the first cosmonaut — the composer Nikolai Popov worked on the film together with the artists.

“We discussed our ideas, thought how to fill this film, selected materials, and experimented. In addition to Gagarin’s speech, here you can hear many synthesized sounds, there is even music that is made from Gagarin’s voice — the range of sound images is incredibly wide”,  said Nikolai Popov.

The exhibition hall has now become a “pavilion of the future”, where guests can imagine how an exposition dedicated to a distant civilization that once dared to send a man into space would look like hundreds of years later.

The exposition includes works by Recycle Group, crocodilePOWER, Aristarkh Chernyshev, Kaikhan Salakhov, Andrey Smirnov and Ekaterina Trubina, Varvara Kuzmina, Anna Krasnaya, Danila Tkachenko, Yanina Boldyreva. Next to them there are busts of Soviet space heroes created in the last century by sculptors Ariadna Arendt, Lev Kerbel, Boris Talberg, Lev Matyushin, Andrei Faydysh-Krandievsky and Anatoly Grigoriev. The guests will also see the sculpture “Valentina” by Yuri Neroda brought from Switzerland, dedicated to the first woman-cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova.

A special place in the exposition took the videos of thirteen TikTok bloggers, including Хабибка, Maria Pavlova, Kate Brush, Treysi Max, Никита Морозов Перфе. For the first time they performed equally with artists.

“We are very pleased that we, the representatives of the younger generation, have been invited to become authors of artistic expression. With this art object, we want to say that our short videos that we make on TikTok are also a form of art, an opportunity for self-realization for young guys. Being a part of these type of projects motivates us to work”, noted blogger Kate Brush.

Guests of Zaryadye on Cosmonautics Day: President of the Creative Union of Artists of Russia Konstantin Khudyakov, director of the Museum of Moscow Anna Trapkova, director of the Center for Contemporary Art “Winzavod” Nikolai Palazhchenko, director of the All-Russian Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Art Elena Titova, artist Aidan Salakhova, playwright Dmitry Danilov, artist Mikhail Tsaturyan, producer Olga Galaktionova, director Vladimir Skvortsov, actress Ekaterina Rokotova.

The exposition in the exhibition hall is open until June 30. Tickets and price: https://www.zaryadyepark.ru/schedule/en/114454/

The film “Gagarin. Lieutenant of the Sky” runs in Media Hall 360. Information about sessions and price: https://www.zaryadyepark.ru/en/schedule/114639/

Photo: Zaryadye press office, Dmitry Kilpio