PROGRAM Olivie 9 september -11 october 2010 REAL ART Сurators: Bogdan Mamonov, Sergey Popov Vladimir Salnikov, Nina Kotel, Bogdan Mamonov, Sasha Leech, Boris Smelov, Nikolay Kasatkin, Ivan Lukinyh, Olga Chernyshova, Sasha Sokolov, Tasia Korotkova, Alexander Pogorgelsky, Katya Rogkova. Gruntovka 9-20 september 2010 GOLDEN POT Petr Maslov Curator - Bogdan Mamonov   3 march -3 april 2007 Pam Skelton. Burning poems Curator: Elena Zaitseva Project Manager Anna Ilchenko Pam Skelton’s art deals with the complex relationship of history and memory, both personal and collective. Her subject of inquiry is the gap between the memories of individuals who happened to be party to a historical event, on the one hand, and the way this event is represented in the collective memory of succeeding generations, on the other. More often than not her work has been inspired by a place that retains the memory of an historical tragedy, but the artist’s interest very often centres on the lives of particular individuals. It can be the unknown lives of common people, who selflessly fought to control the consequences of the Chernobyl nuclear plant disaster (Liquidators project), or the life of a prisoner miraculously surviving a Nazi concentration camp (Ponar). But it can also be that of a heroic historical figure, a poet who became “the conscience of one’s generation”. Such was the impression on Pam Skelton of the Anna Akhmatova Museum in Fontanny Dom, St. Petersburg that compelled her to create Burning Poems. What do visitors to a memorial museum really see when they find themselves in the house where a great historical figure lived and worked? All of us perceive what we see by relying on our own cultural memory. Our impressions of a museum with its furnishings, letters, paraphernalia depend not just on what we view on display so much as on what we have read. Text is what gives a meaning to this collection of objects. The ambiguous relation between text and object, word and image is a topic that has a rich tradition in Russian art. It was dealt with by Ilya Kabakov, Viktor Pivovarov, Andrei Monastyrsky and together with them, the whole set of Moscow romantic conceptualists. As such, it is all the more interesting to present in Moscow an English artist's project devoted to a Russian poet. The video installation Burning Poems consists of projections onto three screens, connected as episodes whose sequence is not established, as if each episode were timeless. The installation itself is placed beyond any particular space; originally, it was displayed amongst the Akhmatova Museum's permanent collection (curator Maria Korosteleva), but now it is displayed in a neutral exhibition space in Moscow's industrial zone. Thus, Pam Skelton’s installation appeals to the viewer’s available knowledge and memory, both cultural and personal. In her book Installation Art Claire Bishop describes the deep-seated relation between the total installation invented by Ilya Kabakov and Freud’s dream theory. A dream: (1) presents a series of visual images, which we live through but do not comprehend; (2) consists of logically unconnected fragments; and (3) cannot be read like a code, its clue is to be found in the subject’s own free association. "The main moving power of an installation, something that animates it is a chain of associations, analogues from culture or daily life, or the personal memory of the viewer” (Ilya Kabakov). It is according to these laws that the installation Burning Poems is built. Its episodes are based on real events in Anna Akhmatova’s life in the 1930s and 1940s. Each of them --- Akhmatova’s burning of her manuscripts, her meeting with the English philosopher Isaiah Berlin, her being kept under surveillance ---tells us of Akhmatova’s stubborn resistance to a totalitarian regime, paying for her creative freedom with the bitter hardships that befell her and her son. Berlin described his meeting with Akhmatova in his book of essays Personal Impressions: "Fate gave me a singular opportunity for a westerner to meet several Russian poets, two of whom — Pasternak and Akhmatova — are indisputable geniuses.” In his book he admires the heroism of writers whom “a totalitarian state denied everything but nonetheless was unable to master." Akhmatova burned most of her manuscripts in 1949 following the fourth arrest of her son. It was the year when George Orwell’s 1984 was published, a book narrating how a system possessing a strong machinery of suppression can break a person's will to resist. However, the story of the life and work of a real person, a poet who lived in the Soviet Union, maintains the contrary. It was that aspect of Akhmatova’s life, her heroic resistance to the system (“I am a hero worshipper,” says Berlin in his book), the invincibility of human spirit in its deadly struggle with the system which most attracted the English artist, impelling her to create Burning Poems. Pam Skelton was born in Harrogate, England in 1949 and lives and works in London. Her artworks investigate geographies, histories and identities in post world war II Europe which are explored in relationship to the histories which inform specific spaces through the production of video works, paintings, curatorial activities and essay’s. Her works explore absences and amnesia in relation to these sites and histories in the aftermath of the Holocaust and Cold War. The body as history is also an active site of investigation and Skelton has explored the influence of genetics in re-defining the ‘other’ for example, the immigrant or refugee. We are grateful for the support to Asya Filippova, Director of ПRОЕКТ FАБRИКA, Maria Korosteleva, Curator of Anna Akhmatova Museum, Nana Zhvitiashvily, Curator of State Russian Museum and “Rossa Rakenne” the exclusive distributor of company HONKA in Russia +7 (495) 101-30-01 +7 (812) 325-74-50               09.03.2007 Даже если наш мир превратится в стеклянные небоскребы  Русский журнал | Анна Ильченко