«Dormitory District» is an interactive open-air installation located in one of Moscow’s dormitory districts. About 70 contemporary Russian artists were invited to participate; each of them will produce a unique art object out of a commonplace iron bed.

This project gives an affirmative answer to the question if the functioning of contemporary art is possible far from the city center, among the concrete blocks located beyond the Moscow circular motorway. The first associations the word combination «dormitory district» evokes in most people are: walks in the park, drinking cold beer on the benches, and finally resting — i.e. bed...The facelessness of the capital’s dormitory districts, lack of cultural institutions and the consequent detachment from the dynamic artistic process were a stimulus for the organizers. «Dormitory District» develops a well-known tradition of European biennials and festivals to transform streets into artistic objects, transfiguring the city and involving its dwellers in the creative experience. The project also meets the theme of the main exhibition of the 3rd Moscow Biennale — «Against Exception», for it is absolutely impossible to exclude dormitory districts from the cultural life of a metropolis.

Art critic Fyodor Romer on «Dormitory District» project:

From Fence to Bed...
In case if the declared theme of the Moscow Biennale is so democratically general, «Against Exception», it means that the unrestrained range must include the sphere of living in a specific formation called a ‘dormitory district’ in the Russian megalopolis. It is easy to arrange art interventions in the museum halls, breaking academic immobility, or to ask gallery owners to pull apart the sterile walls of the white cube, willing to go out. But could you play music on the unsuitable iron bed rails in front of the fence near the Volzhskaya metro station?

It is the social constituent that is most important in the «Dormitory District» project by the artists Marina Zvyagintseva, Sergei Denisov and Ivan Kolesnikov, who are not only co-authors but also curators and organizers. They invite their fellow artists to go out in a definite unpleasant street with a concrete wall as a main decoration. The above beds, transformed into artifacts, will appear as local phantasms on the fence and in front of it. There is a temptation to interpret artworks of about 70 project partakers as a literal materialization of dreams of the residents of the Krasnodonskaya street and its neighborhood. But the majority of the authors have never been in the place, and the ‘dormitory district’ notion is just ephemeral for them. The ideas of how to use the utilitarian beds were born on paper rather than in dreams.

The known Zhulebino resident Marina Zvyagintseva who has opened a gallery of contemporary art there, is famed for her call upon the genius loci. It has provoked the idea of the urban project «Dormitory District» that aims at carrying arts to the people and developing street spaces of a different locus, though in the outskirts. The leitmotif (or rather an object, a home task for the participants, from beginners to celebrities) is a bed as a topographic sign. The bed, merged with the fence, has defined the semiosis of the location with the symbolic name «dormitory district».

The Russian culture has the «St. Petersburg text» (thanks to Vladimir Toropov). Now the «uptown text» has appeared, written with pleasure, together, in the open air. It is planned to be read by a wide audience. To do this, it has to go from the bed to the fence. Otherwise the social constituent of the project will reach the educated guests of the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art only.

Participants of «Dormitory District» project:

Nadezhda Anfalova
Valentina Apukhtina
Oleg Arnautov
ARTKUKHNYA Group
Sasha Auerbakh
Elena Berg
Elena Bizunova
Andrei Biljo
Vladimir Chaika
Marina Chernikova
Sergei Chernov
Iosif Dashevsky
Alina and Victor Dorokhov
Alexei Dyakov
Elikuka
ESCAPE Program
Alexander Fedorenko
Yuri Fesenko
Bee Flowers
Lekha Garikovich
Aladin Garunov
GOLOVA Art Group
Andrei Karpov
Svetlana Klie
Ivan Kolesnikov and Sergei Denisov
Tatyana Krol
Alexei Kuripko
Sergei Lebedev
Alexander Lishnevsky
Georgy Litichevsky
Vyacheslav Livanov
Victor Lukin
Sergei Malyutin
Bogdan Mamonov and Andrei Vradiy
Vitaly Melnichuk
Vyacheslav Mizin and Alexander Shaburov
Maria Naimushina
Tatyana Nazarenko
Tatyana Neklyudova
Alexander Pankin
Alexei and Natalia Petrov
Alexei Politov and Marina Belova
Alexander Ponomarev
PULSART Group
Evgeny Romashko
Dmitri Samodin
Evgeny Semenov
SHKOT Art Group
Alexander Shumov
Alexander Sitnikov
Natalya Sitnikova
Oleg Slepov
Maria Sokol and Andrei Pavlenko Vitas Stasyunas
Olga and Oleg Tatarintsev
Dmitri Tsvetkov
Vladimir Tryamkin
Oleg Tyrkin
Vasily Vdovin
Yulia Vinter
Marina Zvyagintseva

General partner of the project — «Morskaya Politika» LLC

Contacts:

+7 915 163 3360 — Valeria Gallay (PR support of the project)
+7 495 744 4995 — ARTMARIN Gallery
+7 495 694 6660 — press office of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art

http://3rd.moscowbiennale.ru/en/program/special_projects/dormitory_district.html