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GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT THE CURATORIAL SCHOOL

The curatorial school is one of the key projects of the NEMOSKVA platform. It has a nomadic format. The idea of holding a school in different cities of the country is related to the need to increase the availability of education for regional communities. Annual training is a professional development program for specialists and an opportunity to activate horizontal connections between experts working in different contexts, in order to stimulate translocal cooperation.

2019

I

The first NEMOSKVA Curatorial School was held in the fall of 2019 in Satka, Chelyabinsk Region. The topic of the discussion was "The Art of the Document: The Poetics of Testimony". The participants of the school were offered to study a wide range of problems of documentaryness and new forms of realism as key tools for interaction with the current artistic agenda. Classes were held in English and Russian. Education was free, students were paid for travel and accommodation.

The first Curatorial School

The theme of the Second Curatorial School is "Reanimation. Care and criticism in the curator's work" - was announced in July 2020 and touched upon two blocks of issues. The first is about the nature of care. What is the reanimation of complicity in the era of forced social distancing and automation of everyday life? What is the temporality of caring? How is caring here and now different from extended caring? In the second block the questions about the importance of caring in the work of a curator are raised. What bothers me as a curator? How do we (curators) show care? How and where do we (curators) get help? Whom can we take care with? What do I not give a damn about?

Baikal

2021

II

Satka

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PHOTO DOCUMENTATION

I

PHOTO-
DOCUMETATION

Few years back I was deeply touched by a very candid opening speech at an annual conference by Mieke Renders, back then a Managing Director of TEH, a network of European cultural centres. That speech resonated so much with me that I approached her immediately after and asked to share it. Time to time, I reread it as a reminder of human vulnerability, empathy and courage and, with permission of the author, I would like to share part of it with you.

Dear friends,


A lobster grows. And while it grows, it hits the shallow borders of its

shell multiple times in life. At the moment when this happens, the

lobster needs to throw off its old shell and grow a new one. This is

only possible when the lobster seeks shelter and refuge and dares

to go hiding under a stone, into a dark and protected place to start

the process of throwing off its old shell. During a couple of days, the

lobster is naked and extremely vulnerable. The lobster cannot go in

the open as long as the new shell is not in place. This takes time

and it needs the loneliness of a truly sheltered place to grow a new

shell. When this is done, the lobster can go out in the world again

and thrive.


We also need to throw off our shells from time to time. In order to

grow as human beings in life, we need to throw off our old, hurting

shells and dare to grow a new one. Dare to go away and be alone,

dare to be a hermit and look our old hurting, so-called self-

protection right in the eyes. Because if we make ourselves small

and stay in the old shell, we will need a lot of medicines, drugs,

alcohol, and all kinds of distraction to decrease the pain, of which

we actually want to get rid off, but we don't dare to do. It takes a lot

of courage to seek shelter, in order to throw our too-small shell

off and go through ones' transformation process. A certain amount

of desperation is usually needed before we are ready to kneel down

and bow.


This also happened to me, a couple of years ago. My own and self-

created mess had gotten so thick that all the kings' horses and all

the king's men couldn't make me function again. I crossed the line

between in-pain-but-still-able-to-function-normally and the realm of

the total basket case. I broke down, went on my knees and

transformed. The things I learned, I will never forget. As painful as

this experience was, I now see it as an important, perhaps

necessary step in my breakthrough to a happier and more humble

life. After much pain, I got out stronger and more 'me'.


Nowadays, breakdowns are not an uncommon phenomenon:

people are crashing into walls today: socially, biologically,

psychologically and emotionally. I empathise with all of you who are

in that place right now or close by, but I can assure you, there will

be a shift if you let it come in and go through the process. When

you truly bottom out, there comes an exhilarating release.

Mieke's speech invited me to revise my agonising globetrotting habit that I used as a solution to soothe the angst. It was not until a few months later that I found myself in a lobster situation: after numerous attempts to return to Italy, I instead found myself in a plane that landed at Heydar Aliyev Airport on March 11, 2020.

For many years I only spent at most a few months a year in my hometown and would be irritated if someone would suggest I move back, but life circumstances invited me to stay in Baku longer and rediscover the notion of home and review my plans and aspirations.

Some years back I would never have thought that art could lure me away from strategy consulting and globetrotter glamorous life. With time I grew in understanding that I should be doing something else and be somewhere else. A series of serendipity moments brought me where I am now.

When my colleagues and I launched Ta(r)dino 6 Art Platform back in 2019 we had a vague idea of what it would become. It started intuitively and spontaneously, but already back then I felt that its mission is bigger than pop-up exhibition making in my Baku apartment in our free time. For over two years it existed as a nomadic platform and we made few, but successful events in Baku, Venice and Istanbul.

Mieke's speech triggered me to think that maybe I decided to quit too early and I shall stop only when I can confess: I did all I could do, yet I still failed. It was not immediate that I managed to turn my frustration that was slightly growing in an anger into a creative force. After that conference I decided to dedicate myself in full to Ta(r)dino 6 Art Platform for the next 12 months. It was not an easy choice because it meant a lot of changes and personal sacrifices: no stable income and living from savings, high opportunity costs and risks of failure, as well as downshifting my lifestyle to more humble options. Professionally, it often meant to do things I did not know or engage in a boring routine, but I knew if I would not do it, no one would otherwise. At first, there was little success, but as it was a collective journey with friends and colleagues who invested their time, energy and resources for Ta(r)dino 6 to exist, we finally started to see results of our work. Teamwork is what brings good ideas into projects that can then be proudly shared with an audience.

Pandemic and war with Armenia made their adjustments: I accepted the need to extend my 12 months sole Ta(r)dino 6 commitment to 18 months or even further. At Ta(r)dino 6 we often refer to curator Vanessa Müller's advice to 'calibrate compass' and humbly adjust our activities to the changing and uncertain world.

"As we grow our organisations and communities, we often forget to contemplate, to create silence and to stay deeply true to our purpose. We run faster and bigger than we should, reaching for a point which is only written in some vague stars." - TEH 2020 Support Programme and the second Nemoskva curatorial school titled 'Practices of Care and Critical Thinking in Curatorial Work' both have invited me to have such contemplation moments and shaped my present curatorial agenda.

Our weekly Tuesday meetings, Cross-pollination sessions, group readings of Joan Tronto's 'Caring Democracy: Markets, Equality, and Justice' and Viktor Shklovsky, informal virtual ZOOM encounters with my coursemates brought us closer and prepared a ground for in person encounters that should have culminated by everyone spending two weeks on lake Baikal in June 2021.

However, as I was the only resident of a foreign country, international travel became very problematic to impossible. Meeting my coursemates and mentors would have been a real excitement and joy, but my gut feelings hinted that I should be where I am now - in Baku and take these constraints with grace and understanding.

Few days before the supposed trip to Russia I was informed that our self-organised curatorial initiative Ta(r)dino 6 was finally registered as a non-governmental and non-profit organisation in Azerbaijan after 2.5 years of existence!

Official registration is a big responsibility and opportunity. Most of the work we do still remains behind the scenes. Such work requires time, patience, and dedication. We grew in understanding that our future is in our own hands and only if the creative community is developed we also exist to support a discourse on contemporary art from Azerbaijan and beyond. Through a programme of the Cultural Accelerator we try to advocate for the needs of art workers to local stakeholders and cultural organisations responsible for policymaking and funding of art and culture in Azerbaijan and the greater region, but it's a long way to go.

If I travelled to Russia I would not have followed the avalanche of urgent NGO bureaucracy, Cultural Accelerator programming and preparations associated with becoming the first member from Azerbaijan of Res Artis, Worldwide Network of Arts Residencies or if I would, I would not have fully enjoyed my experience in Baikal and have my thoughts in Baku. So I am genuinely glad that life circumstances precluded me to travel. However, I would like the learnings, conversations and encounters I had during the past nine months with my colleagues from various parts of Russia to continue.

We are always open to cooperate with partners who share the same vision and see value in our work. I found many likeminded individuals thanks to Nemoskva course. Economic integration with Russia and Azerbaijan is on the rise, yet cultural exchange only happens at big institutions and state museums. Citizen diplomacy and horizontal relationships are in the hands of common people like us and depend solely on our mutual interest and motivation.

Culture is not something static. It's made by people for people. Especially in countries like Azerbaijan that still build a cultural ecosystem and miss many elements that would allow art and culture to be self-sustainable, external support and relationship building are necessary. Ta(r)dino 6 focus is on creative energy and building an art ecosystem around us. On behalf of our team, I would like to invite my colleagues from NEMOSKVA to visit Baku and take part in the pilot multidisciplinary art residency that we will soon launch in Baku's historical center called Icherisheher (aka. the Inner City) by the end of 2021 with the help of IZOLYATSIA. Platform for Cultural Initiatives (Ukraine), Akademie Schloss Solitude (Germany) and Kultur Aktiv e.V. (Germany). The cash prizes that we won for two years in a row at the Civil Match Online competition will allow us to prepare two beautiful rent-free apartments to welcome our first residents. One apartment will be provided as a temporary studio to young and emerging Azerbaijani artists. An artist will receive support and curatorial presence from Ta(r)dino 6 team and international network. A more spacious apartment, that I now have fun decorating, is reserved to foreign writers, curators and art researchers for the duration of two to nine weeks.

I would like to end my letter with advice from my mentor and friend, James Bradburne: "it's time for you to stop being flowers and become a gardener". Building an art eco-system and introducing mechanisms of support to art workers through a non-governmental and non-profit organisation in Azerbaijan is not easy. There are still a lot of uncertainties, but I know that collaboration, empathy, mutual respect and solidarity will prevail over individual ego-systems.

I would like to thank each of you for sharing and supporting me in my professional journey so far and the organisers of Nemoskva team and especially Daria Bocharnikova for creating a safe and empathetic environment and Larisa Grinberg for her precision, life wisdom and sense of humor.

If any of you would like to visit Baku, you know who to inform first about it!

I want to stop - I can't take it anymore

The frames are flashing faster - time has chewed up the film

The clock, like a mill, is turning the hand...

I am not wheat! I cannot be processed into flour!


January for me is traditionally the most apathetic month of the year. But in 2021, perhaps for the first time, I allow myself not to rush to return to the previous rhythm, to stay in emptiness and listen to the rumble of anxiety instead of running away from it into endless activity. What's behind it?


In the course of therapy, I discovered "heroic" dynamics in myself - the desire to save, revive, open, overcome. Be a pioneer. It sounds beautiful and very romantic. But in 2020 it finally became clear to me that this is completely different from taking care of yourself in the first place. And when you don't take care of yourself, it seems to me that you are not able to take care of others. At least non-toxic care.


Yozhii, in her last letter, criticized the practice of self-censorship as "caring for the institution". But I don't define caring as a purely positive practice. We have already said that one can flood and strangle with care. It seems to me important not to forget about this side of the process.


In the face of an acute shortage of resources, about which Katerina writes (I was very touched by her letter, I read it more than once), care can easily change the vector. And sometimes there is simply no other way out. Refuse the artist or incur big trouble for the gallery director, who has been under siege for many years and is holding the last line of defense? Wanting to fill the emptiness of the cultural field of your city, you start working for wear and tear and become forced to wait and ask the same from artists and colleagues. Asli admires me for her courage, but at the same time I want to hug her and protect her. How long will it last for all of us?


Gosha writes about anxiety for the result and the search for pleasure from the process. It has become almost an obsession for me in recent months to find activities in which pleasure replaces anxiety. What is the curator's pleasure? I would like to formulate this.


Ideas for new projects appear, but resources are scarce. I have come to the conclusion that I can't and don't want to do something out of the "minus" anymore, not to pay royalties to artists, to invite colleagues from altruistic ideals and serve art. So now I choose not to do anything. I'm not giving up, but for now, I choose to be in the void and look for a way to do things differently.

I really hope that together we will be able to find it

I was going to apply for NEMOSKVA in the year the school was founded, but I was afraid because I did not feel competent. In the second year, during the acceptance of applications, a terrible scandal erupted. I felt that it would be difficult for me to go through such an attitude towards myself. And I abandoned this idea. After the round table in the Pushkin museum, I cried. It seemed to me that ideas were crumbling. To tolerate innuendo, violation of boundaries, perhaps deception is unacceptable. On the last day before the deadline, an artist friend called me and said that I needed to apply for the sake of our new projects on the coast. "This will be a different level, Katya", she said. I also decided to consult with people from the art community, especially since my friends were among the initiators of the manifesto voiced at the round table. Secretly, I hoped that they would dissuade me from the idea, and I would not have to overcome my fears. But, on the contrary, they supported me.

Our tutor Yara Bubnova, who made a strong impression on me with her insightful mind, and who was not associated with a foreign curator for me (she seemed to always live somewhere nearby), correctly noted that everyone in our group underestimates themselves and their role. When talking about our projects, each of us said "we". This is a correct observation. I often say "we", because I believe that I could not have succeeded alone in everything that I managed to do in our city, which is far from all artistic processes. Sometimes it seems to me that my role is insignificant - I only have the audacity to imagine that the unreal can be embodied in everyday life. And other events and people are attracted and assembled like puzzles, as if everything in space is solved by itself. So it was with "Nemoskva". For some reason, they took me, while all the time I felt pangs of conscience in relation to those who were not taken in the end.

This was an extremely important event for me. This year has become an important year for me in my life. I turned forty. My husband and I had an accident: we flew under a truck, crashed the car, but miraculously survived - we were saved by a frame that withstood the blow. I stood on the snowy track and laughed with happiness that I was still alive. On the day of the first general meeting on October 2, they urgently removed my tooth and performed an operation on the gum, I was lying with fever at home and could not even turn on the video and tell something clear about myself: I might be kicked out, I thought then. Fortunately, I reached the end, and made my dream, in the fulfillment of which I also hardly believed, because all year we were by a hair's breadth from the lockdown, into reality. But not only I studied with great speakers, met people of action who actually do projects in different regions, but also fulfilled my desire to get to Baikal. This region affected me so much that it changed my attitude towards myself and towards life! Once and, I think, forever.

Siberia - it's big, impressive and strong, like local anthills - I've never seen something like that in my life. Buddhists have a belief that only those whose souls in a past life were associated with this place go to Baikal, they are led by true love for that land. This is an amazing space - it seems that you can hear every blade of grass. At the same time, there is a completely different scale here. And you are different on this scale. And the sounds are somehow eaten up: you can shout or wave your hand to a person walking next to you, but he does not hear you, as if the wind carries your call in a completely different direction, wherever it wants. I understood why so many people strive to get there, no matter whether they are intellectuals (the term "scientific tourism" was suggested by Preobrazhensky) or "intuites" who are fond of alternative theories. Local believers say that Baikal is the "crystal eye of the Earth". Surprisingly, at the depths of the lake, they are looking for neutrinos - particles of the Universe that arrived from space. Sometimes, in order to see the global, you need to look deep into yourself.

The first week on Lake Baikal was the happiest for me, although I did not sleep almost the whole week. Either acclimatization played a role (for example, during a trip to Japan, I had the opposite effect - I wanted to sleep all the time). Or I was subconsciously afraid to oversleep something important. I made many entries in my diary these days, and received a lot of revelations and insights, although in the end I realized that I could hardly ever show them to someone, because the artistic, personal, professional and sacred were intertwined too much. The speakers of the first week gave me a powerful intellectual impetus. I highly appreciated the work of Ushakin, Kalinin and Bocharnikova. I still do not understand how this fragile woman came up with the complex mechanism of the school's work, but when I realized how logically all these themes and texts were connected into one common clew, I was shocked. All these months, we were slowly, persistently, patiently led to understand the obvious. I appreciated the work of the Slavists in a different way. After all, I never thought about those who translate articles for us, write reviews, edit, compile texts into collections, which means that I devalued the work of all these people. Kalinin asked us what theoretical works we rely on in our work. I have always been ashamed that I do not find someone among Western theorists to rely on. And in the end I allowed myself the rudeness of not relying on anyone. But after completing training in this curatorial school, I seemed to have found ground under my feet. For me, the size of the void in the history of the evolution of the artistic consciousness of our society in the years of Soviet power and the regime of modern times has decreased. With Lissitzky, for example, I mentally entered into a dialogue, got to know him again, got to know him from a completely different side - not even as an artist, but as a person, a genius with curatorial and project thinking, as if my contemporary. How much we lost and how much we were not told in academic art education, as if we slept through everything, as if we were forced to sleep for many years. My diploma with honors in painting and years of work in the workshops are worthless if I do not understand the most important thing. Now I feel that I have something to rely on. I feel more confident, as if I feel like one of the successors of those who worked a hundred years ago and did enough. Now the role of contemporary Russia in the artistic field does not seem to me to be accidental, it does not appear to me as poor Russian art. We just need to look deeper into ourselves and appreciate the work of our own compatriots, which we have so accidentally lost, now staring with envy into the Western white cubes. I thought we didn't have our paul o'neills, but we did. We're not as far away as I thought. And I believed that we would be able to set our own vector of development. Of course, keeping a peripheral vision of the global context, studying, but not mechanically repeating it, but creating something new. And I'm a little sad about how many bright minds who, by inertia, are sick of that very Russianness, are in emigration, and little is known about them at home! And only a few can get to know them, and even then only thanks to a grant from a large fund or a large corporation. It seems to me that all of this makes us all uncomfortable and a little ashamed of our country.

I have already started negotiations with neighboring Gelendzhik, where there is a museum exhibition hall, and I want to make an exhibition based on one text proposed by Ushakin at the school. And also, while I was at Lake Baikal, I wrote a project for a gallery of contemporary art. Even if not a center, but a small gallery. It suddenly seemed to me that my hometown-labourer could still afford it. Let's see what's next.

And I thank everyone involved.

We can afford it

How do I answer all your letters in one letter? Is a polylogue possible or is it utopia? How do you structure a conversation to give everyone the floor and still keep the thread of reasoning going, without losing focus? What kind of focus is this? What kind of attraction is this, Sergei Eisenstein would ask? The energy of attention to structure our conversations shortens and dries up the polylogue. Is there a hierarchy of meanings again? The editing of speech? Or is it impossible to grasp this thread of reasoning by its tail? One can only "circle" together over the voiced thoughts, says Yozhi. "Haitarma," recalls Katerina in tatar language. "Goro," recalls Erzhena in buryat. I had a similar intuition. In July, I wrote: " We shall create a circle. And so, the new cycle will begin". My circle includes the Narodniks and OPOYAZ members, Constructivists, and my friends the Slavists and curators. And we're spread out like circles on water, and we hear the movements of the Crimean Tatars and Buryats. Gathering a new canon, we parted to let them into our circle.

We gather in a circle. We began to circle. Sometimes the head spins. But the body feels the movement. I write a letter to catch my breath. I turn my gaze to a stationary object to stop the dizziness. It's important for me to feel grounded, feet on earth.

I. On the method

"Letters are like sprouts," "leaving room for air," writes Masha. "There are people who throw fragments of thoughts like grains into the black earth, and sooner or later those grains produce shoots," Anastasia reflects and asks us, "How does your imagination work? How do you know when you have an idea formed?"

My imagination is a machine for processing encounters and feelings. All the materials of everyday life go to work. My imagination is indifferent to the categories and status of knowledge and experience taken in for processing. A momentary fascination with permaculture, a decade-long obsession with the history of the cultural revolution and the cities of the future, unlearnt political theories, scraps of knowledge on museum making, findings from psychoanalysis, a daily dose of press in three languages, random recipes and conversations about calligraphy - all the waste products of my everyday life are put to work. I've learned to appreciate this omnivorousness of my imagination. It doesn't just accept precious metals. All sorts of rubbish can be accepted. In return, I am learning to appreciate all of the discoveries and knowledge that are beyond my status, beyond the disciplinary framework of my studies. I even began to multiply such encounters in my everyday life, to cultivate unexpected connections. The fascination with anarchist geography or permaculture is not a waste of time, not a loss of focus, but the cultivation of the soil of my imagination, the fertilization of my daily life, anyway over-occupied with "work".

I would join the Lev's club "I want to do interesting things well for me" and call my imagination there. I have more fun doing interesting things well for me together with my imagination. And it's even more important for me to enjoy the workings of this machine than it is to pupate ideas. I usually only need the idea formed when I need to sell it to an employer or to gift it to a colleague in order to move on. Then I make an extra effort. I descale this teapot, so that it better reflects the desires of other. I give it a new name. And if it spins further, I can give myself to the production of pleasure again. "I find it very liberating and comforting to think that in order to say goodbye to a person or get in touch with art you don't have to go to a church or a gallery - we are free to create our own rituals, to make our own artistic gestures, they will be self-valuable," writes Naya.

On the border between everyday life and art, in this crack, I try to discern a political economy of the future, where the work of the artist and the work of the common folks are not alienated, where the circulation of pleasure is more important, where we erect infrastructures for circular movement and cross-pollination. We care about contradictions, and have the strength to continue our polylogue.

II. Movement protocols and algorithms

24.01.2021

The letter is like loose soil, leaving room for air. Letters are like sprouts.

I want to tell you about my summer caring experience that has become very valuable to me.

This story began several years ago. Early in the morning on one of the drifts near Truda Street, we came to a wheat field on the side of a busy highway: a small rectangular patch of land, in the middle - willows and even beautiful rows of wheat. On the opposite side of the road, by the garages, we saw a farmer, a homeless man, watching us. From his look, we understood that this was his field. We crossed the road and started asking him questions. We were with big cameras and glowing eyes, maybe he thought we were journalists, it was obvious that he didn't want much attention to himself, he avoided answers and disappeared into the territory of the car service workshop. Another man, a worker, came out to us and told the story of a wheat field. It turns out that once upon a time there was a private house on this place, which burned down in a fire. Its owner now lives on the street and every year plants crop on this site. This story often popped up in my head. Every year I wanted to be there and see if the wheat was growing, but we moved to St. Petersburg, came back, I went somewhere for the summer, I didn't have enough time. I don't remember if I saw this piece of land at least once.

This spring, in quarantine, together with Yura and Masha, we made an online sanatorium and dreamed of a common dacha. We decided to plant and grow potatoes somewhere in the city on the common land, if there was still common land left in the city. Then I did not think about this farmer, the idea of a potato field rather came from childhood, when our families planted potatoes in the fields. We chose Agrarka for planting - a small academic town next to the agricultural institute, located between the center and the sleeping area. There is a small forest, there is a half-abandoned pond, there is a cemetery, there is a public bath, there is a monument to Lenin and the experimental fields of the institute. We also decided to make our own experimental scattered and invisible field. We made the first plantings right under the monument to Lenin, but we also planted potatoes under the maples, under the pines, in the flower beds at the honor board, at the entrance to the institute, under someone's windows.

Our potato is a partisan, our field is scattered and it is not so easy to see it as a whole, it is gathered together by our memory, our knowledge about it. We want to make potatoes make friends with petunias, calendula, the potatoes are hiding under a blanket of pine needles, in the shade of the monument, in the thickets of ornamental grass.

We visited potato together and separately. When I was lonely, I drove to our potatoes and sent photos to the chat. When, on a fine day, I didn't know where to go by bike, I drove to our potatoes. When I was returning from my parents and I wanted to walk a little through the forest, I went to our potatoes. I took bottles of water for them, I remember once in the heat I had almost no water left, but I had tea with me in a thermos, I cooled it down, diluted it with the rest of the water and watered the potatoes. We took care of the potatoes, the potatoes took care of us.

I remember changing the route connecting different bushes. At first it was difficult to remember all the plantings, especially when it was necessary to find and recognize seedlings, to distinguish them from other plants, to remember the right tree, the right hubble. After the young growth appeared, each of them had its own character and constitution: there were frail ones, strong ones, undersized ones, with eaten leaves, growing in small groups or alone...

Of the 20 emerged bushes, four remained by September.

One bush survived on someone else's private flower bed. He was lucky, the residents of the house looked after the flower bed, it was a privileged bush surrounded by decorative plants. Later we found that employees of the institute or the housing and communal services department weeded the flower beds twice in the summer, so all the other bushes from the flower beds were less fortunate - they were pulled out along with other unplanned plants.

Seedlings in wild areas were mowed by lawn mowers ... It turns out that even a seemingly no-man's land was taken care of. When we saw the stumps in the place of our former bushes, we felt pain, but at the same time we found work that we had not noticed before, someone besides us looked after this land, and we had different ideas about care and order. Regulatory care, ordering care, unifying: both the so-called weeds and potatoes were unauthorized flowers. It was so difficult to accept that this potato and land belongs not only to us, that it has its own destiny, that more agents are involved in these relations than we initially thought.

Three bushes survived under the pine trees in the shade among the needles, they were short and frail, eaten by beetles.

In the fall, we harvested the remaining four bushes, called friends, baked potatoes in the oven and ate ceremoniously.

This summer I was riding a bike in the area of Truda Street and remembered the wheat field. After the road was repaired, everything changed, I could no longer find that very rectangle of land where a wheat field once was. But along the road near the fence, I found a long row of pumpkins and zucchini, I saw the familiar cart and realized that the homeless farmer was alive and continued his relationship with this land. And then I realized that our potato field, of course, is somehow connected with the wheat I once found.

Guerrilla gardening changed my relationship with the place, with plants, gave a new experience of caring, new fields of community and conflict, the partisan potato makes friends with weeds, assimilates new soils and new contexts, the partisan potato dies under the blade of a lawn mower and is expelled from the designed flower beds, but at some point, before the utility workers arrive on schedule, it still spikes under the Lenin monument, surrounded by evenly planted flowers, interrupts their rhythm, sets a new order, new relationships, new logic. Partisan potato stretches out its hand to the partisan wheat and all the other partisans. Now I can close my eyes and easily remember the network of paths connecting all the planted bushes into a single field, remember all my dates with potatoes.

The remaining 16 bushes also gave their harvest.

And I keep thinking about taking care of myself, it seems to me that this is important. It's like on the plane, when they give instructions: put a mask on yourself, then on the child. It's the same with work: if you don't take care of yourself, there will come a time when you can no longer or don't want to take care of anything else.

It sounds selfish to put yourself first, but who said that selfishness is bad? Caring for someone can also be represented through an egoistic prism: we want this person to stay with us, to be attached to us, to feel satisfaction. I think if you understand caring for someone (or something) as mediated caring for yourself, it will be easier to do everyday or extraordinary activities.

Recently, the object of my caring in the field of work is, first of all, the artist, not a work, not an exhibition, not even a spectator, but the author. I spend a lot of time eliminating roughness in communication with the institution, I try to make all the processes comfortable, I produce additional events so that the artist's work is sold, I want to be useful. But at the same time, I feel that in a series of petty whims, oddities, ambitions of artists, I am slowly becoming callous. I look at older colleagues who manage to combine external respect and internal negligence, and I'm afraid to come to this. Recently I felt my system of ethical coordinates, it became clear to me only when faced with another, more cynical one. But at the same time, the second system seems to me more effective: you do not waste time on anxieties, you do not look for formulations, you just do as you or your institution needs. And it is precisely this logic that is brought up by megalomaniac projects and programs put on stream. I want to participate in large projects and programs, but I do not want to move from one coordinate system to another without noticing it.

P.S. I cannot yet figure out the concept of reanimation in the name of the school. But while writing the letter, I realized that this word reinforces the postmodernist paradigm about the impossibility of the new, which is not entirely pleasant to me. Can we really only reanimate?

REANIMATION OF A LETTER #1

The first deadline has burned out. Hooray! Now, with the ease and calmness of a latecomer, I can write whatever the thought brings. Far from leaving the title: I like the idea of reanimation, thrown into our mailboxes by Daria. I liked the letters themselves a lot too! Had to read it twice. I love these things - living letters and words. I think the "republic of letters" will help us move into a new zone of intimacy/attachment/involvement. Plus, in the conditions of online and endless Zooms, it will become an alternative to live dialogue and a place for reflection. While I hold back, so as not to start writing too exalted or too dry - this practice of reanimation would be beneficial for my writing. Let it be awkward!

- How are the things in school?
– Okay, was flipping through a cyberfeminist zine today (online, of course).

First observations at school are like real first observations at school. A lot of new, alien, and at the same time just as interesting. It is interesting to observe how each of the participants in the process opens up. It is interesting to identify the unknown for yourself and at the same time find common things every time. It is also interesting who we will be to each other in the last online meeting and as whom will we meet offline.

And about the zine! While it's hot.

I begin with the introduction by Sasha Pistoletova, who points out that we are not brothers to each other by default, but we can be connected through an act of consciousness, "through the effort of the mind, and not through predetermined connections" - this is the first seed in our field.

Dear Colleagues!

I am writing a letter for you. It is difficult to write to strangers, but I will try to be sincere. It has always been difficult for me to study. And so far I have not finished a single educational process, which I entered, with the exception of the compulsory general education school. Too much knowledge, too little attention. I like that here we focus on just two or three words, concepts that can be revealed in different practices. Recently, during a discussion in St. Petersburg, I spontaneously, without thinking for a long time, expressed the idea that schools, in a broader sense, as places for the production of knowledge, perhaps should return to their ancient meaning – that of places for stopping production. Maybe in order to fix bugs\errors of understanding, in order to circle around one problem for a long time.

At some point, during the first lockdown, the word "care" became too present around me. Everyone was interested and engaged in caring, invented new practices related to this concept. In the end, the word underwent an inflation of meaning, lost its meaning for me (just according to Shklovsky), turned into something like a synonym for the words "kindness", "sensitivity", "inclusion", etc. And I've always wanted to separate art from kindness (in favor of the common good). It is strange, but despite the fact that in the book of Tronto I do not find anything new for myself, nevertheless, it gives me this word back. It removes it from me, gives it meaning. As Donna Haraway writes: "Nothing is connected to everything; everything is connected to something". I see this concreteness of the connection between the concept of care and its meanings in the book of Tronto. Asserting and identifying concreteness, returning meanings (which can be entangled), making connections are probably what I find useful here for myself right now.

That's all for now. Thank you.

Yozhi.