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      (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov: Leningrad 80s >>

Festival "Les Allumées", Nantes, France

Leningrad Saint-Petersbourg, 1991


Page 1: Les Allumées Nantes/Saint Petersburg
Page 2: Programme (booklet)
Page 3: Performance NEW COMPOSERS
Page 4: KOLIBRI backstage
Page 5: Sergey Kuryokhin's POP MEKHANIKA

>> Exhibition NEVSKI PROSPEKT UNDERGROUND:
The Collection "2x3m", Kozlov, Necrorealists, Matveeva,
Bugaev, Zaika, Maslov, Kuznetsov, Enver, Fobo >>

Page 1: Les Allumées Nantes/Saint Petersburg

Text: Hannelore Fobo 2019 • Pictures: (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov and Hannelore Fobo 1991

Introduction

For six years, between 1990 and 1995, the city of Nantes, France, organised a series of important cultural festivals called "Les Allumées". Each festival lasted for six days and was dedicated to a large international seaport: Barcelona (1990), Saint Petersburg (1991), Buenos Aires (1992), Naples (1993), Cairo (1994); the last one, Havana (1995) was canceled due to restrictions imposed by Cuba.

 (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov with a poster of "Les Allumées Nantes/Saint Petersburg", Nantes, October 1991


(E-E) Evgenij Kozlov with a poster of "Les Allumées Nantes/Saint Petersburg", Nantes, October 1991



"Allumé" means "lit" or "alight", but also "crazy" – "The Crazy Ones" would probably be the best translation. On the other hand, "allumées" uses the feminine plural form of the past participle, so the title might be a short form of "les nuits allumées" – "nights on fire", referring to the fact that all events happened at some time between 6 o‘clock in the afternoon and 6 o‘clock in the morning.

The Saint Petersburg edition took place from 14 to 19 October 1991. It had originally been planned as the "Nantes/Leningrad" festival, but then changed the name to "Nantes/Saint Petersburg", as Leningrad had been renamed on 6 September 1991 following a referendum on 12 June 1991, with the majority of voters having opted for the city's historical name.

The festival presented a large variety of events, some of them as coproductions with French partners, such as

music: Auktion, Avia, N.O.M., New Composers, Two Airplanes, Trislistnik, Pop Mekhanika, La Capella Glinka, Alexander Rudin and young musicians (chamber music)
visual art: exhibition Nevski Prospekt Underground: - Bella Matveeva, (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, Necrorealists (Evgeny Yufit, Vladimir Kustov, Sergei Barikov / Serp, Valery Morozov) - Sergei Bugaev - Enver - The Party of Free Men (Oleg Maslov. Oleg Zaika, Alexei Kozin) - Victor Kuznetsov - Hannelore Fobo, Vladimir Peshkov, - Collection 2x3 (Elena Bogdanova, Hannelore Fobo, Vladislav Gutsevich, Evgenij Kozlov, Oleg Kotelnikov, Vincent Lego, Aftandil Leladze, Wolfgang Luthe, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, Vyacheslav Mogilevsky, Alexander Nikolaev, Inal Savchenkov, German Pavlov, Igor Smirnov, Ivan Sotnikov, Grigory Strelnikov)
dance: Compagnie Claude Brumachon
fashion: LEM
performances: Litsedei Clown Theatre, Kolibri
literature: Russian and Soviet authors
films: Soviet cinema
political debates
• a chess competition with Russian chess Grandmaster Alexander Kochyev.

A full list of events and a timetable are available on the page "Programme (booklet)" >>

 Les Allumées – Nantes-Saint Petersburg, 1991 A simultaneous exhibition with Grandmaster Alexander Kochyev.


Les Allumées – Nantes/Saint Petersburg, 1991
A simultaneous exhibition with Grandmaster Alexander Kochyev.


Although Les Allumées – Nantes-Saint Petersburg did include some of the more traditional cultural aspects of Russian and Soviet culture, such as the choir "La Capella Glinka" or chamber music by Tchaikovsky, Rimski-Korsakov, Shostakovich and others (performed by Alexander Rudin and young musicians), most participants were from the so-called "underground" – young creative people from Leningrad's subculture or "counter-culture", setting the trend. More about Leningrad's 1980s subculture >>

More than twenty-five independent artists displayed their works at the exhibition Nevski Prospekt Underground, either through individual presentations or as part of Kozlov's collection "2x3m". More about the collection "2x3m" >>

As the majority of works were from 1990, visitors saw a cross section of new Leningrad art, among them paintings by the "Necrorealists" and the "New Artists", the two most influential Leningrad artist groups of the 1980s. There had been manifold points of contacts between different groups of underground artists and underground musicians since the early 1980s, many performing together during Sergey Kuryokhin's Pop Mekhanika concerts at the Leningrad Rock Club and other venues. The New Composers, Kolibri, and Litsedei clowns were part of this scene. See Pop Mekhanika at the Leningrad Palace of Youth, 1986 >>



CRIC, the festival committee, invited not only performing artists, but also visual artists participating at Nevski Prospekt Underground (with the exception of artists from the "2x3m" collection). In this way, the number of artists and musicians attending the festival became quite impressive. Although some had already been able to travel to the West towards the end of the 1980s, for many others it was the first opportunity to visit a Western country: the Soviet practise of compulsory exit visas for travels to the West – a practise maintained throughout the Soviet bloc – required approval of the KGB for each single visit, and until requirements were gradually eased with Gorbachev's perestroika, exit visas were not given to ordinary Soviet citizens. (The practise was officilaly abandoned in Russia only in 1993.)

The Saint Peterburg guests arrived on a large Soviet (transport or expedition) ship, travelling sevaral days non-stop from Saint Petersburg to Nantes; the ship would also be their swimming hotel during their stay in France. As the Leningrad sub-cultural "stratum" had never been exceedingly large, many guests knew each other quite well, and had come to know each other even better by the time they arrived in France. The fact that three or more people shared one cabin also contributed to building up a kind of "recreational camp" atmosphere, much enjoyed by many, and somewhat less by others.

 Les Allumées – Nantes-Saint Petersburg, 1991 Oleg Kotelnikov felt inspired by the festival's atmosphere ("cinema, vodka") and created several drawings for Hannelore Fobo; this one has a sketch of the ship, the artists‘ "swimming hotel".


Les Allumées – Nantes/Saint Petersburg, 1991
Oleg Kotelnikov felt inspired by the festival's atmosphere ("cinema, vodka") and created several drawings for Hannelore Fobo; this one has a sketch of the ship, the artists‘ "swimming hotel".


In this respect, Evgenij Kozlov and I were privileged: as we arrived directly from Cherbourg, we were given a hotel room in the centre of Nantes. In Cherbourg, we had assisted the opening of the exhibition "Le passage des éléphants ocre" on 11 October, displaying works by Marina Koldobskaya, Oleg Kotelnikov and Kozlov himself, as well as my photographs. It was the follow-up exhibition to "Der Weg der ockerfarbenen Elephanten" at Kampnagel Sommertheater, Hamburg, earlier that year, where the four of us had been guests of Kampnagel for three weeks.




French actor Marina Vlady was the festival's guest of honour. For Soviet people, she was the living memory of legendary Soviet actor and singer-songwiter Vladimir Vysotsky, to whom Marina Vlady was married from 1969 until Vysotsky‘s death in 1980. Vysotsky's famous songs were often played at the festival restaurant, the meeting place for all participants at lunch time and dinner.

 Les Allumées – Nantes-Saint Petersburg, 1991 Hannelore Fobo (artist), Patricia Solini (CRIC, Nantes), festival director Jean Blaise, and actress Marina Vlady, at the opening of "Nevski Prospekt Underground" 15 October 1991. Left: a painting by Necrorealist Sergei "Serp".


Les Allumées – Nantes/Saint Petersburg, 1991
Hannelore Fobo (artist), Patricia Solini (CRIC, Nantes), festival director Jean Blaise, and actress Marina Vlady, at the opening of "Nevski Prospekt Underground" 15 October 1991. Left: a painting by Necrorealist Sergei "Serp".





The success of a festival depends to no small degree on food and drinks, and the festival restaurant offered plenty of both. Festival participants were received in the tradtion of French hospitality – which included red table wine served in generous quantity. Lunch and dinner were free of charge to everyone wearing the official festival badge.

Les Allumées – Nantes-Saint Petersburg, 1991, at the festival restaurant. Olga Feshenko, "Kolibri" (Ольга Фещенко, Колибри), (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, artist, "Russkoee Pole / The Russian Field" ((E-E) Евгений Козлов, Русскоее Полее), Yuris Lesnik, video-artist, cameraman "Pirate Television" (Юрис Лесник, Пиратское Телевидение), Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, artist, performer (Владислав Мамышев-Монро).


Les Allumées – Nantes/Saint Petersburg, 1991, at the festival restaurant.
Olga Feshenko, "Kolibri" (Ольга Фещенко, Колибри), (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, artist, "Russkoee Pole / The Russian Field" ((E-E) Евгений Козлов, Русскоее Полее), Yuris Lesnik, video-artist, cameraman "Pirate Television" (Юрис Лесник, Пиратское Телевидение), Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe, artist, performer (Владислав Мамышев-Монро).



Les Allumées – Nantes-Saint Petersburg, 1991 On the night of the opening of "Nevski Prospekt Underground", a different location was chosen for dinner: a large industrial hall displaying graffiti art by local artists.


Les Allumées – Nantes/Saint Petersburg, 1991
On the night of the opening of "Nevski Prospekt Underground", a different location was chosen for dinner: a large industrial hall displaying graffiti art by local artists.

The handwritten sign on the wall reads
"Les verres sont originaires du restaurant et souhaitent y rester"
Стаканы родились и выросли в ресторане и не хотят его покидать
("The glasses were born and grew up in the restaurant and don‘t want to leave it.")




 Les Allumées – Nantes-Saint Petersburg, 15 October 1991 Hannelore Fobo taking pictures during the opening of "Nevski Propekt Underground",


Les Allumées – Nantes/Saint Petersburg, 15 October 1991
Hannelore Fobo taking pictures during the opening of "Nevski Propekt Underground",



Les Allumées – Nantes/Saint Petersburg was the third and largest ever international festival dedicated to Leningrad's subculture. The range of events and activities went beyond those of two previous festivals in 1988 (Stockholm) and 1989 (Liverpool), both of which had presented a New Artists exhibition ("The New from Leningrad" and "Perestroika in the Avant Garde", respectively), as well as a supporting programme that included a Pop Mekhanika concert.

Yet in spite of its importance, little is known about Les Allumées – Nantes/Saint Petersburg today. As no documentation was produced after the festival, the course of events and how they happened only exists in artists' personal memories, with the exception of some newspaper articles.

This is why I decided to have a closer look material from our archive. The large number of activities going on during the festival made it impossible to attend them all, but Kozlov and I collected posters, programmes and other material published before and during the festival. We also documented it with videos and photos, Kozlov using his Bauer VHS video camera while I took the pictures with a Pentax camera and a 35mm slide film, and we sometimes exchanged the cameras to film each other. The total length of the videos is about seventy minutes, and the number of slides is 128.

A selection of these documents is now available on this and the following pages, including video stills from those (yet unreleased) videos. Most documents have been published for the first time. An exception are my pictures from the Pop Mekhanika performance on the last day of the festival, published online in 2017 more >> as part of my documentation on Sergey Kuryokhin more >>.




What can be said about Les Allumées – Nantes/Saint Petersburg today, almost thirty years later?

Studying the material, we understand why Les Allumées – Nantes-Saint Petersburg was not only the third and largest festival of Leningrad's "subculture", but also the last. In retrospect, the festival clearly marked the passage from the Soviet to the post-Soviet period, a passage offering artists new opportunities. Subsequently, the term "subculture" – or "counter-culture", "underground" – lost its meaning of denoting an art community different from the official one, yet characterised by a certain degree of cohesiveness.

This has become quite obvious with the next generation of Saint Petersburg artists – those born in the 1970s and later. How would you group together a "portion" of these artists and performers as "underground artists" – now, when everyone is overground?

It makes no sense, unless you identify "underground artist" with "repressed political activist". This would apply, for instance, to the members of the group "Voina" ("War"), who were persecuted by the Russian state on the grounds of their provocative actions. On the other hand, being a political activist is no precondition to be subject to oppression by the Russian state, as the example of Kirill Serebrennikov demonstrates.

In search of the underground, we might find interesting artists, but we will not encounter a large artist community, because until the end of the Soviet Union it was the state itself which built up this community – by denying young talented artists the status of professionals on formal grounds, namely the lack of certain types of diplomas. The Soviet state thus created its own subculture with the help of "amateur" artists, who would develop fringe activities closely supervised by the KGB.

This explains the heterogenity of aesthetic concepts presented at Les Allumées – Nantes/Saint Petersburg: With regard to the Soviet Union in general, and to the city of Leningrad in particular, "underground" is a sociocultural classification in the first place, and only in the second place is it an aesthetical one.

What distinguished these concepts from "official" art was that they were innovative. It was this very spirit of making up something new which generated a kind of "field", to use a term from physics, that is, a space containing energy, acting like a physical entity possessing a momentum.

Seen from this perspective, les Allumées presented new Leningrad art under a common label for good reason.

The idea of such a field was present in the name of Kozlov's Leningrad studio "The Russian Field", or Russkoee Polee ,1989-1991 (both words written with a double "E" to produce a total of thirteen letters, Kozlov´s favourite number). It was here, on Fontanka river embankment 145, apartment 31, that Kozlov started his collection "2x3m". He invited his artist friends to create a work in a two by three metre or three by two metre format to build up a collection representing a multitude of individual positions, a powerful statement about Russian art.

We can see how the focus shifted from a more general "underground" concept to the concept of such individual positions with the title of the next important exhibition on St. Peterburg art. "Self-Identification. Positions in St. Petersburg Art between 1970 until Today", was curated by Barbara Straka and Kathrin Becker for the Stadtgalerie Kiel (1994), followed by Berlin, Oslo, Sopot and Saint Peterburg.

The same year, 1994, the "field" moved to Berlin, where Kozlov and I opened "The Russian Field 2". Here the collection "2x3m" has continued to grow, even after we had to close the studio in 2008. "2x3m" now comprises almost fifty works by Russian artists, with a new work accomplished in 2019.

To pursue such a monumental project, three conditions must be fulfilled: the initiative and vision of an artist-collector, (E-E) Evgenij Kozlov, artists ready to meet the challenge, and a common "field" made up by mutual trust and understanding. With regard to the third condition, the Leningrad "underground" has produced a long-lasting effect. In a society becoming ever more fragmented, such a requirement would now be much more difficult to meet, be it in Saint Peterburg or elsewhere.

Hannelore Fobo, December 2019.

"Les Allumées Nantes/Saint Petersburg", Nantes, October 1991. Exhibition logo with a rockabilly Lenin wearing the iconic pompadour – Elvis Presley's slicked back greaser hairstyle.

"Les Allumées Nantes/Saint Petersburg", Nantes, October 1991. Exhibition logo with a rockabilly Lenin wearing the iconic pompadour – Elvis Presley's slicked back greaser hairstyle.






Uploaded 12 December 2019