The factory of psychological alleviation

Total site-specific installation, 2017, with Vladimir Seleznev, Danil Akimov, Evgeny Gavrilov

The installation is located in the symbolically charged historical space — the production workshop of Demidov Plant. Saving the context, the authors radically redefine all its elements using the legend of the real «factory of alleviation», created as «a monument to the work of generations of people who have lived and worked here for three hundred years: they finally got a long-awaited and well-deserved rest».

Having changed the production functionality to the stylistic of the Japanese Zen Park, industrial readymades transform into «contemplation machines». Retort emits light, red carps float in tanks for liquid metal, semi-finished products form sculptures on the sand. Each object here condensates the lifetime of many generations of workers.

Now this time is «disincarnates», turning the installation into a metaphor for the transition of the industrial era into a post-industrial one.

Ogoniek Cinema

Evgeny Gavrilov, Andrey Syaylev

The former workshop now holds a cinema where one can face one of the modes of existence of the main element of this place. Liquid metal slowly flows down forming a fiery river and immersing viewers into a meditative state. Glass tanks-aquariums with fish inside are located on the background of pouring fire. These aquariums used to serve as storage tanks for hydrochloric acid needed for industrial accumulators.

Altar

A retort for manufacturing steel used to be the central element of the workshop. In this new workshop, it retains the memory of its previous role by generating a beam of bright warm light, as it used to do before. This light is projected onto a large mirror globe rising out of the retort, floating over it and sprinkling the entire space with yellow flecks of light.