Nikolay Polissky

What is the connection between land art and architecture?

Land art as art is, I think, something altogether ancient. It’s something from the earth, something from our ancestors, which means that it died a long time ago. For us it is a new and unfamiliar spectacle. Of course, you can call it a kolkhoz [collective farm], but then no one now has any need to create a kolkhoz. What we need is to do what is interesting, that which enchants and which forces the viewer to get to grips with the universal, mass nature of the project. In Old Russia, I suppose, all this cost a lot of money and all the folk crafts that were recreated at the end of the 19th century were sponsored by large fortunes and wealthy individuals. Talashkino, Gzhel’, Dulevo: all this was created so as to force the Russian narod [common people] to work for its own good. And for this reason Russian folk art underwent a renaissance and lives to this day in shawls, matryoshki, wooden spoons, and so on. But for us this is a spectacle, a Russian folk festival. It’s not even from the age of Old Russia, but from a proto-age, a primeval period – like the shaman dances of our distant ancestors. It’s commonly thought that cliff paintings with bisons are the most ancient art, but perhaps this status really belongs to dancing at the fireside and ceremonial cremation. Universal unification.

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To locals preoccupied with survival, a former Muscovite’s artful towers of twigs or wood or snow are either madness or inspiration.

Nikola-Lenivets, Russia — In this dying village, people don’t carve out a living. They scrape it with their nails from the soil.

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