Exhibition "Playing in the cities" Automatic translate

On October 27, in the historic waiting room of the Kazan station "Comfort" (1st floor, hall №3), the exhibition "Playing in the cities" will open, dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the play "Juno and Avos". In the center of the exhibition is an installation by the artist and set designer Irina Korina, which is a project of the Juno and Avos Museum. Curator - Vyacheslav Shmyrov.

What is the City Game project about?

The exposition of the pop-up museum is based on the history of the creation of the play, told through episodes from the life of six authors: the poet Andrei Voznesensky, composer Alexei Rybnikov, director Mark Zakharov, artist Oleg Sheintsis, choreographer Vladimir Vasiliev and actor Nikolai Karachentsov. A unified narrative in an installation by artist Irina Korina, curated by Vyacheslav Shmyrov, tells how Juno and Avos became a legendary production of international fame and places it in the cultural context of an era of stagnation.

For the Voznesensky Center, the appeal to the famous rock opera is not only a tribute to the production of Lenkom and the poem by Andrei Voznesensky, but also an attempt to tell about Juno and Avos as a work that transcended the boundaries of arts, genres, states, ideologies. The City Game exhibition tells about how Juno and Avos was able to unite different people and different continents. The venue is the waiting room of the Kazan station, built by the architect Alexei Shchusev at the beginning of the twentieth century, here it acts as a metaphor for the intersection of creative ideas and destinies.

How is Juno and Avos related to geography?

The plot of the play is based on the love story of the Russian Count Rezanov and the Spanish girl Conchita, the daughter of the governor of the city of San Francisco, founded by the Spaniards on the American continent, - an enchanting chain of geographical names and historical events that repeatedly entwines our planet.

So the unique fate of the performance begins in 1971, when Andrei Voznesensky, being in Canada, gets acquainted with the love story of Rezanov and Conchita and writes the poem "Avos" about it. It becomes the starting point of one of the most beautiful legends about love, expressed first in the rock opera by Alexei Rybnikov, and then in the performance of the Lenkom theater. A new "city game" is being formed here: from the premiere of "Juno and Avos" in Moscow in stagnant 1981, through the triumphant tours in Paris in 1983, which made the play a property of the world, to the New York tours of the Lenkom theater at the end of the Gorbachev era in 1990.

Authors and organizers about the exhibition

Irina Korina, project artist:

We are creating a project for the Juno and Avos museum: we change the location of the performance, its semantic position, we consider this project as a part of the country’s history. We remember the context of its origin, the late 70s and 80s, and think of it as a heritage, as a part of the museum collection. The very form of exhibiting at the "Playing in Cities" exhibition is of a model and decorative nature. This museum is still a model, a sketch.

Vyacheslav Shmyrov, curator of the exhibition:

The history of the creation of "Juno and Avos" - a poem, disc, play - a story about overcoming the "iron curtain". The phenomenon behind closed doors. A dream performance that was paradoxically nourished by Orthodox chants and Russian rock, poetic and scenographic experiments and playing at the full power of the national acting school… This musical and theatrical phenomenon this year is forty years old, and this is almost two thousand performances not only on the stage of our theater "Lenkom", but also in many parts of the world, including triumphant tours in Paris and New York… This event is dedicated to the exhibition of unique artifacts and unique human stories of the poet Voznesensky, composer Rybnikov, director Zakharov, artist Sheintsis, choreographer Vasiliev and actor Karachentsov.

Olga Vartseva, Director of the Voznesensky Center:

The play Juno and Avos, based on a poem by Andrei Voznesensky, is still being sold out at Lenkom - a phenomenal success for theatrical production. The history of the play involves almost the whole world, different continents and cities. Hence the choice of the site - the theme of the road, routes and movements runs like a red thread throughout the entire exposition, sending the visitor on a journey from Krasnoyarsk to New York.

As part of the exhibition, an accompanying performative and educational program will be held, which will soon be announced on the Center’s website and in social networks. Upcoming events include performances, concerts, curatorial excursions, master classes, lectures on Juno and Avos, and film screenings.

Irina Korina - artist, graduated from RATI-GITIS (2000) with a degree in stage designer. As a set designer she collaborated with many theaters in Moscow and Russia, since the early 2000s she has been working in cinema. In 2017, her installation was featured in the main project of the 57th Venice Biennale. Her solo exhibitions were held at the GRAD Foundation in London, the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, at the Steirischer Herbst festival in Graz, Austria. Laureate of the professional award in the field of contemporary art "Companion" (2006, 2009, 2012) and the All-Russian competition in the field of contemporary art "Innovation" (2008, 2015). Artist of the Year (2021, Cosmoscow). He is working on his projects together with the architect Ilya Voznesensky.

Vyacheslav Shmyrov is a curator, film critic, organizer of film festivals, founder and editor-in-chief of the Kinoprocess magazine. Organizer of Russian film festivals, since 2003 - artistic director and general producer of the Moscow Premiere festival. Since 2019 - the organizer of the International School of Young Filmmakers of the CIS countries "Commonwealth" in Batumi. Since 2017, she has been teaching the history of world cinema at the Russian Institute of Theater Arts (GITIS). Curator of the exhibitions “Tarkovsky. Space ”(2012) and“ Parajanov. The Color of Pomegranates ”(2014) in the Gallery on Solyanka, a number of projects dedicated to Andrei Tarkovsky, made in collaboration with the AZ Museum (Anatoly Zverev Museum).