Exhibition "Last Address / 5 years" Automatic translate

State Museum of Architecture named after A.V. Shchuseva presents the exhibition “Last Address / 5 years”, dedicated to the fifth anniversary of the project.

Five years ago, independent journalist Sergei Parkhomenko and the head of Memorial, Arseniy Roginsky, and his colleagues came up with the Last Address project, which commemorates the victims of repression. The sign itself - a metal plaque slightly larger than a postcard installed on the wall of the house - was designed by architect Alexander Brodsky during the workshop, which was supervised by Eugene Ass.

Since then, more than 800 signs with names have already been installed - more than in 40 cities and villages of Russia, Ukraine, Moldova and Georgia. And about every house that became someone’s last address, about every person whose address it was, information was found and posted on the project’s website. More than two thousand applications are registered, and these applications are added every day. And all this is done on a voluntary basis - with permission, but without the help of the state. The “Last Address” is a rare today’s bottom-up initiative, conceived and implemented by the citizens themselves.

And just like the public initiative “Last Address” turns out to be a cast of not only memory, but also today. The attitude to the tablets reflects one of the main conflicts in the life of modern Russia - the clash of a person-centered perception of the world and the view that the state "is never wrong" that has taken root in us. This conflict, in a reduced, but not softened form, is reproduced around almost every house, every object where the applicants of the "Last Address" come with their signs in the hope of coordinating their installation with the owners of the property or the owners of the buildings.

“One of the main fights of today is on the territory of eighty years ago - the ratio of positions regarding the events of that time turns out to be a mirror of what is happening in Russia now,” said Anna Narinskaya, curator of the exhibition. It was around this thought that an exhibition dedicated to the fifth anniversary of the “Last Address” was built. This is a video installation-constructor that reproduces in concentrated form the life of the project in our “today”, going from the utmost documentary in each specific plot to generalization and even metaphor.

“Last Address / 5 Years”: a maze of video, audio and font animation deconstructing, and then again gathering together the history of the installation of the plate. The “shell”, invented by Nadia Korbut and Cyril Ass for documentary sketches created by Elena Vanina and Kirill Kulagin in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Perm, makes the viewer an accomplice in this action, which - there is no doubt about it - reflects how much society is ready to work with memory today.

Just like the applicants of the Last Address reach out to the past, “pulling” the names of innocent victims from oblivion (and immortalizing on the tablets), our exhibition represents the closure and even interpenetration of the past and the present.

The author of the idea is Sergey Parkhomenko
Documentary filmmakers - Elena Vanina, Kirill Kulagin
Audio installations - Theater.doc
Architects - Nadia Korbut and Cyril Ass
With the support of the Memorial Society
Project Information Partner - Silver Rain