It took me a while but I managed to put the first chunk of pictures, there is a thousand more and I don’t know if I’ll manage to upload everything but if you went to the festival and want your picture, get in touch.
Click here to go to the thumbnail (which is not a thumbnail). Enjoy the pictures…
One more thing, Chris is at Index Office video-editing… just so you know…
Well I sure ain’t alone in the dormitory anymore and things sure haven’t changed for the better either. I am writing this after a day of emotional ups and downs and it has ended with me feeling a little sick. Last night 3 hard looking young Russian fellas moved in to the same room. I went to bed early and read a few essays from an Index on Censorship book, one on the Russian condition and went to sleep around 12 o’clock. Around 12.30 2 of the young Russians came banging in to the dorm, just switched the lights on, dressed themselves up, messed around in their bags not giving
A damn who else was in the dorm. When they were finished whatever it was they were doing they left staring me down, leaving the lights on. I went to my bag and took out my knife and brought it to bed with me. Sometime later I heard several bangs in the distance, at that time of night god knows what they were. 15 minutes later the 2 youth came bouncing back in to the room, switched on the lights, noisily changed their clothes and left. For the night thank god.
Went to the offices of New Social Solutions to teach Alexis how to use Adobe Audition with the recording I had asked him to make a couple of days ago. We actually did no work in the morning but rather spent it getting to know each other using Goggles’ translation software. This is interesting in itself because often you have to translate the translations. Once it translated my Saturday as Friday and another time as Sunday. Alexis himself is a descent and interesting guy. He told me he thinks Russians are very aggressive and I’m afraid I have to agree. Just read my rant about traveling around St. Petersburg.
Alexis himself as well as working for New Social Solutions is an artist. His art I think is very innovative. It is all about fabrication of the image, marketing and the media. To be honest the media is mainly a fabrication anyway. His website is www.varsopko.narod.ru. On it you will find fabricated images. One of which is of an unused power station with smoke coming from the stacks. There are promotional posters with real Russian performers but their names have been changed to, for example Michael Jackson and Jennifer Lopez. There are fabricated tickets stubs on the site for fabricated shows. There is also a completely fabricated newspaper article for a fabricated artist and his fabricated exhibition. This article includes a picture of Alexis as the artist. Please look at his website as well as that of the street newspaper Putdo Moi www.putdomoi.ru. This website has an article produced about the visit of ‘ten feet away’. Use Babel Fish to translate these websites www.babelfish.altavista.com.
After spending a few hours swapping social views and creative stories we got on with the job in hand. I taught him as much as I could using the translation software but I think we will have to go over it again at some point..
Later I met Victor who came in to the office. He is a photographer with a very good digital SLR and he is also a programmer. He looked at my website and complimented me on the design. I’m afraid I have to disagree, I am not a website designer and what I have is the best I could come up with. We both swapped some information using the language translator and hopefully I will be able to see some of his photographs soon.
Later I went walking around St. Petersburg looking to change some money at a reasonable rate. You wouldn’t believe but the rates range from 45 to 52 rubles to the pound, being the tight arse I am I went walking and walking some more, shopping for the best rate. All these placse have hefty, stout security who look as they may well be armed and have all watched the same American shows on what Russian bodyguards should look like.
Since I have been here I have seen no black people and today I saw 5 although 3 of them were outside some hotel and looked as if they were in positions of power in some human rights abusing African nation.
Most of what I am seeing here is ugly. Most people who visit St. Petersburg will see beauty, swanky dressed women, wearing the latest fashions, caked in makeup, drinking out of straws and looking coy. Well built, good looking men, in top shelf clothing, holding their women gently, staring at you with a power look. Phone shops everywhere and everyone on their mobile phones. High class exclusive hotels, restaurants with over priced, crap food that wouldn’t feed a mouse. Black four wheel drives with tinted windows and heavy set men standing by them wearing tights suits, with plastic in their ears. Fur shops, jewelry stores and electronic boutiques with bored pretty men and women working there not caring whether you are there or not.
As I said I am writing about this day here on this bench, ready to go to bed feeling a little sick.
Once more we awoke, had our usual breakfast of kebab & coffee & went to the offices of New Social Solutions. Lena, another employee of the office and Arkady’s partner took us to the Podmoi distribution point at the night shelter. To get there we had to take our first bus and I was standing in front of this plump, short middle aged woman who smashed me in the ribs and then slipped past me. I have to say this was a little unexpected and later in the journey she pointed at me telling me (in Russian of course.) that my hair was in some other persons face. Well we all know what to do when our face is in someone’s hair. PULL IT OUT. The wisdom of initiative. Moany old cow.
On the way to the distribution point Lena bought some cakes for the users. The Podmoi distribution space is extremely small and cramped. Many UK charities say they do not have enough space, well try using your cupboard as an art room. Waiting for Lena were 2 of Podmoi’s vendors and I was told they were vendors with some mental problems. I noticed one of them had a severe head injury on the left side of his head.
Out of context, like in a country we may view as being inferior to ours this may reinforce those views but this is just untrue. Back in London many of the users of the homeless charities I myself am a user of have mental illness, head injuries and behavioral difficulties of varying levels. I myself have a severe head injury but am very lucky as my symptoms are mainly invisible (although this is a 2 edged sword.) and manifest themselves in memory problems, concentration and mood swings. None of my cognitive skills have as far as I know been affected. Sadly with many people across the globe this is just not the case and as a result they require some extra attention.
Lena brought out some paints and brushes, made tea and the three vendors there used this time to express themselves through paints and brushes. The whole of St. Petersburg has only 1 night-shelter which can only service 43, people, mental health services are practically non-existent. I am not making a judgment here just stating a fact. Many services are insufficient in the UK while some are over saturated, here they are negligible. You do the judging.
That evening we did our fist pod-casting teaching session with Alexis of New Social Solutions. The session began with me using lots of extravagant gestures and mouthing words that meant nothing to him on how to use the kit. He messed around for awhile, we showed some of what he could do with the kit, explained about the difference between VOX POPs and interviews (Find out more about pod-casting using the instructions available on this site) and he tried a couple of things himself. I left him a homework task and we will look at editing on Thursday.
That evening we went back to the Egyptian owned restaurant, had a nice filling meal and went back to the hostel early. Tomorrow I am all alone because Ade leaves.
Sasha has been the Art Director of the excellent ‘Put Domoi’ - St. Petersburg’s Street Paper. In this interview he talks about his journey, and in the second interview (coming soon) he will talk about the famous ‘ Art Squat of Pushkinskaya’ which he helped found in the late 80’s. This is the first time we have attampted simultaneous translation, so your feedback will be much appreciated.
picture taken by Nadezhfida Davydova
The picture shows Arcady Tyurin of St. Petersburg’s Street Paper ‘Journey Home’ in a public performance piece. For Russians, access to social services is dependent on registration at an address. St. Petersburg has at least 54,000 unregistered individuals living in the city. To be registered you have to have proof of past residency, and without this you cannot get access to jobs, healthcare and other necessities to live. If you cannot get a job you cannot get an address. This means you cannot get registered. This is the vicious circle of homelessness in Russia.
In this short podcast interview, Arkady Tyurin of ‘New Social Solutions’ talks about new ’surviving technologies’, solutions to tackling social exclusion within St. Petersburg’s unregistered population.
New Social Solutions also publishes Putdomoi (Journey Home), St. Petersburg’s Street Paper.
Design by Alexander Menus
Our flight stops off at somewhere called Riga, and I’m sitting here thinking’ Riga, where the hell is Riga? When we did arrive at Riga we got lost looking for our Russian transfer, and the staff were shouting our names over the PA to get our arses there and we finally found where we were supposed to go. The plane to Russia was a 40 seater with two propellars. At the Airport, Arkady was there to meet us.
He took us for coffee at 2 am and then to a hostel that reminded me of a commune I was in when I was younger.
Ade introduced his language tool to people at the hostel, something I have named the Welsh Computer (Ade is Welsh). This is a piece of Welsh slate and a stick of chalk.
Wake up first day in Russia, Ade is photographing everything in the room. The place we stayed in has a bordello above it and you can watch cctv footage of whose going up and coming back down. St. Petersburg is a very beautiful city. It is very big and everything looks very old. We used the metro for the first time, the escalator goes down for ages and all the architecture in the station and the design of the trains is very classical. The concentration is on design rather than what is practical. Travelling round is very difficult as the Russian alphabet has 36 letters and half of them are completely alien to me (no English translation here) Walking around the centre we saw someone selling kittens in the street…
…and a couple of young lads doing acrobatics in front of cars in the road
Our first meal was in a traditional pancake shop.Ade ordered a couple of salads. He was telling me how nice they were and that I should try them myself. When I told him they had chicken in he seemed a bit surprised, and he suddenly got ill. He says meat makes him ill, I wonder if he would have been ill if I had never told him there was meat in it.
