The name of my report sounds a bit botanic, because the discussion is going to be about plants a little.
There is a very simple thesis: “It is impossible to built City 2.0 by planting palm trees.”
It is very obvious that some plants can perish because of the tough climate of our northern country.
But there is a solution – the so-called self seeding. The plants which can in these tough conditions naturally regenerate by seeds and can be the most adaptive to specific climate.
Here you can see a very famous plant Siberian globeflower that is able to bloom and fruit every year and give self-seed crop in the conditions of transpolar Arctic prairie.
So that was a very interesting deviation to botany because there is a parallel between the natural processes,
nature is a very clever and well-organized structure, and the determination of a cultural city strategy.
In my opinion, though I am an optimistic person, there is no City 2.0, at least in our country.It is less likely that it exists somewhere.
The real things are that our cities are not created and governed by people, but they should of course strive for a form of a city administrative system like this.
Norilsk that you see on the picture is not yet the City 2.0. Here by request of organizers I would like to add some Norilsk exotic to my report.
I will say just several words about that, but of course it is not enough to describe the whole picture.
I like the city and there are many advantages in it.
For those who are not aware, Norilsk is not far from Moscow, the flight takes just four hours. Norilsk is also the most northern city on the planet.
We have winter for 10 months a year, the temperature outside can reach 50 degrees below zero, but the most paradoxical thing is that inside it is very hot, and the temperature can be near 30 degrees above zero.
In distinction from the report about the helicopters we do not have any troubles with vehicles, the taxi arrives every three minutes and it is cheap and can get to any place in ten minutes.
So if the taxi came in five or ten minutes, so it would be very long, and this taxi company does not properly work.
There are a lot of peculiar details like this.
The city really begins in tundra and ends there but, at that Norilsk has one of the largest arias among the cities.
There is a district called Snezhnogorskh, where not so many people have been because you should spend a day and use an off-roader to get there.
Altogether there are many interesting particularities in my city. Polar day and polar night are brightly coloured and it is a magnificent place. Besides I think that this city has a perspective.
It is a storehouse of all Mendeleev elements; reach mineral resources, city-forming enterprises because we are a single-industry city.
Now there are social investments and our city starts developing and becoming more beautiful. So, that was a deviation about Norilsk that I was asked to.
But going back to a cultural strategy, from which I went so far aside. This is of certainly a bit provocative.
I tried to distinguish two polar types of cultural strategy based on Norilsk experience, which can be realized in that city. The first is orientated for cultural intervention, I figuratively called it “The third capital” and the second I called “The spirit of the place” because it underlines the originality of the area and it is based on self-organization of people.
A very entertaining fact is that cultural intervention makes the activation of local people one of its most important aims.
But the paradox is that when the external action ends, the community comes to its original condition.
I am not speaking without any proof, because there certainly was a huge cultural experiment there.
The fund which was orientated on provocation and intervention started its work there, so it was a real experience.
What is the normal human reaction on such provocation and intervention? Surely, it is an aggressive abruption and resistance.
But of course later such projects will have their auditory, who do not become the real participants, but who are just get used to waiting for something new, what else surprising and new they will see.
People become disaccustomed to think up anything new. When the fund left the city the spirits were very hopeless and desperate.
Now we are left in a lack of culture and darkness.
Certainly cultural intervention makes a high cultural hurdle of a high quality project. And this is its main advantage.
From the other side we have another situation with “The spirit of a place”. When the topic is close to people, when they live with these ideas they step in that project and the consolidation of the most active energies on the area happens around.
Not only the partnership develops but also the competition which is honest in this case. In one word, people have an increased feeling of pride for their city and they feel better.
We observe it now in Norilsk and it makes me happy. It is not only the projects that we make. I mean that our local community, different organizations start running many interesting good projects.
So, in first situation we have an expert project, when somebody came and told us that they know what is better for us.
In another situation people make that collective work themselves.
Surely it is a bit provocative on the whole, especially on this slide because there was no cancellation of global scopes and the harmony should be everywhere.
But those designers who use cultural intervention very easily should ask themselves for how long they are going to support this policy to make the result stable.
With the help of which powers and means it is possible to reach it, and is it technically possible?
Then I would like to devote another part of my report to the project “ Severdoc” that we have been running in Norilsk for one and a half year.
This is the example of self-organization on the area.
It got the highest Russian prize in the area of public relations “Silver archer – 2010”.
It was not a coincidence, because the project “Severdoc” is an ideological northern idea of our district.
You could notice that I am a very optimistic person so our team consists of people like me.
We really love Norilsk and we want to spread this love on as many people as possible.
We try to find and create something useful. So, in my opinion every region needs an ideological idea like this.
The most important thing is that we do not do anything alone.
The topic gathers people, coworkers who share it as their own, very quick.
Another peculiarity is that we always create something new which is based on the local material. We are looking for beautiful things around us.
We do not bring any stars here. But there are still a lot of them and there are full houses, thousands of people if that is a mass event.
So we create new things as you see, and there were a lot of projects for one and a half year which have been developed ” Severdoc”.
I do not want to speak about them for a long time, so I decided to show you 4 selected video reports. Every project reveals the topic in its own way.
International festival “Severdoc” organized by media company Severnyj Gorod (Northern City) started its work in February 2010 with an opening exhibition of reportage photography called Northern Tales.
In the community centre as many as 9 photographers presented more than 60 works.
Never before the life of Taymyr has seemed to be so unique and versatile. They are absolutely different people with their own values and ways of life.
This is something we never take notice of but we should.
A photo of two people and a steamship in the background: this is a steamship on board of which they will never travel.
The festival aims at drawing attention to the northern territories and telling about a unique life in these latitudes.
The festival was an outstanding event of cultural life of Norilsk.
Even polar explorer Artur Chilinganov underscored its importance: ??There will be films about the history of films Arctic development as well as new documentaries about exploration of Arctic.”
Besides, there is an exhibition of photos shot by children, which is great. And, all in all, we have to see to it that young folks know the history of Arctic exploration.
The barnburner of the festival was screening of selected documentary and short films made in Norway, Sweden and Russia.
Films for the festival were provided by a long-standing partner, Murmansk-based TV company TV21.
We are happy that so many people will see these Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish and Russian documentaries.
As, unfortunately, documentary films still remain part of the elite culture.We are doing the right thing as in general we want to share our love for the north with the English and get a similar response.
Let’s love the north, watch intellectual films and good photos and be friends. For good photos one could visit the exhibition of children’s works We Live in the North held under the auspices of “Severdoc”.
It was not easy to choose the best, 120 young photographers from Norilsk and Dudinka presented 300 images.
The North as perceived by children is beautiful. “We can act like carpers saying this city is this or that and that it is not nice here, but children live here and here they spend the most important part of their lives-their childhood.
And their childhood is different but what we could see in the photos was a fascinating childhood. The best photographers were awarded and out of their works was formed an exhibition, which was held in cinema hall Rodina.
About 2000 citizens of Norilsk visited various events over 4 days. And it was only a beginning.
Shortly after “Severdoc” started to conquer new heights or better to say new depths. Deep underground in mine Oktyabrskiy an exhibition of famous photographers from Norilsk and Moscow was held.
“Surely we feared that some hindrances might have occurred, but when we went down, we were happy to see the whole display as it was a great art space comparable with exhibition halls in Norilsk.
In most cases miners are fond of fishing, hunting, motorcycling and so on and cultural events take a back seat.
Now they have an opportunity to visit the exhibition virtually at the workplace and close this gap.
Under the auspices of “Severdoc” media company Severnyi gorod presented one more project ,Fish of Happiness.
It is a collection of 30 fish amulets. Each one has its own name in the Dolgan, Nenets and Nganasan languages: Success, Kindness, Love, Friendship, Dream, Beauty, Health, and Gift. Architect Elena Arseneva made up new northern legends for each fish amulet.
“I have a book with stories by a Nenets old woman. It is not even stories but from that book I borrowed a lot of names and figures of speech as their stylistics, with which I had to work, is very unambiguous.
The pastiche of traditional legends of the northern region was not just a formality. The project got a critical acclaim of custodians of the culture of the northern region.
Exhibition Fish of Happiness was opened by Vladimir Segunei, an honoured artist of Russia and the leader of children’s folk ensemble Taymyr.
Headphones, Sergey Nikolayevich “Caught young Bakyt a keta fish while fishing.”
While visitors enjoyed the northern flavour, honoured artist of Russia Sergey Rebrya and soundman Aleksey Kamenev worked in a studio.
Their music and voice revived new northern legends on the radio and TV. Caught young Bakyt a keta fish while fishing.
From his father he knew that this fish was outstandingly wise. New legends about northern fishes became a fresh perspective on the ancient northern culture of those people who settled in this region later.
Nevertheless the main encounter with the traditions and culture of peoples of Taymyr was an ethnic holiday Bolshoy Argish.
This event outlined a new tendency for the citizens of Norilsk, which is to welcome winter as if it was a holiday.
It was necessary to break stereotypes, create a positive attitude to a severe northern winter instead of sadness preceding the polar night and a long spell of cold weather. “Winter is great”-say Nenents, Dolgans, Ngasans, Evenki and Enets people.
We invited to come to Norilsk citizens from all over Taymyr, members of 5 ethnic communities to teach citizens of Norilsk how to live in harmony with northern nature.
I have been living in Norilsk for 30 years and I would like my fellow countrymen from Taymyr to come.
I’m overwhelmed with emotions.
There are so many people, even despite the weather they are coming”. Bolshoy Argish became a new regional holiday.
In severe stormy weather more than 10000 people came to welcome winter. Such an ethnic holiday was held in Norilsk for the first time.
Why is it so unusual to meet winter with local people in Norilsk? A small remark, there are only two big cities on Taimyr these are Norilsk and Dudinka.
There are practically no native people in Norilsk and if you would like to submerge into a naive culture you should go to Dudinka.
But that is unusual for many other reasons also. We think that this project work makes the life of local people more intensive and bright.
We guess that the result of our project is a very useful northern plant “Severdoc”. It is also very persistent, because some other project will live and develop there, on Taimyr, without our help and participation.
I would like to thank you for attention. My idea is mainly directed to cultural designers, because I am the manager in the area of culture, and I think that we should cultivate that which grows and blooms stable and we will get a huge payback in return.
After the meeting ends you can catch your own lucky fish in the back rooms, the symbol of northern fertility and good luck that you have seen in the demonstration.
But do not look on the other side of the fish and do not read the names.
This is an improvised fishing, so I invite you to try, and one more time, thank you for attention.