On April 1, the Pavilion on New Holland Island launches the second season of its regular educational programming, “Lecture Hall.” For 2018, the lectures will be organized under eight distinct themes. “Lecture Hall” was created as a means of bringing high quality educational initiatives to the wider audience of visitors to New Holland. The topics for these lectures have been specially selected to appeal to a broad range of ages and demographics. The lectures in this particular season will run on the island until October. Admission to the lectures is free of charge.
ABOUT THE LECTURE HALL PROGRAM
“The History of the Leningrad Underground,” a series of lectures in collaboration with the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
Curators: Sasha Obukhova, curator of the Archive of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art; Maria Udovydchenko, the Archive of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art
This public program of lectures and discussions has been organized by the Garage Museum of Contemporary to acquaint its audience with the history of “Unofficial” art in Leningrad and St Petersburg in the first half of the 1990s, as well as a chance to meet some of the participants of the cultural events of the era.
Each lecture is dedicated to a different period or phenomenon in the creative life of the city, ranging from the Unofficial art of the 1970s (nicknamed “Gaza-Nevskaya” culture) to the artistic legacy of the New Artists, including composer Sergey Kuryokhin. One lecture will explore unofficial music and literature — spheres closely connected to visual art, mutually nourishing and enriching one another. The concluding lecture will survey the most significant exhibitions of Leningrad art in the era of Perestroika up through the early 1990s.
The lectures will be accompanied by a presentation of visual artifacts, ranging from documents and books, to photographs and video footage. Participants will include some of the leading specialists in the field of contemporary art: Gleb Ershov, an associate professor in Interdisciplinary Research and Practice in the Arts, in the Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the St Petersburg State University; Stanislav Savitsky, a PhD candidate in Art History and associate professor in Interdisciplinary Research and Practice in the Arts, in the Department of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the St Petersburg State University; Dmitry Pilikin, a curator, art critic and deputy director of the Diaghilev Museum of Modern Art in charge of the exhibitions and collection of the St Petersburg State University; Ekaterina Andreeva, an art critic, curator, art historian and specialist in Russian and Western Art of the 20th-21st centuries, a PhD candidate in Art History and PhD in Philosophy, and Senior Researcher in the Department of New Tendencies at the State Russian Museum; and Sergey Chubraev, an art critic and specialist in the creative work of Sergey Kuryokhin, who is the collector and creator of a significant archive dedicated to the memory of the pioneering musician. The introductory lecture will be given by the curator of the Garage Museum Archive, Sasha Obukhova.
“The History of the Leningrad Underground” is a continuation of the public program of the Archive of the Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, the world’s largest collection of materials on Russian contemporary art from the end of the 1950s through the present. The Archive offers a platform for Russian and international scholars and researchers to complete projects like conferences, exhibitions, seminars and publications, expanding and disseminating the knowledge base around Russian contemporary art.
Lectures on the Social Sciences, in collaboration with the Higher School of Economics in St Petersburg
Curator: Margarita Kuleva, research fellow, Professor in the Sociology Department of Higher School of Economics in St Petersburg
This series of multidisciplinary lectures offers the general public a fresh perspective on the social phenomena and processes that we encounter every day. Leading Russian and international social scientists will use non-intuitive examples and innovative methods to explore just how the world in which we are living is changing before our very eyes. The speakers will show the audience the possibilities offered through the lens of the social sciences, drawing not only on classical concepts, but also on their own empirical research findings from the last
“The Sociology and Anthropology of Everyday Life” features a series of insights into experiences and phenomenon familiar to all of us, which we will attempt to look at from a different perspective. Why do people eat, read or go on dates the way that they do, and not other ways? How does moving around the city in a taxi or a bicycle affect the municipal economy? How does a smartphone transform our understanding of what it means to “be human”?
“Local History” attempts to address the past and present of cities through the history of their inhabitants, the local communities, specific cultures and practices. Through these lectures, we will rediscover anew St Petersburg and other cities.
“Culture and Information” proposes a sociological alternative take on the classic art historical perspective. As part of this series of lectures, the conversation focuses not on works of art themselves, but rather on the sociological conditions of their production, circulation and consumption — whether that be in movie theaters and galleries, or on Youtube and the streets.
Lectures on Political and Social Sciences, in collaboration with the European University in St Petersburg
Curator: Margarita Zavadskaya, Associate Dean and Researcher in the Department of Political Science and Sociology at the European University
The lectures from the European University are organized in two blocks: research and education. The first block presents lectures from leading specialists — both distinguished professors and emerging researchers at the university — dedicated to political sciences and related disciplines: republican theory, the study of science and technology, empirical truth, gender issues, and the contemporary philosophy of anthropology, as well as Russian and Post-Soviet politics.
The second block showcases books published by the European University, whose selected authors will share their research and insights into current historical problems. The university’s publishing house has been publishing research on social and humanitarian sciences for twenty years now, releasing ten series and publishing scholars from Russia and Europe. Books from the publishing house can often be found on the lists of required reading at universities, as well as amid the nominations for Russia’s most important literary prizes.
Seance Magazine’s Film Club
Curator: Vasily Stepanov, film critic, editor of Seance Magazine
These thematic blocks of screenings are directly linked to the topics driving the editors and authors of Seance Magazine, tackling blockbuster, classic and little-known films, while discovering new talents and filling in the inevitable gaps. Each new issue or major publishing project will be revisited through a series of lectures and screenings, conducted by Seance’s contributors, as well as by invited speakers, including film historians and filmmakers. Over the course of these live conversations with the guests of New Holland, the themes of the issues and books will receive a new interpretation and a continuation. Among the topics are the 50th Anniversary of the events of 1968, the films of that year and films addressing the events of that year; the mutual entanglements and intersections of Cold War cinema, touching on both McCarthyism and late Stalinism through a series of screenings timed to coincide with the release of the first volume of Mikhail Trofimenkov’s Hollywood’s Red Noir; a series of screenings in collaboration with Chapaev, an online educational portal aimed at eliminating the gaps in the understanding of the history of Soviet film, sketching out the contours of this lost Atlantis of film to uncover its hidden secrets and reveal what’s never been told.
The first program of lectures will be dedicated to Polish film, from Kawalerowicz to Munk, from Hoffman to Polanski and Żuławski. These films are fierce, avant-garde, unexpected and even impossible, amazing even to today’s most sophisticated audiences. These lectures are organized with support from the Polish Institute.
Genius Loci, lectures on architecture, in collaboration with Project Baltia Magazine
Curator: Vladimir Frolov, architectural critic, editor-in-chief of Project Baltia magazine
Presented with support from the Diogen Platform (diogen.me)
This season, the architecture-themed cycle of lectures curated by Project Baltia will examine the phenomenon of place. The conversation here will explore cities and their fragments, the landscapes where nature meets culture. Architecture historians and practicing architects will share their takes on the significance of the site, which, from their point of view, is endowed with its own distinct atmosphere — the genius loci, or “spirit of the place.” Venice, Berlin, St Petersburg, Moscow... Can all of these big cities hold on to what makes them unique in the 21st century? Or will their particular “spirits” be frightened off by the ever-increasing numbers of prefabricated pubic spaces and knock-off buildings?
The invited speakers will take on the role of portraitists, attempting to capture the substance of that elusive aura of authenticity described by the German cultural theorist, Walter Benjamin. “Genius Loci” will look at historical cities, but also Modernist and Post-Modernist buildings and their particular attributes. The selection criteria for the topic of each lecture hinges on the presence of — in one place or another — a certain “poetics of space” (to quote Bachelard), something difficult to put into words, but that nevertheless wholly represents the essence of the image of the given territory. This image is hard to hold on to and easy to lose, and to experience it fully one must be able to decipher the message of the spirits. The submotif of this cycle will be the story of the architects, whose creativity provided the cornerstone for the foundation of the identity of each location, the genius-drafters creating the places that will forever belong the history of urban architecture.
Out Loud: A Study of Sound
Curators: Marina Israilova, art historian, independent researcher; Vita Zelenskaya, anthropologist, independent researcher
This lecture is dedicated to sound in all its political and social aspects. Within the context of a rising interest in sound in humanitarian sciences, this line of thinking about sound seems the most significant and promising.
The lecturers represent the fields of philosophy, sociology, culturology, anthropology, and sound studies, a discipline that approaches sound as a social phenomenon, determined by (co)society, and preserving the traces of its own contradictions. At the same time, the speakers will note that sound and music has the potential for liberation, the ability to transform and unite, to create new worlds — however temporary or imaginary those worlds may be.
As an additional discussion, the lecture series will consider the ways that we listen and hear, that we produce sounds and silence, that we draw the borders between noise and music.
Lectures on Film Theory(Theories)
Curator: Aleksey Artamonov, film critic, editor of the website, syg.ma
Film theory has existed almost as long as cinematography itself, shaping much of the 20th century. For the last 50 years, the methods of its analysis have expanded and branched out to the point where we can no longer speak about any one unified theory, but rather, must consider the multitude of intersecting, though distinct, tendencies, comprising the complex multidisciplinary network around film. By and large, cinema today is not so much an object to be examined, as it is an opportunity to approach the study of visual culture from different angles — media history, the means of representation, the mechanics of the human psyche, etc. Rather than attempt to trace a linear history of the development of film and film theory, it is more critical today to try to put a polyphonic spin on the existing methods of interpretation — from feminism or psychoanalysis, to visual anthropology or media archaeology — in an attempt to understand what holds the most relevance for us today in light of the new challenges of contemporary culture.
Lectures on Design
Curators: Ivan Gerts, Yury Kuznetsov and Valentina Shchapova, the design department of New Holland
This program of lectures on design will acquaint its audiences with the myriad manifestations of design, highlighting leading independent studios, social projects, and related disciplines. The central crux of these lectures lies in the idea that culture and art are not goods and services. The avant-garde and brutalism stood in firm opposition to ornament and conformism. The series kicks off with the general theme of “Made in St. Petersburg,” a survey of the studios jockeying to make the visual environment more harmonious. As a logical conclusion to the program, the series “Escape from Design” will offer encounters with people who have left the world of design for contemporary art and other related fields.
