THE WALL ELEMENTS 2

The Wall Elements 2 album is an attempt to carry out a visual research, as well as to provide a platform for the artists’ self-expression.

On my journeys, covering most part of Russia from its extreme western point to the Pacific Ocean, I sought to document the work of, in my opinion, the most visually striking and prolific artists.

All the participants were invited to create works on any topic of interest to them, in the technique they prefer at the moment.

Alex Partola

There are two diferent ways to care for the fate culture: TO GUARD AGAINST barbarism and TO OVERCOME barbarism.

The first requires strong walls, law, order, the cosmos. For the second, it is important to keep active the primordial culture-creating force that once was able to overcome barbarism - to construct an orderly cosmos, to build, to discover and establish laws. In this respect it is vital to keep this source always alive - not so much the culture that is possible, the very possible, the very possibility of culture.

The first approach is conservative, it poses risks of archival routine, antiquarianism, museality, legalism, formalism, hypocrisy and phylactery.

The second one - of dangerous proximity to barbarism, futurism, the destruction of historical memory in its true sense ( it rather shows a tendency to recall prehistoric times), ill-considered rationalism and revolutionism. In the final count, the conservatively sterilized culture gives rise to futurists. And only futuristic barbarism brings us back tot the primeval source of culture, its original meaning, for the sake of which it is worth protecting.

Anatoly Akhutin.
NOTES UNEARTHED. 1976.