Performative practices in contemporary art and the funeral ritual (the case of the project “The Garden named after” by Artem Filatov and Alexey Korsi)

Abstract

The author analyzes the project “The Garden named after” created by artists Artem Filatov and Alexey Korsi in the Crematorium in Nizhni Novgorod as a space of heterotopia. The project is considered to be a memorial complex. The article demonstrates how this memorial garden was rooted in the practices of street art and participatory art in Nizhny Novgorod. If art projects in situ usually actualize the collective memory of a place, “The Garden named after” has been working with personal memory and collective digital archive. The new practice offered by artists Artem Filatov and Alexey Korsi gives a chance of a personal touch for a commemorative practice and for sharing personal memory with other people. The author draws an analogy between the project “The Garden named after” and the experiments made by Russian avantgarde architects such as Nikolay Ladovsky. Ladovsky considered architecture as a programme that defines how people could feel and perceive space. That understanding of architecture is close to the experience of time-based art. In other words, we could speak about some kind of a zone of transition between architecture and performative and social practices. The project “The Garden named after” exists in this zone of transition.