Let’s Draw – Let’s Live

Photo after the final performance 21/09 2024
©Georgy Kiesewalter

The title of the research project “Let’s Draw – Let’s Live” refers to the popular Soviet-era idea of ​​creating a common home for different peoples. A creative group of residents of Belyaevo and Konkovo, together with artist Natalia Smolianskaia, asked two questions: in what forms was this idea embodied in the past and what have we inherited from this narrative today?

To participate in the event, you need to register using the link

https://ges-2.org/let-s-draw-let-s-live-laboratory-results-presentation

For almost six months, the participants explored the area, read and discussed thematic scientific and fiction literature, communicated with former and current students of the Peoples’ Friendship University of Russia (RUDN) and the Pushkin Russian Language Institute. As a result of walks, searches for significant places and studying the international context, the creative group created their own map of the area, which can be seen at the presentation. In addition, you will be able to flip through the participants’ author’s zines, wander around another, virtual map of Moscow, find points scattered around the city that are somehow connected with the Soviet project of internationalism, and leave your mark on the virtual wall newspaper “Let’s Draw – We’ll Live”

The presentation will end with a screening and discussion of a documentary film created by Natalia Smolianskaia. This is a specific portrait of Belyaevo and Konkovo, in which real and imaginary boundaries, ideologemes and paradoxes, memories and their echoes in the present, reflections on intercultural dialogue and obstacles on the way to it intersect. The film includes footage of the final collective performance-walk along the route developed by the participants. The evening will end with tea.

Artist of the project
Natalia Smolianskaia

Work group
Anna Voronkova, Polina Gerebtsova, Alexandra Kuznetsova, Sergei Lebedev, Irina Fedotova, Elnara Eyubova

Curators
Sergei Babkin, Alexandra Tumarkina

Coordinator
Varvara Tchuchalina

Producers
Angelina Vorona, Olga Koroleva