The provocative project "Rodina": The artist set fire to rural houses for the sake of photographs

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Opinions about Danila Tkachenko's provocative project "Motherland" vary from "this is not art, but a crime" to "this is exactly what art should be - acutely social and resonant in society." The artist's idea was to draw attention to the existence of empty villages, to the problem of desolation and desolation of villages and villages and, accordingly, the decline of agriculture.

Danila Tkachenko is engaged in visual projects based on documentary photography. His last project, entitled "Homeland", became quite provocative, and primarily not because he raised a rather acute and painful topic for today's society, as the author actually intended. The subject of discussion in the press was how the artist decided to draw attention to the problem. Danila Tkachenko deliberately set fire to houses in one of the abandoned villages and took photographs until the fire burned everything to the ground.

According to the artist, the shooting took place in a very remote place, where no one had lived for a long time, and there were no settlements or forests nearby - ideal conditions for starting a big fire and not turning it into a disaster. “Used dilapidated, non-functional and destroyed buildings were doomed to complete physical disappearance for several years,” Danila comments on the circumstances of his project, stressing that the fate of these houses was still a foregone conclusion.

And nevertheless, a fuss still arose around the project: the artist was accused of destroying private, and possibly state property, of being overly dramatic, and of vandalism. They began to send complaints against him to the Ministry of Culture, send threats with a promise to "figure it out" and "burn you yourself." Danila Tkachenko himself does not comment on the situation.

The artist's website reveals the essence of the idea behind this project. “Since 1917, the rural population of Russia has declined by more than 80%,” writes Tkachenko. The first stage in the destruction of villages in Russia and agriculture was the collectivization of 1928-1937, followed by massive repressions, as a result of which more than 7 million people died, and more than 2 million were sent to the Gulag. The next stage was the program of the USSR for the resettlement of "unpromising villages" in cities. Thus, by 1979, the number of villages decreased by more than half (by 60, 2%, that is, to 177, 1 thousand people). This led to a decline in agriculture and an increase in imports of agricultural products.

Danila Tkachenko emphasizes that in modern Russia this trend continues - the number of villages and villages is decreasing, villages disappear from the map of the country, and according to some forecasts, in 2025 96% of village residents will move to cities, which means the almost complete disappearance of villages.

Marina Abramovich is called the "grandmother of performance," her projects always invariably cause a lot of controversy in the press. About one of her most provocative projects " Life and death of Marina Abramovich"we wrote on our website.