RELEASE CINEMAS BAIKONUR EN

June 15, 2018
Press Release
BAIKONUR NOW
Joint project between ARHIV and the Austrian Cultural Forum (Moscow)
Venue: APXIV, NIIDAR, 12/11 Bukhvostov St, building 5, checkpoint #2, Moscow
Exhibition date: June 30, 2018, 20:00
In this new project, the self-organization APXIV (Archive) together with the Austrian Cultural Forum and its
director, Simon Mraz, explore the cultural landscape of the periphery of the big city and its outskirts, as
well as their development prospects and the utopian life style of their communities. The APXIV artists'
interest in these topics is dictated by the organization’s own living conditions, such as its physical distance
from Moscow city center, and by the conceptual objective of forming their own art environment and
expanding the boundaries of the pre-existing art system. In addition to that, APXIV provides an
engagement space for artists and visitors, not through building a hierarchical structure, but through
creating a heterogeneous area for fully-fledged communication between the artists and the visitors as
equals to occur.
Perhaps such a positioning of the community may seem utopian, but this actually brings APXIV closer to
the new project, which focuses on an old Soviet cinema house called Baikonur, which is now under
reconstruction. Chosen by Simon Mraz in order to study cultural life in the city outskirts, the cinema house
is used to explore these and other topics including the Soviet legacy, the utopia of space exploration (as a
kind of colonization of the suburbs of humanity) and the concept of ruins (including the idea of the
ruining of ideology).
Moreover, the Baikonur cinema is in itself a full-fledged phenomenon, not just a legacy of the past or a
cultural remnant that needs to be commented on. Having a special ontological status, its presence in
modern times violates the linearity of history and the passage of time. The cinema, like a
phenomenological wormhole, establishes a connection of different time periods, distorting our usual
ideas. If we talk about space ruptures (since we are talking about a wormhole), this cinema can be
regarded as a rip in the symbolic fabric of reality, where the ideological component is scrapped, because
the cinema was once a properly working machine of propaganda.
It can also be said that the Baikonur cinema is an actor where all these lines of force converge, which
brought APXIV here in the first place. Here it is worth noting that any self-organization resists
disintegration and resists the increase of chaos, and this is an important point if we look at the decline of
the cinema through the lens of entropy and the thermal death of the Universe, while at the same time the
capitalist system accelerated these processes.
In addition to the above, an interesting historical fact is that a copy of the Baikonur cosmodrom existed. In
the 1950s, a wooden replica of the cosmodrom was built 300 km away from the real one in the village of
Baikonur (as strange as it may sound) to sow confusion among possible enemies and to preserve the
secrecy of the rocket launch site. APXIV artists in their turn, in order to enhance the effect of a speculative
shift of realities, boldly declare that the space of APXIV, located on the site of the NIIDAR (Scientific and
Research Institute for Long-Distance Radio Communications), is the real base of the Baikonur cosmodrom.
All these displacements and stratifications of realities, time periods, places and ideas and their
concentration in the space of APXIV in the new exhibition project give rise to a real kaleidoscope of ideas
and build a network that connects all these elements into one space and time architecture of the
periphery.

Artists:
Ruslan Polanin
Olga Klimovitskaya
Sofya Ovchinnikova
Katya Granova
Ya Nzi
Vladimir Savostin
Valentin Pirollo
Gosha Golitsyn
Maria Cheloyants
Lika Gomiashvili
Anastasia Soboleva
Nikita Kayem
Anna Kobzeva
ARXIV
https://www.facebook.com/APXIV
apxivgroup@gmail.com
+ 7 926 539 70 72 / Gosha Golitsyn
+ 7 916 667 67 64 / Olga Klimovitskaya
+ 7 977 622 72 40 / Ruslan Polanin
The Austrian Cultural Forum
http://www.akfmo.org/
+7 925 860 12 75 / Simon Mraz, Director
+7 495 7806066 (14) / Daria Gusarova, project manager
Daria.Gusarova@bmeia.gv.at
APXIV is an independent self-organization of artists, created in January 2017, on the territory of the
NIIDAR (Scientific and Research Institute for Long-Distance Radio Communications) in the premises of the
former archive. APXIV was founded to create its own and collaborating with other art environments. In
their works, the artists of APXIV focus on the artistic process and try to get away from the standard
approach to exhibition practices. For example, all exhibitions are held in the format of a one-day event,
and the exhibitions itself is often has a form of a single statement.
The Austrian Cultural Forum in Moscow is the cultural representative office of the Austrian Republic on
the territory of the Russian Federation. The main objective of the Forum is to work with Russian and
Austrian artists in the context of acute and relevant topics. This particular project is part of a bigger
project called "THE PERIPHERY OF THE BIG CITY", the implementation of which is planned in 2018 - 2019.
ATTENTION!
To access the exhibition grounds, please e-mail your full name to apxivgroup@gmail.com
by Friday June 29, 2018 (12.00)
BAIKONUR NOW is the first part of a series of artistic projects dealing with a number of 39 historic
cinemas in Moscow living districts. This cultural and historical context of Soviet and urban cultural
institutions is facing fundamental changes. Many cinemas have been closed, and in the near future
they will get a new meaning. Information about upcoming projects with the participation of Yuri
Palmin and Vasilena Gankovska are following soon.