Re:centering periphery 2 – Moscow
A film by OginoKnauss
Directed by Manuela Conti and Lorenzo Tripodi
With:
Roman Sinitcin as Michail Bulgakov´s reader
Ekaterina Milyutina,
Valentin, Nikita, Zhenia and other residents of the Narkomfin Building
Alexei Senatorov, owner and CEO at MIAN Real Estate
Elena Olshanskaya, Resident of Zhourgaz House and campaigner for the preservation of EL Lissitsky’s Printing Plant.
Script: Lorenzo Tripodi
Cinematography: Manuela Conti
New York assistant: Nicola “Teach” Guarneri
Sound design and recording: Francesca Mizzoni
Editor: Manuela Conti
Moscow executive: Anastasia Volkova
Russian Translation: Liliana Polyanska
Text revision: Paul David Blackmore, Mike James.
Narrator: Lorenzo Tripodi
Voice recording: Gino Roberti / joprec
Software programming and internet application: Sergio Segoloni / k-labo
ДОМ ÐОВОГО БЫТÐ
(Dom Novogo Byta)
.
Dom Novogo Byta is a new stage into the investigation led by Ogino:knauss on how Twentieth century’s modernist principles shaped the everyday life of urban dwellers, and what is their heritage in a global urbanization perspective. Invited by the “RKM-save Urban Heritage†campaign for the preservation of constructivist architecture to produce a piece for an art exhibition, the collective landed in Moscow in 2009 to shot a video installation. This film is the diary of our journey chasing the remnants of the extraordinary utopian season of the avant-gards and confronting with the contemporary reality of post-communist Russia. It adopts as a vantage point of the shanty Narkomfin building, hardly surviving today in a central plot of land appealing for real-estate speculators. Designed in 1927 by Moisei Ginzburg this is one of the earlier projects to absorb Le Corbusierian modernist principles. It was a prototype for revolutionary communes to come, aimed at reforming the everyday life of Russian citizens together with their spatial environment, but its utopian aims were soon annihilated by the rise to power of Stalin. From the story of the Narkomfin, the film progressively divagates into the imagined landscapes promoted by propaganda, finally getting lost in the inhuman periphery of the new mass urbanization.
