Russian-Germans: Wo beginnt die Heimat? /C чего начинается Родина/What Is The Beginning Of Motherland

Several classes were conducted by the artist Nika Dubrovsky, social worker Vera Kravchik, artist Yana Smetanina, photographer Anastasia Khoroshilova and art therapist Olga Michaels.

We are working on a joint collective project (“Tablecloth”), memory maps. Memory maps that include records, archival materials shared by project participants, photographs of their relatives, the places where they worked and lived.

It is very important that the project is not the production of tablecloth or in fact any type of production. After all, there are already too many things that we produce. This is more the problem, then the achievement! What we are trying to do is to create a relationships and social fabric. Relations between older people, many of whom feel forgotten and alienated, relationships between artists, photographers, and social researchers and the readers of this website and our future exhibitions.

But the main thing that seems important is the joint work of artists and the participants of our workshops. These are the notes that we make together, these are the memories that remain part of the “tablecloth”.

Our tablecloth is almost 6 meters long and printed on a thick transparent tracing paper. It is easy to stick to it other materials, also printed on tracing paper. Overlaying texts, photographs, drawings and notes on top of each other, we organize a complex texture of the visual and social image.