Derelict Village is a project by Vladimir Chernyshev where public art, photography, video and installation come together. The project explores and draws on the language of entropy and decline of the remains of traditional rural culture which also entails a new transformed existence.

Torches lighting the surfaces of old wooden houses could be read as a ritual intervention set in a broader mythological context of a culture in decline and in a narrower context of the mortality issues. The depiction of death, either in its narrower or broader cultural sense, is the limit of artwork’s reach. In death, there is no content. The emphasis in on the intention and the action itself that is an immersive experience of the perpetual process of withering, characteristically present throughout rural areas. The author believes that this process is, in fact, the course of life. Death is not seen as something tragic or taboo, but as something ordinary and essential to life or, in its own way, as a source. The total length of travel is over 30 000 km in over 10 regions of Russia. The project was shortlisted for Sergey Kuryokhin Contemporary Art Award in Best Public Art nomination in 2014, and longlisted in Kandinsky Art Prize in 2015.

Especially for Arctic Art Forum, the artist made a trip in Arkhangelsk Oblast and Karelia in August and September 2016.

Project’s web-page: www.vladimirchernyshev.com.

Artist: Vladimir Chernyshev.