V–A–C SREDA

interview

Photography by: Nadya Lygyna

29 January, 2021

Sreda — is a new media that was created on the platform V-A-C last year. One of the main features is that every Wednesday all previous texts disappear and the new one comes out. This way in any certain time you can only check three articles (it is another feature of the journal) - read text, get to see an art work (f.e. currently it is a video Descent into the Fungal by Andrey Shental) and listen to the podcast.
We talked to the editors of the online journal about the digital congestion of digital content, experiments within the Sreda and development of the platform.

Grigory Cheredov, Anna Illchenko, Katerina Chuchalina, Karen Sarkisov

HOW DID THE IDEA OF CREATING A JOURNAL COME OUT AND HOW PANDEMIC AFFECT IT?

V–A–C Foundation has been nurturing the idea to establish its online presence for quite a long time, but at first it was not very clear how to approach it in a most competent and meaningful way. Also we had a request from our foreign colleagues who were constantly asking us what they could read about contemporary Russian culture outside of usual news report articles. And finally, the last push was made by a pandemic, but at the time it kicked everything was ready for the start so it mostly played the role of a trigger. The name (in rus. word Sreda (среда) means Wednesday, environment) refers not only to the day of the week when the new articles come out and previous disappear, but to the idea that it is a hybrid platform, an environment where different items coexist over the barriers, outside of the format, pre-formulated agendas or abstractly understandable relevance.

IN THE FIRST ISSUE OF SREDA IN ‘TO READ’ SECTION YOU SUGGESTED LEV TOLSTOY — WHY?

It needs to be said that at first we planned to launch ‘Sreda’ not earlier than autumn 2020 — there were many different technical difficulties and conceptual questions that we thought we wouldn't solve faster. But in March the whole world shut down in isolation and we, with colleagues, realised that we have to start as soon as we can, if not now then when?
From the very beginning, one of the main ideas that defined the identity of the 'Environment' was that the very 'nuance' in our view of culture and modernity can be brought by art. We always said that we want to look at all the different aspects of cultural context through the prism of art. That is why Lev Nickolaevich’s treatise ‘What is art’ seemed to us to be a logical starting point in the journey of ‘Sreda’: even so the text was written almost 100 years ago, in 2020 it doesn’t lose its relevance. In one of the chapters Tolstoy says that an artist is able to infect people with emotions through the work of art. In the context of the flaring pandemic this thought was surprisingly relevant — in the sense that art must once again save the world and help people to live through these difficult times.

WHY DO ALL MATERIALS EXIST EXACTLY THE WEEK AND LATER JUST DISAPPEAR?

At the age of overload of digital content when we all continuously read, scroll, share and screenshot something we didn’t want to create another digital archive that would infinitely top up with the new information.

Besides, we thought that this time limit, or as you wish, expiration date of materials, plus the inability to save and copy them for later would encourage readers to respond faster and more willingly. On the ‘Sreda’ everything is as simple and concise as possible: you have three types of materials that are available until a certain time. It means that you already understand what from this you would like to see, read and listen to and you are not scared of an enormous shaft of the information that usually exists in every modern media.

And finally, we always wanted 'Sreda' to be as flexible as possible and be able to quickly respond to the current cultural agenda. As is today we can think together with Tolstoy about getting infected by art, and in a week we can organize a festival of contemporary Russian feminist poetry translated into English, timed to coincide with the release of an anthology in one western publishing house.

HOW ARE ARTISTS SELECTED FOR THE 'WATCH' SECTION?

At first we had predetermined formal restrictions associated with the viewing of artwork on a screen. For this reason we mostly published two-dimensional formats - video and graphics. And as of the graphics — we were greatly inspired by the graphic images of satirical and topical themes that you can see in publications such as The New Yorker. In our case we wanted to emphasise the independent value of visual imagery that would have reacted to the ambiguity and inconsistency of modernity. We had some variants of art works to show — to share the works that already existed, works from the collection of V-A-C foundation and also creation of the new ones. There was no fundamental difference between the artistic statement of an accomplished artist or a little-known. For us, both of these points of view are equal.

There were some cases when artists were inspired by the texts. For example, that happened with the image by Vlad Kruchinsky that related the story by Kuchinov about the nutritional utopia of academician Nesmeyanov with the news about an unprecedented drop in the price of WTI crude oil to negative levels in the spring of 2020.

This way some of the works reacted to the texts and others were independent statements. The launch of the journal took place at the beginning of the pandemic, and many new artworks became a reaction to the self-isolation regime and often a reflection on the current situation.

From a legal point of view, it turns out that we are renting the art work. And in the case of the production of new works, all rights remain with the artists.

HOW DO YOU SEARCH FOR THE THEMES AND HOW MANY FUTURE ISSUES YOU HAVE ALREADY SCRIPTED?

Last year that was the first for the ‘Sreda’ . We, as you say ‘gone wild’ — the range of topics was huge, a lot of experimentation and a lot of frills. The grid of topics was planned a year in advance, it was compiled by the editors with the involvement of external participants and was set by longreads. The other two elements of 'Sreda' - podcasts and artwork — were picked up gradually. They are always deliberately located at a considerable distance from the longread, rather contouring the centrifugal orbit than approaching the longread centripetally.

This year we will try to slightly fix the main interests and directions so that these orbits become more obvious and stable. We will increase the number of materials originally written in English in order to bring them to half. The opening of GES-2 ('House of Culture ‘GES-2’ on Bolotnaya Embankment — ed. note) will provide many additional reasons for new materials, of course, but 'Sreda' was created nevertheless in order to speak as widely and extensively as possible about contemporary culture, describing it beyond the boundaries of both professional artistic disciplines and the institutional program.

Danya Belcov

ZELFIRA TREGULOVA, DANIIL TRABUN, MARIA KUVSHINOVA, NIKOLAY REDKIN, ANDREY MALAKHOV - THE GUESTS OF YOUR PODCASTS. HOW DO YOU COMBINE THEM ALL?

First year for ‘Sreda’ was rather laboratory, experimental. We wanted to set ourselves some kind of threshold points and deliberately turned to such plots and invited such guests that were difficult to imagine in one context. It was somehow like a meeting of an umbrella with a sewing machine on a surgeon’s table but we had a possibility to find out which materials resonate, which leave unemotional and also which cause bewilderment. In the future we won’t have such a wide range of themes and the identity of the journal will be more visible. But we must say that the section with podcasts was originally thought through as the most open to changes of all three and more reactive and responsive to the current situation. From here, surprises will not go anywhere: for example, we plan to test the narrative podcast genre in the near future and see how it works in our case.

HOW JOURNAL WILL BE DEVELOPED IN THE FUTURE?

The main formats, I think, will remain the same: artworks, texts and podcasts. But within them some changes, transformations and innovations are possible. For example, we wanted to think about certain genre boundaries for artworks and define a list of main themes around which texts would be built. But still, we will definitely save space for the experiment and it is possible that we will come up with something completely new.

WHY MEDIA IS NEEDED TODAY?

This question sounds rhetorical, almost the same as ‘why we need electricity’. It is for circulation of ideas, images and thoughts, probably. We are mostly intrigued by the question, what the media should look like for the cultural institution — there are some hypotheses, which need to be proven — that is what we are doing.

Katerina Сhuchalina, Grigory Cheredov

TEAM OF ‘SREDA’?

DANYA BELCOV
In ‘Sreda’: I participate in the editorial board, choose the themes for podcasts, and ensure the platform runs smoothly.
In V–A–C: Junior Editor.
Favourite material in ‘Sreda’: Sreda Mix: Denis Riabov
Interesting project now: ruby yacht

ANNA ILLCHENKO
In ‘Sreda’: I am selecting artworks.
In V–A–C: Curator of exhibition projects and program of artistic residences.
Favourite material in ‘Sreda’: Oil and stomach: the nutritional utopia of academician Nesmeyanov.
Interesting artist now: Patricia Dominguez

KAREN SARKISOV
In ‘Sreda’: I participate in the editorial board. I mainly select topics for podcasts and texts.
In V–A–C: Curator of exhibition projects and editor of books series.
Favourite material in ‘Sreda’: Poetry: Anna McDonald
Interesting book now: Torrey Peters / Detransition, Baby

Karen Sarkisov, Anna Illchenko

GRIGORY CHEREDOV
In ‘Sreda’: I participate in the editorial board, choose the topics of texts and possible authors and translators.
In V–A–C: I am in charge of the publishing department.
Favourite material in ‘Sreda’: Eugene Kuchinov. Quesalid’s Knots: A Guide to the Soviet Union’s Esoteric Research Institutes
Interesting book now: Pidorenko V.P. / Poems. Pidorenko V.P. Mountain of corpses.

KATERINA CHUCHALINA
In ‘Sreda’: I participate in the editorial board.
In V–A–C: Curator, head of the curatorial group.

interview

Photography by: Nadya Lygyna

29 January, 2021