Satellite Voices

Moscow / Русский

Anna Nistratova

February 23, 2012

Part 2: The concluding part of our interview with Flacon's inspired art curator

• Text by Kristina Voytovich

Part 2 continued from yesterday's interview with Anna Nistratova, the art curator of the Flacon Design-Factory, one of the city's major creative spaces.

Satellite Voices: What do you think about the audience coming to Flacon?
Anna Nistratova: When I came to Flacon, I met a completely new category of people. I was absolutely shocked because I felt the culture Renaissance here. I was impressed by the young people who was coming to us because I had not seen something like that before. Street artists, ecologists, designers, skate boarders, yogists, philanthropists, volunteers, young business people, vegans, social workers, athletes, and b-boys.I think people have become more active. They make more non-profit projects, and they are willing to help each other. Flacon is some kind of a prototype of state, in which acivil society can develop. Civil society needs to build itself, and it does not need any government. We can clearly see it here.

SV: Who recently has impressed you?
Anna Nistratova: Last year we began to do various street art projects. For me it was a revelation, despite the fact that I was engaged in contemporary arts before. Now I'm diving deeper and deeper into this environment. We have great classical, graffiti and monumental artists. For example, last year Alexey Kiosk painted the whole house for us. One thing, when you get a picture or a layout by email. Another one, when you see a house of five floors with your own eyes. It makes a much stronger impression. When Alexey was finishing, we stood in the street on a cold night next to this house and could not believe what was happening because it was a huge project both for him, and for us. Now we want to paint all the walls, except for the brick ones, and continue to do the monumental projects at Flacon and in the neighbouring area.

Moreover, there are a large number of street artists who are engaged in design and painting now. I really like the two young artists Roma Kreemos and Pavel Ripley, who are interested in monumental painting and illustration. Kreemos made the wall in the cafe "Milk", and, Ripley started to work  with us as a designer. There is also the artist Vitaly SY from St. Petersburg who deals with optical effects in monumental painting. I want to bring him to us.

The Skater Pavel Kuznetsov has recently arranged a terrific poetry with an open mic. In February-March, he plans to show the performance at Flacon, as he wrote a long verse poem about his life. This should be interesting and funny because he is talented in everything.

My latest source of inspiration is Sergey Stoyn and his vast network of associates. It is hard to describe him using only one word. He created the worldwide well-known ice cream in the form of Mayakovsky, Marilyn Monroe and Darth Vader’s heads. He is also a poet, a former holder of anarchic music label and a partisan advertiser. He has recently been to Miami, and presented his ice-cream and new bio bacteria devouring plastics and pesticides developed by Russian scientists to the public there. 

SV: Do you plan to work on any personal projects this year?
Anna Nistratova: This year I want to devote more time to my own creative works. We are going to open a visual book shop at Flacon. I want it to have a great range of book devoted to arts, photography and design. I am very excited about that because books are my passion. Plus, when I came to Flacon, I quite unexpectedly started singing and performing on the stage. I would like finally to found an after post-punk band. Maybe this interview will help me find the musicians? There is also a desire to make at least a couple of street works, enroll my daughter in guitar courses and learn how to play the guitar myself, finish a girl diary and start working on my archive. It would be nice to spend some time somewhere on my own, being an artist for a month or two.

Image Credits: Artyom Goloschapov, Lev Maslov, Anastasya Tsayder