By way of an introduction to this entry, I am going to start a regular blog about the work of Index Arts. This has been an almost totally static page for far too long but things are going to change. I plan to let you know what I am doing in the programme and share some thoughts on shows I see around town. I welcome your comments and responses. So let’s get going.
I’ll start with a photo of Arkady Tyurin in his gargantuan painting created for Index Arts’ ten feet away international homeless festival last year. I have been emailing him today about the Freedom to Create prize, (more on this later), and he is a close associate of Index Arts. And his name begins with ‘A’.
Arkady, works with homeless people in St Petersburg. His work is powerful and effective because of the indivisibility between art, action, the people he works with. Oh, and football. This indivisibility is typical of artists — we know their life is their work and vice versa, but in Arkady’s case (and the cases of others who devote their talents to social transformation) the community he works in gets built in to the equation.
In his words: ‘Our government doesn’t need 130 million people of the 150 million population of Russia (20 million can serve the oil tube and the government). Our government provides these people with a wide spectrum of possibilities to die. And we invent some technologies (quite strange sometimes) to keep them alive. We are the only possibility to speak for many talented people which don’t belong to grey stream of official culture.’
This is an artist who lives by putting all his energy and creativity — ‘technologies’ as he describes it — in the hands of some of the 43,000 homeless people in St Petersburg. This may be leaping through rings of fire to draw attention to the impossibility of homeless people accessing basic services, putting on a poetry festival in the middle of winter in St Petersburg where admission is by winter coats, gloves or scarves, creating a snowbound memorial to all the homeless people who die during the Russian winter, wrapping up a square in the city with a massive banner featuring the words of homeless people, publishing a street paper employing hundreds of people, or captaining a homeless football team (his Russian team won the Homeless World Cup two years ago and they are currently setting up a tournament with the Georgian team).
The Freedom to Create Prize is a brilliant idea — the total of $100,000 in cash prizes (three categories — young artist, main category and imprisoned artist) is unsurprisingly attracting the attention of hundreds of artists around the world who are using their skills in defense of freedom of expression. This is a self-selecting census on who is doing what and where in the world of arts and freedom of expression — that’s why it is so important to disseminate the information as widely as possible — and why all eligible artists should apply. For artists who, by dint of the work they are doing, are often working in obscurity, sometimes risking their lives working in hostile environments necessarily under the radar, the prize is already doing important work in identifying this international constituency who need profile to continue their work, particularly in countries where there is less or no infrastructure.
The ArtVenture Freedom to Create prize is approaching its deadline on 31 October, so please send the link to anyone who could be eligible.
Julia Farrington is Director of Index Arts
