About the project
Olesya Gonserovskaya
artist
The biologists Francisco Varela and Humberto Maturana, taking a break from scientific experiments, made a list of features that distinguish the alive from the not alive. The search for a clear boundary between the alive and not alive is still incomplete. How can we describe the difference between them? And is this classification adequate to describe the world generally?
Why do we say that things that eat, multiply and die are alive? What do we do with things that only partially behave as if they were alive — they grow and eat, but do not multiply and are not born? And how do we distinguish the growth of something living from the growth of something not alive? — prices grow, understanding grows and the population grows.
The question “What is the difference between alive and not alive” has always fascinated sociologists, psychologists, political analysts and anthropologists. A person thinks in words and language influences the thought process. The specific distinction of “alive/not alive” loses its scientific basis and moves to the field of metaphor and ambiguity.
There was a sociologist called John Law. According to his theory, if something functions within a system according to its direct purpose, it is invisible – equal to nothing. But as soon as it goes outside the system and does something unprescribed, the zero becomes a one.
There was an architect called Alvar Aalto. He believed that knowledge was only worthwhile if it harmonized with the external (landscape) and the internal (people and their activity). Thus, architecture is a transitional space between people, their activity and the external world.
These ideas came to influence my feelings about everything that happens around us.
We still have a very vague idea of how life appeared. How did it become an inexhaustible fountain of diversity? What force makes this fountain gush? What are we doing here and what is happening? Perhaps the categorical division into alive and not alive will one day become unsuitable? This is a record of my amazement at what is taking place.
In the interiors of the library, I place sculptures/interventions on biological topics, which touch on the theme of “alive/not alive”. The intervention objects themselves are not alive. But they may serve as indicators of processes taking place here and now, parallel to our existence.
Before the project was launched, I had no idea about how the visitors would react, whether they would tear down the new objects in anger, write complaints about the disrespect shown to architectural heritage, and pester the library employees with questions.
But none of this happened. There were many different reactions. But one type of reaction stunned me. When I came to adjust things, recharge batteries or remove something, even from objects in very noticeable locations, suddenly an employee might start to ask questions which showed that although she had seen the objects every day, she had not really noticed them.
🐛️🎍️🦆️Alive|not|Alive☃️️🏢⚰️️
Afterword about the project
Lydia Griaznova
curator
This text is an afterword following the ending of the project in the Aalto Library. Working together is a two-sided movement, where our paths cross, overlap, sheer off and move on their own. So here is my part of the story.
This project started with our questioning how humanity divides the surrounding world into alive and not alive; visible — and hidden, perceivable — impenetrable; useful, valuable — useless, uncomfortable; comprehensible — impervious, tamed — uncontrolled. I wondered how obsessive naming, dissection and intersection, sorting and ordering of completely everything around us are performed in the environment. The Alvar Aalto Library is a building that boldly manifests the architect’s concept of sensitivity to the natural environment and phenomena. At the same time, it remains an artificial addition to the existing landscape, and throughout its existence, it has required special maintenance to preserve Aalto’s initial idea. The library changed and aged during the 20th century. Geopolitical upheavals when Finnish Viipuri turned into Russian Vyborg as well as Universal Time’s heartbeat ticking left their marks. The library was meticulously renovated in 2013. Tourist guides of all kinds call it “the pearl of Vyborg”, considered a great example of Finnish architecture and the exemplary work of Alvar Aalto. Aalto’s library is impregnated with the idea of nature. The library contrasts its otherness with the surrounding crumbling houses of different epochs, from the Middle Ages to the soviet and late capitalism of aughts. In the houses around it, nature is present by evident signs of dilapidation and obsolescence. These are natural and inevitable processes. The belief that this should be prevented and stopped (selectively) seems inevitable too.
Mold, fungus and insects are only allowed to be outside. Other movements of organic forms are rationed and controlled. Is the library recovered after years of decay alive? What about the ruins on the neighbourhood streets, inside which weak sapling is slowly growing? If to shift aside the position of human benefit and look at non-human existence, the firm yes morphs into vague silence.
For five months, we place inside the library sets of objects. They were located on junctions of routes of various library processes — of the established system of functions and procedures, relations and non-spoken agreements, which does not necessarily articulated or clearly presented.
They were strangers to this place. They are images of other than human forms of life which had appeared in the already overloaded with images/meanings space constructed by formula <approximate calculation>:
AALTO’S CONCEPT OF PUBLIC SPACE x NATURAL ENVIRONMENT AROUND∞ [DAY-NIGHT CYCLE + ROTATION OF EARTH + CHANGE OF SEASONS + WEATHER CURVE + ...] x TOWN’S ARCHITECTURE LANDSCAPE [1293–1710 SWEDEN + 1710– 1721 RUSSIAN + 1812–1917 FINNISH + 1917–1918 ONCE AGAIN FINNISH + 1918 AGAIN, FINNISH + 1918–1940 AGAIN, FINISH + 1940–1941 USSRIAN + 1941–1944 FINISH + 1944–1991 USSRIAN + 1991–? RUSSIAN + …? X] x BUILDING MODIFICATIONS [1st RENOVATION 1961 + 2nd RENOVATION 2013 + MINOR CHANGES IN BETWEEN] + COVID RESTRICTIONS 2019–2022 + LIBRARY’S COMMUNICATION SYSTEM [NOTIFICATIONS + WARNINGS + RULES + ANNOUNCE-MENTS] + CIRCULATION OF HUMAN’S [THOUGHTS + FEARS + KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS + DREAMS + IDEAS + DESIRES + NIGHTMARES + STEREOTYPES + PREJUDICES + …X] =
Our objects became signal interferences in the existing broadcasting — small “beacons” intended to persistently manifest the presence and existence of many others. They recall those outside the walls but are ready to appear inside at any convenient moment. Those who are generally silenced and subdued but occasionally pop up here and there
by whirr and hiss,
whiz and fizz
squeak and crack
rustle and sough —
to interfere
unexhausting
continuous
broadcast
of human-made
infra/structure.
When the exhibition part of the project was finished, we stepped over the library’s threshold, got on the train from Vyborg and continued to live our lives in our “natural environment”. But I cannot overlook the tension between those placed opposite each other in pairs of “alive / not alive”. They drop out from designated positions of how to be named and behave, broke the division and ripen, burst and overflow all over the space. I might easily swap the variables within a formula “alive/not alive”. The relatively alive coexists with the relatively not alive. Depending on the context and the position taken, one thing becomes alive, and another is not alive.
It is happening in all the places where humans have bent nature to a comfortable to them position — refined a forest to design a park, paved asphalt measured, categorised, arranged, fenced and planned where and how everything must be. In every bush and sprout growing in an inappropriate place, a silent protest manifests itself against the idea that “there should be a determined time and place for everything”. To “blossom and resist” — lichen whispers on the windowpane. To “blossom and resist”, — pollen echoes from all the surviving trees after one more winter next to people. A trace of the sticker on the streetlight overgrown with moss, mold on the edges of a photo hanging on the wall of a coastal exprison turned into a museum — these are signs of presence some other than my life forms of life. They are here without waiting for approval to stay. There is no need for it because there is no need to ask.
An uncountable “alive” exists apart from our concerns about present and future ecological catastrophes. The world is more than humanity’s subjective attitude towards it, and it is unlikely to agree to play by people’s rules. This is my last temptation to put words in the nonexistent mouth of phantom generalised Nature. That lovely dearie Nature from postcards and screensavers that interweaved into visionary notions of prosperity, paradise and unquestionable good. So, here is what I hear from the zoomed background of this beautiful picture. Stones covered by seagulls’ shit whisper to me through the odour of half-decomposed seaweeds and stagnant water: “We are here; you can be aware yourself about this. If you wish, keep it in mind”. I don’t know when life existed above all categories will make its move and wipe away the feeble construction of reasons and necessities, justifying the atrocity of human deeds towards our own species and all the so-called “alive / not alive” who share the same terrain. But something that would be so tempting to call a courageous battle for the right to live in an artificial human-made world proves to be an imperturbable presence. While people cheat, hide, dodge, bluff, mimic, suffer losses, change tactics and prepare new attacks, the “alive/not alive” keep existing. I believe that in the long run, it will outlive and gobble up me, the library, shabby apartments, an art nouveau mansion, a pretentious low-budget post-post-modernistic palace and all our micro and macro plastics. The boundaries of alive /not alive, once constructed and reconstructed, will be erased again and again. As well as the category of interference, which, on my belated afterthoughts about our work, is better to name “neighbourhood”.