Visual Strolls
seasonal residency
Visual Strolls is a residency space for artists who share an affinity for landscapes and wilderness, inner and outer. Foresta is changing with every season as the real forest does. In cyclical circularity it celebrates changing seasons of nature and of our lives. As snow melts away, as days grow longer, as leaves change colour, as they fly with the wind, as stillness settles in, as warmth returns, as birds cross continents — at the turn of each seasonal moment we invite a different artist to bring a new time of the year to Foresta by creating a portrait of time that later becomes part of the permanent Museum of Seasons.
Summer 2020 Artists in Residence
are 2 members of a collective from Moscow Tseh Knigi, dedicated to experimenting with the book form and finding new ways of preserving information and personal stories: Natasha Markina and Sara Magambetova.
Summer 2020 Portrait
“«Я весь не вмещаюсь между башмаками и шляпой.» Уолт Уитмен «Песнь о себе»
Как может человек вместить в себе вкус каждой съеденной земляники, все летние грозы и все веснушки своей бабушки, как может он сохранить каждое мгновение, каждую песню, спетую в одиночестве? Время, со всеми запахами и шорохами, ускользает от нас. И даже память изменчива. Мы - самое непостоянное в этом мире.
Но постоянна природа. Каждый год мы встречаем одни и те же ритуалы: одуванчики в июне, виноград в сентябре. Такой же виноград собирали наши прабабушки, те же песни пели им соловьи. Шекспиру и Уитмену квакали те же лягушки, что и нам сейчас. Природа объединяет всех, живущих и умерших сотни тысяч лет назад. Время течёт для неё
по-другому, оно постоянно и бесконечно. И нам так нужно приблизиться к этой бесконечности, к этому постоянству, синхронизироваться с тем временем, которым живёт природа, слушать её, говорить с ней.
Как хочется замереть и увидеть каждое изменение каждого нового дня: на сколько подрос лопух, в котором часу выпала роса. Если бы можно было так застыть, словно камень, и увидеть всё, что видела природа, услышать всё, что слышала она, узнать, что отвечал Уитмен лягушкам, и носить всё это в сердце, между шляпой и ботинками!
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“I am not contain’d between my hat and boots…” from ‘Song of Myself’ by Walt Whitman
How can one accommodate the taste of every eaten strawberry, all summer thunderstorms and all the freckles of their grandmother, how can they save every moment, every song sung alone? Time, with all the smells and rustles, escapes us. Even memory is volatile. We are the most fickle phenomenon in this world.
But nature is constant. Every year we meet the same rituals: dandelions in June, grapes in September. The same grapes were harvested by our great-grandmothers, the same songs were sung to them by nightingales. Shakespeare and Whitman were quacked by the same frogs as we are now. Nature brings together everyone who lived and died hundreds of thousands of years ago. Time is flowing for nature differently, it’s constant and infinite. And we need to get closer to this infinity, to this constancy, to synchronize with the time, which nature lives, to listen to her, to speak with her.
How one would like to freeze and see every change of every new day: how much has the burdock grown, in which hour did the dew fall… If you could freeze up like a rock and see all that nature had seen, hear all that she had heard, find out what Whitman had said to the frogs, and wear it all in your heart between your hat and your boots!”
Natasha Markina
Natasha is an artist, animation film-maker and director, founder and curator of Tseh Knigi. She is closely engaged with painting, artist's book, animation, working with ceramics and wood.
Sara Magambetova
Sara is a painter, writer and scriptwriter. Along with her work writing scripts and prose, she is also passionate about ceramics and wood, painting and illustration.
About Visual Strolls
Visual Strolls is not only an online gallery, an exhibition room, a portrait into the work of the invited artist. It is also a part of our long-term research, understanding arts and creativity as forces that change human states of attention in manifold ways, as forms of cognition and perception, divergent perspectives and poetry of vision, access to intuition and imagination, and empowerment for conscious creation of culture. You can read more about Art into Life research here.
Cover image: Natasha Markina