THE FOUNDATION PIT

The Platonov Festival presents the cycle "Platonov-2021", which includes performances created by guest directors, composers, choreographers and artists specially for the festival. All of them are associated with the works or personality of Andrey Platonov and are held not in theatre halls, but at unusual venues in the city.

A performance can be any situation that includes four basic elements: time, place, the body of the artist, and the relationship between the artist and the viewer. For three days, the artist Polina Kardymon will be digging the foundation pit. If Platonov's heroes dug it for a great future, then why do it now, spending so much physical strength? For what idea can you give your strength and health? Moreover, if you know in advance that at the end of the third day the bulldozer will bury the foundation pit and nothing will remain of it.

Polina Kardymon: "I know in advance, unlike the heroes of The Foundation Pit, how it will all end, I do not cherish hopes for the "future", from which the question arises: What is all this for? I do not have my own "concept of the future", I feel lost in time and space, I don’t know what will happen tomorrow. I have never been engaged in physical labor, I have not even dug potatoes in the garden, for me this is a test, can my body do physically active work for 9 hours every day? What will happen to me during this time?"

Polina will dig her foundation pit with the accompaniment of Platonov's text - words and phrases from the story of the same name that touch her and force her to dwell on them in more detail. Every day she will remove from the phonogram the phrases that she has internally comprehended for herself. This is a rare example of performance, in which the director herself acts as an artist and performer, without delegating to others the responsibility for her idea, and physically realises the idea in time and space.

Spectators can come at any time and watch the excavation of the foundation pit for as long as they want. You can come more than once and follow the performance in its development during all three days. Those interested will be able to join Polina for a short time and get their own experience.

Does physical labor become intangible if you know in advance that its result will be destroyed? Isn't the pain of exhausting work like the agony of creativity? Does "meaningless" work make sense? Is it worth cherishing hopes and programming the future if, at the end of the day, there are always forces that can bulldoze it? The audience of the performance will be able to reflect on these and many other issues.

Polina Kardymon (Novosibirsk) - theatre director, artist, curator, member of the MYK group, resident of the space-laboratory "Workshop of Kriklivy and Pankov", co-author of the projects PERFODNI and the book club ZVUK BUKV. Author of the audio performance "Koromysli", included in the programmes of several festivals. Director of the play "Mushrooms" at the Novosibirsk "First Theatre", which was included in the special "Mask Plus" programme at the "Golden Mask" festival as one of the most relevant works of the Russian theatrical season 2019/20.