‘On the Way’ project is a public art (art in public spaces) workshop guided by Uve Jonas, an artist and curator, director of a residence in Berlin. A total of 19 artists from Yekaterinburg took part in the workshop, 17 of them later carried out their personal projects. All of them had a simple yet ambitious goal: intervene in public spaces of Verkh-Isetsky living area. Participants had two weeks to complete projects that would be outstanding enough to become the talk of the city, but would also be low-budget or need no financing at all.

The workshop began with three lections for all comers. The first one Uve dedicated to public art in Berlin, his curating experience and art project. The second lection was read by Norbert Artner, another guest from Austria. Norbert talked about ‘Festival of Regions’, an event held biennially in public spaces of Upper Austria. A photographer, video art specialist, designer, Norbert also worked with space in a journalistic manner, made a series of photos and a documentary about life in Verkh-Isetsky area. The topic of the last open lection was public art of Yekaterinburg and was read by four guests. Daria Kostina, Bukashkin museum curator, talked about pioneers that carried art into the streets of Yekaterinburg. Marina Sokolovskaya shared her experience of partaking in art process and projects in early 2000’s. The last lecturers, Anna Klets and Andrey Kolokolov, art directors of ‘Street-Art’ agency, talked about ‘Stenografia’ a street art festival. All lections were for all comers and we were pleasantly surprised to see how many people we were able to attract. The first lection was attended by about 50 people, and by the final lection this number had doubled. Uve also provided participants with individual as well as group counseling. The group has also spent some time learning about the area’s territory, its specifics and history.

The group spent 31 August to 10 September doing preparatory work, and 11 to 12 September the projects were carried out. The artists had a challenging task of not only creating a work of art in the city where their audience would be citizens that are not often exposed to street art, but also coming up with a way to present their projects at the final exhibition at Verkh-Isetsky Culture Centre on 20 September where they would be viewed by an audience more sophisticated in terms of modern art.

The artworks turned out as different as the partaking artists. Works displayed at the gallery were genuine and reflected meaning of projects carried out in public spaces or partially documented them. One of these works was ‘Motherland Plays’ by Sergei Laushkin that evoked a stormy reaction of the audience from the very first day of its creation. As soon as Sergey saw the ‘Motheland’ monument in front of Verkh-Isetsky Culture and Arts Centre, he immediately thought there was a feeling of motion to its entire pose and willful arm movement. Sergey suggested to re-think the monument that had been a severe and mournful sight for several decades. But times change and Motherland must change with them. And it is no coincidence the artist chose a ball painted in the colours of Russian tricoloured flag to be her toy: what is a better toy for Motherland, this huge monster whose name children all throughout Russia are taught to write with a capital letter, than the whole country? The allegory is as beautiful as it is simple.

Another work that didn’t live long was ‘Reloading’, Natalya Khokhonova’s project. During the excursion director of Culture Centre mentioned a monument to a male and a female workers that used to stand in front of the Centre, but was lost in late 1970’s. He also mentioned that the management would love to put some monument onto the empty pedestal. Natalia’s first thoughts were of an enterprising sculptor that will be too happy to lull the Culture Centre into buying a culturally outdated monument. ‘Reloading’ is a white cover that has not yet received any filling, some sort of clothing for one of the gypsum statues that were so popular in Soviet period. There is more than just one meaning to the project – a lot of people actually believed it was a New Year decoration awaiting its time while Culture Centre is being reconstructed.

However, Pavel Pogudin’s ‘Point of View’ seemed to be the most popular project. Pavel is a motion artist with a lot of interesting projects in his portfolio, including one made for Emir Kusturica. While working at the project Pavel had a chance to apply his 3D modeling skills while installing smaller constructions on an eminence (brick fence of a plant, a pole at a tram stop). A few spyglasses were installed in the distance. It was only a matter of people’s curiosity to peep into the spyglass to see the direction of the ‘Point of View’.

Not all projects were that noticeable, a lot of them were performances rather than stative works (‘Function of Beauty’ by Ekaterina Zharinova, ‘Picking Ashberry’ by Sasha Saltanova, ‘Beating with Flowers’ by Kirill Borodin). They could only be seen again at the exhibition in a slightly different form. ‘Childhood’s Golden Dreams’, a work by Anatoly Vyatkin (author of the famous keyboard monument) was also quite difficult to find. The concrete plate painted golden with manholes (sewage is a popular shelter for homeless people in winter) installed into it was hidden in one of the yards alongside with a cradle painted the same shade of golden. ‘We all were children once and anyone can end up in the street’ is one of the messages of this art work.

Alongside with projects that invited audience to interact, such as ‘Love Your Home’ by Tonya and Sasha Vorobyovs (the artists made public transport stops a cozier place by offering people tea and pretzels), ‘Souvenir’ by Anya Sitnikova, artists presented projects that could be easily noticed by citizens. They are such projects as ‘Princess VIZa’ (an allusion to ‘Princess Gita’, a formerly popular brand of tea – translator’s note) by Ilya Mozgi (a huge teabag swimming in Verkh-Isetsky pond), ‘Veteran of Homes’ by Maria Plaksina, ‘Verbs to Action’ by Julia Eremeeva, ‘Assol’ by Sergey Rozhin, ‘Welcome to the Shire’ by Maria Telegina, ‘Drop It’ by Dasha Gofman, ‘Golden Hills. Measure of Taint’ by Alexander Radtke, characters of a ruined monument came to life and walking in the area by Styopa Tropin and Alina Rakhmadulina.

The final chord of the project was a roundtable discussion on public art and comfortable public space, which took place right before opening of the exhibition. Who hires city design specialists, what makes a space comfortable for living and is the artist ready to find common ground with the area dwellers? Those were among the questions discussed by government spokesmen, non-profit organizations, artist and culture managers. Uwe Jonas, project curator, shared his Berlin experience.