21 September 2023
On
10–13 September at the Eastern Economic Forum, the Cultural Code Foundation in
cooperation with the Roscongress Foundation, Vellum Gallery and the House of
Russia Abroad presented the exhibition ‘Culturalcode.rf. Encyclopaedia of
cultural meanings. Vladivostok’. EEF was organized by the Roscongress
Foundation.
On the
first day of the Forum, the discussion ‘A Creative Nation: Regional Initiatives
and International Partnerships in a Creative Economy’ was held, raising the
topic of creating an ecosystem of interaction between multinational cultures,
creative and other sectors of the economy, contributing to increased
competitiveness, improved quality of final products and their promotion in
local and international markets. Other topics included ways to integrate the
concept of traditional values into the entertainment and media industries, and
the role of culture in establishing cooperation between Russia and Asia-Pacific
countries. The discussion was attended by Cui Shan, President, Russian-Sino
Foundation of Developing Culture and Art; Ekaterina Gurova, Dean of the Faculty
of Media Communications and Design, Russian Academy of National Economy and
Public Administration under the President of the Russian Federation (RANEPA),
and others. Lyubov Agafonova, art critic, founder of the Vellum Art Gallery,
Advisor to the Director of the Museum, House of Russia Abroad, and expert of
the CULTURALCODE.RF All-Russian Media Platform, spoke about the importance of
art, the role of the individual and cultural codes during the discussion.
“At a time when the increasing desire for globalisation and the
intermingling of ideas of cultures and mores has led to the fact that society and
people’s minds are overloaded with superfluous, fake, and untrue values, the CULTURALCODE.RF project aims to
find, identify and make available information about the true origins of
Russian culture, about the twists and turns of the history of this culture,
about how a person should perceive it. A project that teaches this should be
and is unconditionally supported by Roscongress. We have always endeavoured to ensure that not only economic, but also
basic cultural common values are spread and
supported,” said Igor Pavlov, Director of the Eastern Economic Forum.
At the Far Eastern
Federal University, on the sidelines of EEF, an artistic story unfolded that
reflects the unique and unprecedented scale of changes in the life of all
mankind in the 20th century. The beginning of these
processes were storms in minds, on newspaper pages and colourful canvases –
precisely within the framework of the diverse, multinational and unique Russian
reality.
The exhibition, part
of the CULTURALCODE.RF
All-Russian Media Platform, presented the
works of artist and poet David Burliuk – the originator and propagandist of new
art, practitioner and theorist of “-isms”, the founder of Russian and
Japanese Futurism. The first post-revolutionary years of Burliuk’s work are
closely connected with Vladivostok. It was here that a whole group of Futurists settled in 1918 and the
Literary and Artistic Society (LAS) was organized, which concentrated the city’s cultural life and set the vector for its future development.
Revolutionary
changes in the social and political order, science, worldview and even in
everyday habits, transformation of cultural codes are completely inconceivable and illogical without the propaganda influence of art throughout
Russia. In early 1919, unusual posters with drawings and texts
by Mikhail Cheremnykh, Vladimir Mayakovsky and Nikolai Gramen began to appear
in shop windows, on the walls of houses, on the pages of newspapers and
magazines. Visitors to the exhibition ‘Culturalcode.rf. Encyclopaedia of
Cultural Meanings. Vladivostok’ were able to see a series of agitprop posters by
Mikhail Cheremnykh.
The practical path of the birth of a new language, a new literature, a new painting led to the culmination – the creation of the New Man. New cities were to be built for him. Visualisation of their architecture, akin to "science fiction", was enthusiastically pursued by the Vesnin brothers and Konstantin Melnikov, Yakov Chernikhov and, a little later, Alexander Bykhovsky, whose ‘Monument’ also became part of the exhibition ‘Culturalcode.rf. Encyclopaedia of Cultural Meanings. Vladivostok’.