Dmitry Gutov

The footbridge

Archstoyanie 2010. Summer

It is good when artist gets a definite task, it saves you as an artists from necessity of inefficient efforts to invent some odd and needless things. Oleg Kulik provided us with such a definite task – to create a labyrinth. That time I used to study a book, comments of Diderot concerning  Helvétius with marks at the margins by my favorite Marxist philosopher Michael Lifshits, made in hardly readable fine pencil spelling. I made photos of some of these marks to expand them and find out what has been spelled.
 The word 'tonko' (a thin line) spelled by Michael Lifshits is my labyrinth but with some special sense different from common. I wanted to organize a labyrinth which firstly provided a visitor with atmosphere of infinite freedom. You could see everything clearly, in front of you, from your backside, from your right and left sides, but you can not step left or right but have to follow and step over a word 'tonko' from the beginning to the end of your trip. The chosen ground for the project realization turned out to be such a wild space with swarm of gnats and clegs, with beaver's lodges that it had become clear no one had to break in this landscape. So the bridges are wooden and could be crashed down, decay or used as materials for lodges by beavers. There is an idea of transparence in it due to possibility of dissolving of art objects in nature.