Machines will rise at night: a night of factories will pass in Russia

Art tries to revitalize the industrial area

On August 12, the All-Russian Night of Factories will take place. 18 production facilities in 16 regions of Russia, from Kaliningrad to Derbent, will turn into art spaces. Night owls, who will witness the highly artistic “rise of the machines”, are waiting for performances, promenades, exhibitions, concerts, performances, multimedia installations and art objects.

The new nighttime art movement, which arose in the wake of the popularity of Museum Night, Library Night, Movie Night, etc., differs from similar cultural events for night owls. It is curious that, before forming the program, the organizers of the festival (from the team of the Ural Industrial Biennale and the Nemoskva project) selected factory sites by competition, and not artists, as usual. The results of the competition were announced in March, and only a couple of weeks ago some details of the program appeared.

Of the Moscow factories, the Center for Creative Industries “Fabrika” participates, where the paper production workshop still operates, but now this place is much better known as an independent cultural platform. As part of the Night of Factories festival, Fabrika will be able to see new exhibitions and, most importantly, look through rare books that have long disappeared from the shelves of bookstores. Rarities include Looking at Others’ Suffering by Susan Sontag, Roland Barthe’s essay Cy Twombly, and Gert Lovink’s Critical Theory of the Internet. However, in comparison with factories far from the capital, everything will be quite modest here.

Another thing is giant factories, such as, for example, the Perm Sibur-Khimprom, where a performance will be held, at the end of which a symphony will sound, created from the sounds recorded at the plant. The plot of the production will immerse you in the history of the interaction between art and production. Or the Chekhov Power Engineering Plant, where a performance is also planned, as well as a series of large-scale installations that will sound and be illuminated by laser beams. Multimedia projects will create the feeling that machines speak to people as if they were alive.

Involved in the “Night of factories” and abandoned industrial production. For example, the workshop of the Onega Tractor Plant in Petrozavodsk. Production went bankrupt five years ago, and later the plant was sold at auction, restarted under a different name, but not all shops are now working. Part of the abandoned house has turned into an art cluster, where new objects will appear as part of the festival. Bolshaya Ivanovo Manufactory is another stopped production that will become part of the nightly action. Textile production in the heart of Ivanov ceased to “beat” in 2008. Art is trying to revive the industrial area. As part of the “Night of Factories”, two multimedia installations will appear on the central facade and in one of the workshops, which will become an occasion to speculate about the future of the abandoned manufactory.

However, most of the Night of the Factories program is described rather vaguely.