First visit for 'Kaliningrad ohne Heimweh'

Late in the morning there was a meeting with Yulia Bardun from TRANZIT already organized. She managed the required application for me. And only short time later I got known to Roman Tkatchenko, staff member of TRANZIT, who helped me several times during my residence. In the evening I went (after the advice of Yulia) to the Photographers Union, where an Irish photographer was showing her work. There I met the young webdeveloper and photographer Nick Kharchenko – he gave me some good advices and invited me – for example – to a very nice and interesting trip with a group of photographers to the Masursky Channel.

Now I started photographing intensively. In the evening of the 8th of April I met the photographer Roman Gorodko and started organizing with him a small photo-workshop for children, we realized at the end of my trip. Fortunately Nick called me in the evening and told me about the celebration on the 9th of April: the 65th anniversary of the storm and capitulation of Königsberg. So in the next morning I went to the memorial of the 1200 fallen soldiers. And also the following days I used mainly for photographing.

On the 12th of April I got a bright call from the historian Ilya Dementiev, who I already knew from my first Kaliningrad-trip (four days in June 2009) and who helped me in advance organizing this trip by doing all the required formalities very patient and without objections. He was back from Moscow and invited me to his office. We went together to the Polish Consulate where I wanted to take some pictures of the flowers and candles which have been put down there after the aircraft disaster. Afterwards we had a conversation while drinking a cup of tea. The next day we also spent together. Ilya invited me to a journey to a school in Novostroevo. For some children from Kaliningrad there was organized an entertaining program. They were offered to make sports, play chess, make crafts and (unfortunately also) to learn shooting. For a long time I haven’t seen a school from inside, but what I saw in this rural area was really surprisingly: a very well-appointed school with lots of possibilities. The end of the program was formed by a manifold pupil’s performance with lots of dance and singing. Afterwards, already in the night, we made a short visit in Tchernyakhovsk Castle.

At the following day I met Olga Goryacheva and Juriy Seliverstov from the Kaliningrad Photoartist Union. I showed them some of my pictures and we made an agreement that I should show my aborning work about Kaliningrad in the beginning of May in public.

The next days I used again for photographing intensively and now I started travelling to the region (Zelenogradsk, Svetlogorsk).
On the 21st of April I met Svetlana Sokolova from the Museum Friedland Gate. She was not only very friendly, but also very interested in my work. She put me in contact to the director of the Regional Art Gallery, Galina Zabolotskaya.
Meanwhile Ilya still attended on me. He showed me a film, invited me to the theatre and on the 27th of April I drove with him and two Italian students for a day trip to the eastern part of the region. Among other things we visited a small museum of local history in Kubanova, built by Galina Kiseleva’s own initiative. In almost the same manner the teachers Nadezhda Komarova and Anatoly Komarov built an instructive school museum for regional history.

The young student of history and staff member in Yulia's bureau, Grach Arakelyan, organized a bike for me so that I was able to explore the surroundings of Kaliningrad now also bicycling.
Nick put me in contact to Max Popov. Max works as a designer and photographer in an agency and is collecting pictures of Königsberg / Kaliningrad for about 10 years. At the moment he is editing a book of his collection (and some more pictures). It is not only the amount of very unknown photos which are making Max´s book so interesting, it is also the manner, how Max is working with the material. His photo book is nonideologigal, unsentimental and nonpatronizing. It is a chronological line from Königsberg to Kaliningrad in there, but it is always broken by cuts, interesting confrontations and associative correlates. I am really looking forward to the published book. Anywhere I learned so much about Kaliningrad in such a short time.

Now it was time for me to make a first conclusion. I had to prepare for the presentation at the Photoartist Union. That is very unusual for me. If it’s possible, I like to wait a little while with choosing pictures, to get a distance and more objective position to my own work. But the day came: the 5th of May. Russian art of improvisation helped to solve all technical problems (special thanks to Roman T., Ilya and Nick) and to my surprise there were about 30 interested people and the very small room was overfull. Nastya Lila helped with the translation of my comments to the 80 photos I showed and the philosopher Alexander Sologubov, too. Afterwards he showed an own small work. I was not really able to understand the following discussion, but I had another chance some days later.

Ilya heard about my «success» and organized another presentation on the following Saturday (8th of May) in Gymnasium 40 in Kaliningrad. He invited lots of students and about 15 people came. Again Nastya made the translation. After my presentation Ilya made a discussion about my photos. And I realized, that Ilya was not only a supporter of my work, he was also its greatest critic. Most of the attendees were affected in a sad way by my photos. Ilya said, that I will make people with my pictures more sad. And he thought that my pictures are too onesided and negative. I answered that affecting people by artwork is very positive, because they start to think about it. And my standpoint is the one of an artist who knows about his responsibility for his work, but who can’t be measured by moral dimensions. Our dissent could not be solved but the whole discussion for me was very useful and I thank Ilya for making this possible.
In between these two presentations, I visited the director of the Regional Art Gallery, Galina Zabolotskaya. I showed her some of my pictures and to my surprise she offered me to take part in an exhibition with four different photographer’s views onto Kaliningrad in autumn 2011. It will be a honour for me to take part because two of the three others are already fixed: the famous Kaliningrad photographers Dmitry Vishemirsky and Oleg Maksimov. So I know that my Kaliningrad adventure is not over yet.

Already at the beginning of my trip and during this residence more and more I realized, that Kaliningrad was dressing up. At the beginning I was not sure if it’s the »normal« spring-cleaning, when lots of people were cleaning the parks, painting trashcans and fences. Or is it all for the 65th anniversary of defeating fascism, the victory day? Especially the renovations of the memorials showed into this direction. And with every day there were more posters and pennants in the city, shopping centres, telephone companies and banks congratulated the inhabitants to the victory day. Already on the 5th of May you could watch the tests for the great parade on the 9th of May in the center of the city. The celebrations began already on the 8th of May. There was a wreath ceremony at the marine memorial, followed by a music parade through the city to the sports hall ›Junost‹ (Youth), where there was a great welcome for the veterans. But the »real« victory day is the 9th of May. At 9 o’clock in the morning the military parade already started. I felt a little uneasy. For sure, the 9th of May is a wonderful and great day to celebrate but the omnipresent evocation of victory seemed to me like whistling in the dark. Yes, Russia defeated fascism on this 9th of May. But afterwards all the history went against Russia. And in the reality of this exclusively financial reality, Russia lost the war. That was on my mind, when I was standing at the parade, with lots of others. Soldiers and military machines started and it did not improve my mood. Afterwards there was a wreath ceremony at the memorial of the 1200 fallen soldiers and, far out of the city, a so called reconstruction. Lots of pilgrims went out to Fort No. 5 (where the reconstruction was) and the traffic came to a virtual standstill. The sun was shining, the atmosphere was friendly and on a big field, surrounded by lots of spectators, there were two parties: one in Soviet and the other in German uniforms lying in trenches and behind hay-wire circuits. Some fires were set and than they started with much ado. After twenty minutes the Germans were, for now, defeated. But a second act, now directly on the old and destroyed Fort No. 5, was to come. It lasted half an eternity to prepare it again, drumfire started at long last. At the end there was a Soviet soldier waving a red flag on Fort No. 5. The crowd was celebrating, the soldier got killed by a last German bullet and two other Soviet soldier appeared to wave the flag on, the crowd was celebrating louder. Reconstruction seems to me a very great word for such kind of theatre, it’s more a reason for big children to have a big blast. I went back to the inner city and met with Roman T. We ate and drank together and in the evening we went to the party at the House of Soviets. The day ended with a great firework which put me in a conciliatory mood.

The end of my residence was now really close. The next day I used for a last photo-trip to the region, in the following days I met with different people and on Wednesday and Thursday there was this small photo workshop for children, I made with Roman Gorodko for the ›Youth for Freedom of Speech‹. On Wednesday we went out in small groups and with different themes to make photos and on Thursday we evaluated them together. There could have been some more children but our explanations seemed to be helpful for them.

My very last day was also the day of the Museum Night. In the late afternoon I met with Inna Vyshemirkaya and Dmitry Vishemirsky. We had a nice, thoughtful conversation and both took me to the Museum Night. Because I wanted to say good-bye: to Svetlana Sokolova, Yulia Bardun and Galina Zabolotskaya. They were all very stressed by organizing there events, but I saw them all and was able to say good-bye. On my way back I made some last photos in the night. At home I took my things together, slept for a while and in the next morning I went to the bus station, where my bus was already waiting for me to bring me back to Berlin. But I know: I have to come back.