Russians have for decades fashioned functional objects from such cast-off items as forks, plastic bottles and onion bags. Collector Vladimir Arkhipov sheds light on the artful labours collected in his archive of “post-material folklore”.

Interview by Christopher Frey

Vladimir Arkhipov collects the art of everyday ingenuity: a power charger made from a recycled Polaroid cartridge; a barbell bracketed by elevator counterweights; an abacus repurposed into a back-massager; a short-wave radio receiver constructed from metal scrap; a water boiler jerry-rigged from a pair of razor blades, wire and an A/C plug. All of their component parts previously used.

For more than fifteen years, Arkhipov has been assembling this archive of “post-material folklore”, idiosyncratic DIY tools and toys fashioned mostly by casual inventors in and around the Moscow area. Though he’s reluctant to ascribe the word “art” to these self-made “thingumajigs”, he treasures their accidental poetry in the service of function.

The archive began in 1994, when Arkhipov realized his own conceptual art had little relevance amid the upheaval of the post-Soviet meltdown. As he says, “I still thought of myself as an artist, I just wasn’t making anything.”  Then, while visiting a friend’s dacha, he noticed a coat hook that had been made from a toothbrush warped over a flame. “It was so simple, but it struck me right away. I knew it was important.” For decades, Russians living under communism, cut-off from Western disposable consumer culture, had been fashioning functional objects from such cast-off items as light shades, plastic bottles and onion bags.

Arkhipov remembered his own father’s inventions, among them a TV antenna made from a set of aluminum forks. “Things like these had been around me all my life but were almost invisible to the naked eye.”

In recent years, Arkhipov has been invited to take his enthusiasm for “post-material folklore” on the road. But rather than deliver his Russian objects to galleries in Brazil, Ireland, England and Spain, he spends a few weeks in advance of his exhibitions hunting for local examples of self-made objects. He always discovers something. Like the gas mask a professor in Sao Paolo had created from a coffee canister and funnel—on days the smog was unbearable, the professor filled the canister with essential oils and breathed into it instead of the air soggy with particulates.

Each object tells a local story, in terms of the materials recycled and the uses to which they are put. The Russian pieces, for example, show off the manifold benefits of a Soviet-era technical education. But Arkhipov ultimately holds to a more phenomenological, quasi-mystical appreciation for the ingenuity that post-folk culture represents.

Arkhipov’s collection has been featured in two books: Home-Made: Contemporary Russian Folk Artifacts (Fuel Publishing) and Born out of Necessity, 105 Thingumajigs and Their Creator’s Voices (Typolygon)

I spoke with Arkhipov at his friend’s suburban Moscow apartment, in November 2008.

What’s your criteria for including pieces in the archive?

The objects must be functional, visually interesting, one-of-a-kind and not for sale. They must also have an author, someone who can talk about their creation. The form must be unique, unlike anything else. I usually believe the author if he says it’s unique. The less the author thinks about what he’s made, the more interesting it is for the art. Because it’s more pure, not aesthetically loaded. I think things that man makes only for himself can have aesthetic qualities that are not in things made for sale.

Any piece’s uniqueness is usually a coincidence of time, place and the creator. I never know which house will yield an interesting discovery, it’s always accidental.

[Photos: Vladimir Arkhipov. Commode made from a stool by Alexei Tikhonov;
Shovel made from a road-sign by Vladimir Antipov.]

How did you find the first piece in the collection?

I went to a friend’s dacha outside Moscow to help him build a stove. As he was unpacking things I went into the attic. There were some old coats hanging up and when I took them off I noticed the hook — it was made from a toothbrush warped over a flame. Such a small thing! I guess it was a coincidence, because at that moment I was able to see this hook for what it was. It was something important.

It was the answer to the questions that had been brewing in me about what to do next. I decided to start collecting things like this hook. Because usually I saw these things separately, one here at this house, another there, I never thought about it. These self-made tools, gadgets, had been around me all my life, but were an unexplored part of material culture. We just took them for granted.

I wanted to collect them in one place and have the opportunity to reflect on these objects and what story they told. Within a year I put on the first exhibition.

The pieces you collect are, by necessity, tied into the material reality of where they’re made. When you saw that tooth-brush hook, when you began the archive, what were the conditions like in Russia?

After the USSR collapsed, 1993 was the most difficult year for our country. After that everything changed. The social and economic divisions started becoming more stratified, more extreme.

Some of my friends got very rich, and they lost their interest in art. They were more interested in Ferraris and luxury cars. And others didn’t have any money. They couldn’t afford to be interested in anything. The art I was making became irrelevant and unnecessary. I think it was true of all art in this period.

As an artist, the 1990s were the period of looking for an audience, trying to find who is the spectator. Eventually, as some people made money, the art began to develop again, but according to the laws of bourgeois art. It was something shocking and kitschy. It wasn’t interesting to me.

[Photo: Valdimir Arkhipov. Footbridge made from a bed by an unknown author.]

During this time you still thought of yourself as an artist, not yet a curator.

I still thought of myself as an artist, but I wasn’t making anything. I had an apartment in a small town that I rented out for income. Instead, I lived with friends in these condemned houses in Moscow, like a squat. I didn’t need much money to live here. Now where we squatted is the most luxurious part of Moscow, the Kutuzovsky Prospekt.

When I had to make some money I did construction work. It was my dream to have enough money to stop working and just make art.

Here’s a classic story from those times: I was owed a lot of money by this construction company. But it was run by criminals. When I finished my work I never got my last, largest sum. My problem is that I didn’t have what Russians call a ‘roof’ — the people who can look out for you, protect you. In short, I didn’t get the money. I wasn’t the only one. A large group of builders got fucked. You need the courage to shoot people. I didn’t have this quality. Russian business has no recourse for people like me!

[Photo: Vladimir Arkhipov. Summer shower made by Alexander.]

Now that your collection is being noticed outside Russia, art critics and curators tend to appreciate it as either a critique of consumer culture, or as a sociological catalogue of the deprivations suffered here in the immediate post-Soviet era. What do you think about that?

I accept that but only up to a point. I think the more specialized your labour, the less ingenious you become. Consumer societies can lose contact with the material world, with tactile things and the process of creating them. Because if you have money, you need something, you can buy it. But the poor man is more attentive to the details of everyday life. For them this attentiveness is the guarantee of survival.

These pieces do say something about where and when they were made. In Soviet times there was a unique material culture. Because the whole cycle of production, from beginning to end, it was done here. Our technologies and products developed in parallel, but differently than the West. There are certain things that are Soviet-standard that you would never find in the West.

But when I look at these things together, there’s no big difference between the communist and the post-communist times. Yes, they can say a little about when and where they were made, but we should also be careful not to make too much of it.

I prefer to look at it as a phenomenon of contemporary culture — not sociologically, but phenomenologically. For example, I compare these pieces to a sort of folklore by calling it material folklore. But there’s no real tradition of this, not in any conscious sense, you’re not closely following what a whole body of people has done before you. These things are sporadic, occasional. You can’t understand all the why, where, and how, but you can admire them, appreciate their ingenuity. You may even appreciate how they look, although they weren’t necessarily made to look good.

What do you mean by phenomenologically?

These things are traces of the creative force in man. Creativity belongs to everyone, but everyone is different, so the manifestations, expressions of it are different. Some men have a facility with words, others with sound or numbers. And there are others who still understand the world with their hands. Those last people are the people who interest me the most.