THE BASES
2022 . sculptures with cameras and tablets
In
The Bases, Pcholka addresses the tumultuous history of Minsk, where the new
autocratic regime installed an extensive network of surveillance cameras on
Stalinist post-war architecture. Pcholka created casts of lamppost bases from
the main boulevards of Minsk – where the most important protest marches took
place in 2020 – and mounted cameras on them, symbolizing the regime’s permanent
state surveillance, which extends even to those in exile.
The ornamentation on the lamp bases was designed by Nikolai Mikholap, who took inspiration from Słuck sashes. There is a story behind this: In 1937, a group of scholars, art experts, and artists were working to establish the first State Gallery of Art in Belarus. Its opening was held in 1939, and its Director, Nikolai Mikholap himself, included in the gallery’s collection Słucksashes that the Radziwiłł family had collected in the town of Nesvizh. In 1941, the collection included 2711 specimens, almost 400 of which were on exhibition. From June 1941 to June 1944, while Minsk was under German occupation, the collection remained in the city. Although Mikholap tried to organize an evacuation of the museum’s collection, he failed to move it abroad; everything in it, including the Słuck sashes, was lost.
After the liberation, Mikholap was accused of embezzling the collection. Dismissed from his post as director, he took up design, becoming the head of artistic design in the Belarusian Soviet Socialist Republic (BSSR). In this role, Mikholap designed different kinds of ornaments for cities and towns that needed to be rebuilt. In doing so, he often used the motifs of the lost Słuck sashes, including on the bases of streetlamps. The lamps were installed in 1950 and remained in Minsk practically unchanged until 24 June 2017. On that day, one of the lamps was hit by a tank during preparations for a military parade. There were no casualties, but the Minsk Directorate of Street Lighting concluded that the life-span of the old lamps had been exhausted, and that they should be replaced with plastic ones. The ‘refurbishment’ was finalised by the end of 2019. In 2020, the thousands of people who took to the streets walked past these new plastic lamps – which became new witnesses to history and an image of our culture, and/or its real absence.
