Since 5 years we have been collaborating with the feisty ladies of ARMA17. Perhaps you don’t know the power of the female hands that help curate and shape this force of nature. It is indeed a wild outlaw creature of a country but our dear partners in crime do wondrous things to help steer the ship.
They always somehow trusted (like it or not) our weirdness. We first laid eyes on these beauties when we flew to the Ukraine in 2011 to hop around their stage at Kazantip playing genies inside some sort of bottles. They didn’t even blink when our crew somehow managed to miss more then 5 flights. We were the last of the last skulking around the dance floor moving to some music only we could hear inside our heads.
Since then we have been the female reincarnations of Monty Python’s search for the holy grail covered in chain mail, fake blood and broccoli masquerading as shrubbery. The next session they built us a huge nest that sent feathers flying for hours over a dance floor as we rubbed honey over our bodies and locked ourselves in metal cages ( oh how we remember the frightened look in Anton’s face as he declared the club would be sued for allergic reactions for the fluff that must be in everyone’s lungs) They created a playground based on our sketches of the Coney Island structures in the early 20th century that we called cloud kingdom. For the almost closing of their last location we built giant tubes and laser guns and ran around like 60’s Barbarella space queens.
Last year, at the launch of their first summer festival, we witnessed a cultural revolution. A shift is happening in Moscow. The bohemian artistic playful fantasy camp this collective built raw with their hands and minds and hearts is starting to spread. This mentality creeps and crawls into the souls of many and transforms into this epic 24 hour festival they call OUTLINE. Perfectly curated music combines with a passion for art and unlike most festival out there the girls DO believe in the value of art. Installations are equally as powerful as the lineup at this event.
We are so grateful to have been a part of this last year, where we built romantic corners into decaying structures and dressed in white with baby powered cascading like snowfall around our sandy bathtubs, bridges to nowhere and apple tree messages.
This year the girls let us come with a large crew to build a space for our ritual awakening the 5 senses. We piled mountains of sand inside this huge factory, the entrance to our backdoor pathways offered you a rose water sacrament as you made a decision on which direction to take. You could choose a strange bed with a spy mirror or a cult celebration tea ceremony with the smell of lavender wafting through your nostrils.
We must give our super special love and thanks to Helga Wretmann and Sina Kempe for co-ordinating the performance and helping us build, with sweetest Nella Reiken and Fabian Fenk getting big props for their dedicated installation powers in the faces of all sorts of chaos.
++all shot on Impossible HQ polaroid film ++