Neryungri Museum

Occupy Siberia

I re-visited the local museum in Neryungri for one last glimpse of this Yakutian town — as presented through its own local history.

On display were images of Neryungri taken during the 1970s and 1980s — reflecting a type of early vision which beckons toward its current form. The three images below include a building titled Museum [Музей]; an installation (exhibit); and photographic collage. Collectively, these images define a process of my personal encounter with Neryungrian historical form.

The image above is an arrival scene of the first constructed residential building in Neryungri. Below, I have blown-up one image for closer inspection:

Notice in this image the celebration of things marking various relations of intimacy as a lived experience: a mattress moving through the front door, a leather brief case that lies on top of other items, and the metallic/plastic suit case (to the right of the leather brief) that sits on the earth, thrown there off the truck, making an indent in the snow.

What is on is display is a typology of the personal. Such things as a briefcase that require closeness to the body [carried under the arm and opened by hand], are situated among other things in a hierarchy based on their ability to register human touch. Together, it is a visual on new beginnings as displayed by the will of things to assert themselves as personal belongings.

One exhibit hall was littered with oil paintings of development:

Among these paintings, one artist’s rendition below of the “elevated cabin” stands out as a prototype of the Neryungrian departure from its proto-developmental form, reaching, that is, toward an articulation of a high-energy civilization. Behold:

The geographer Vaclav Smil, writing on high-energy consumption, captures an essence of the painting in this reminder of modern energy’s capacity: “In 1900 even a well-off Great Plains farmer holding the reins of six large horses while plowing his wheat field — controlled with considerable physical exertion while perched on a steel seat and often enveloped in dust — sustained delivery of no more than 5 KW of animate power. A century later his counterpart driving a large tractor effortlessly controls more than 250 KW while sitting in the air-conditioned and stereo-enlivened comfort of his elevated cabin” (2000:23-25).

Thus, on display through the “elevated cabin” is comfort and convenience in the harness of industrial production. It is also an instance of the urban form, a rebellion emerging across the Siberian space, as if importing a type of cosmopolitan resource into the super-natural landscape as part of a project to occupy Siberia.

In the collage directly above, I have attempted to capture the import of cosmopolitan resource through the tableau of men-at-work — gazing out before them (toward an object of labor). In the case of the Neryungrian, his object of labor are other paintings inside of the museum exhibit itself, and as such, artistic labor becomes a manner of intense reflection.