Crystal is Watching You

Right now, Museum Night has kicked off at the Museum of Architecture, featuring a fresh new addition – the “Crystal of Perception”, an installation by Sergey Kuznetsov, Ivan Grekov, and the KROST company, set up in the courtyard. It shimmers with light, it sings, it reacts to the approach of people, and who knows what else it can do.

Written by:
Julia Tarabarina
Translated by:
Anton Mizonov

18 May 2024

Object

In the courtyard of the Museum of Architecture, a new installation has been unveiled. Its creators, Sergey Kuznetsov and Ivan Grekov – co-author with the chief architect of Moscow on the Lomonosov cluster building – realized this project with the help of the KROST company, which also built Kuznetsov’s “Russian Ideal House” in Nikola-Lenivets.

Here’s how the installation came to be. Sergey Kuznetsov visited the “Falconnier. Architecture of Light” exhibition and was inspired – he decided to create an art object from octagonal glass pieces salvaged by museum staff during the renovation of the State Archive building on Bolshaya Pirogovskaya Street. This event sparked the history of the exhibition, the catalog, and even the project to revive the technology of Falconnier glass bricks by the St. Petersburg company NWGlass.lab. The octagonal glass pieces, which were common in Russia, were partly preserved by the museum, while the rest were simply stored, with no clear plan for their use. A year ago, a small installation using these glass pieces was created at the exhibition, displayed on the vault on the second floor of the Ruin Wing.

Here’s the exhibition installation, and to the right, a frame from a video showing workers smashing the bricks with hammers:

"Falconnier. Architecture of Light" exhibition. Museum of Architecture, the “Ruin” wing, 07.04.2023 – 20.08.2023

Now, Kuznetsov’s installation includes 348 glass bricks, according to the press release. They are set into a stainless steel grid patterned after the original octagons. The grid forms a simple parallelepiped, which by day looks like a stele with a dense, yet delicate pattern, hiding something mysteriously glowing inside. At night, it’s clear that the glass bricks form a proportionally enlarged octagon repeating their shape.

“Crystal of Perception” art object in the yard of the Architecture Museum. Author: Sergey Kuznetsov, co-author: Ivan Grekov, KROST production, 2024

Night view. “Crystal of Perception” art object in the yard of the Architecture Museum. Author: Sergey Kuznetsov, co-author: Ivan Grekov, KROST production, 2024

The installation is highly media-oriented: the lights shift in various modes, music plays, and there’s even a camera installed, which is expected to respond to people approaching. In short, it’s packed with features – it just doesn’t tell time.

At the opening, Sergey Kuznetsov focused on the name of the installation, a quote from the cult Soviet film “Kin-dza-dza”. There’s a moment in the film where this “Crystal of Perception” is sought, which turns out to be a glass crystal that the Violinist accidentally put (well, stole actually) in his pocket.

Here is the moment from the movie:

According to the Chief architect of Moscow, the artifact is almost never shown in the film, but if director Danelia were alive, he might have envisioned it just like this.

“Crystal of Perception” art object in the yard of the Architecture Museum. Author: Sergey Kuznetsov, co-author: Ivan Grekov, KROST production, 2024

This statement can be both agreed with and debated. On one hand, the rich technological content of the resulting object matches the plot, but on the other hand, the Crystal now standing in the museum courtyard would be quite difficult to put in your pocket.

So, we can’t say, as in the colorful movie excerpt, “Violinist, put the crystal back!” – the installation rightfully occupies the center of the space, and is highly visible and audible. If we compare it to the notorious Crystal of Perception, one might think that this object resembles a sort of “reactor”, designed – I won’t say “once again” – to reboot the museum, breathe new life into it... Well, let it be so!

Overall, there’s a sense that the Falconnier exhibition, along with the story of rescuing and reviving the glass bricks, has become a kind of keystone for the museum, much like the crystal – it’s constantly being revisited in thought.

Additionally, at the opening of the installation, Sergey Kuznetsov mentioned that he had invited a small circle of his closest friends, and then jokingly remarked that those who didn’t come fell into another circle...

In this light, the newly installed Crystal takes on a new perspective, appearing more like a large faceted eye. And who really knows what other technologies are embedded in it? It might just respond to the approach of a person, or maybe something else entirely?

18 May 2024

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