Project of the Satka Museum of Local Lore won the grant of Vladimir Potanin Charitable Foundation.

The project “Porogi. New Life” entered the number of 17 winners and won a grant of 5 million rubles in the grant competition “Industrial Experiment” held within the program “Museums without Borders.” The organizers said that “the winners were the museum organizations, whose cultural projects are aimed at the revitalization of objects of industrial heritage, as well as their integration into the modern cultural context.”

The new project will be a continuation of the work of specialists of the museum of local lore on preservation of one of the most popular and significant attractions of the district - a monument of cultural and historical heritage “Porogi” with the oldest operating hydroelectric power plant. The main plans are conservation, research and repair. The most important is to give “Porogi” a new life “introducing it into the excursion and museum circulation.”

In particular, it is planned to continue the archival search on the history of the HPP, to conduct a comprehensive survey of the monument, to organize emergency measures, to draw up a technical task for restoration, to organize a temporary exhibition space in the building of the HPP and in 2023 to open an exhibition dedicated to the new life of “Porogi.” The exposition will be accompanied by an audio guide and creation and demonstration of a video installation with a projection on the dam will became its unique and very effective component.

Moscow specialists familiar to us by the projects of the Magnezit Museum and Sobranie Fund will work in the project team in addition to Satka enthusiasts of museum studies. This is Nadezhda Maksimova, coordinator of work on creation of exhibition project, audio guide and video installation. Dmitry Baryudin, coordinator of work on preparation of technical task on restoration and adaptation of a cultural heritage object for modern use, designer of exposition modules. In addition, a professional director will participate in the project, who will be the author of the scenario of the video installation-performance (according to the idea of the project’s authors, the images will be projected on the HPP dam) and the scenario of the audio guide to accompany the exhibition in the building of the hydroelectric power plant.

By the way, the nomination in which Satka residents have participated was the most popular. It received 53 applications. Nominations “Industrial start” and “Industrial upgrade” received only 39 and 38 applications respectively.

— When launching a new thematic competition, we wanted to test the hypothesis about the growth of demand for projects aimed at the revitalization of industrial spaces in the regions. The results of the “Industrial Experiment” confirmed our assumptions. We saw a wide geography of teams developing the theme of industry and a clear demand on their part to work with objects of industrial heritage, as well as the variability of its formats and objects: from a water tower and a hydroelectric plant to examples of a constructivist heritage in the form of a factory kitchen. It was also important for us to support local initiatives that grow from the internal resources of the territory and ensure its sustainability, - said Oksana Oracheva, General Director of the Vladimir Potanin Charitable Foundation.

119 applications from 38 regions of the country were accepted to participate in the competition, almost half of them - 56 projects - became finalists, and 17 projects from 13 regions became the winners.

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“Porogi” is one of the oldest and most impressive monuments of the industrial heritage of the Southern Ural. The complex includes a dam with drainage structures designed and executed by the engineering offices of Shukhov and Bari and also the building of the hydroelectric power plant. The latter consists of a machine room equipped with European generators of the 1910s and the remnants of the ferroalloys workshop.

The competition “Industrial Experiment” continues the activity of the Vladimir Potanin Charitable Foundation to support creative initiatives of museums and museum organizations. The focus of this program is on cultural projects aimed at revitalization of industrial heritage sites through conservation, actualization, presentation of such heritage, as well as its integration into the modern cultural context. Industrial heritage is a system of material objects, artifacts of industrial and technical culture created for (within) production processes or somehow connected with them. The degree of preservation of such objects is variable: from complete ruin to objects functioning at the moment.

The total amount of grant support for the winners of the competition of 2022 will exceed 67 million rubles. The amount of grants will be from 2 million to 5 million rubles. The operator of the competition was ZAART Support and Development Center for Contemporary Arts, the co-organizer of the Ural Industrial Biennial of Contemporary Art.

Source: Magnezitovets.

Photo of Vladimir Ushakov.