Roman Minin "Donetsk Metro Generator"

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There was never a metro in Donetsk. It is technically challenging to build a metro without breaking thousands of drifts and communication junctions related to mines is difficult. Donetsk as an anthill city, a city with a complex underground infrastructure. There are many artificial spoil tips made of waste from the coal production in the urban environment. This is harmful to the environment. But compared to the underground work, no one paid attention to these majestic ornaments of the Donetsk landscape. Even psychologically it is difficult to imagine a metro in Donetsk. Metro lines could go straight to the mines and many miners would descend under ground right from their home, at the nearest station and would not return to the surface until their shift ended. I am personally depressed by this state of affairs. The bus, which collects miners from their home districts at 5 am, was a ritual. On the way to the mine you could admire the view from the window on the spoil tips, poplars, dear five-story houses, play cards with your friends, meet the dawn. You can say it was a ritual bus. But the premonition of trouble inspired me to create a complex monumental composition on the hidden potential of a particular region, on roads leading to the future, to the past, about events-stations on which the movement stops and starts again.


66 stations, 8 lines, a ring line and one million human wills of alternating current of our mentality move history along strategically important stops which create this map. Mentality generator produces a current of changes. Events are rapidly changing the society, news after news, from one point of no return to the other we are moving in the space of time. The main meaning of what is going on will remain underground. Each passenger will leave at her station and will know nothing about the other stations, their names still remain "not renamed" and relevant. And the message from the author to the viewer will remain unread.


It's 2017 now. What do I feel when I look at this composition? I feel the bitterness of loss and at the same time, сompleteness. I realize that I was able to curb the destructive energy of this generator and to create with its help a system of associative poetic images. As a painter, as an artist, I played with reality of the current state of affairs. The gaming feature in this picture fascinates me more and more. I feel the delight of the sacred seriousness of this game, comparable to Mozart's "Requiem". The rules of this game are bloody and the mystery does not cease. As Aristotle said: If you want to be serious - play. Perhaps you can make a board game from this picture, but only after we see how it all wraps up and how powerful was the energy of human wills.


"Donetsk Metro Generator" is a self-portrait, made with liturgical self-oblivion. After all, everything that we do is a self-portrait. I like to analyze the situation from the side, gushing with poetic images. For me this composition is a monumental sketch, worthy of realization in the eternal material, in stone, glass, metal.