Belyi Peter

Peter Bely's Pinocchio Library project is dedicated to modeling the past. Usually, the genre of modeling is related to the future. It is no coincidence that it was popular in the 1920s, during the time of utopian hopes, when artists not only created models of future cities, but also perceived paintings as indications of possible technical projects. Pyotr Bely's Memorial modeling is aimed not at the future, but at the past, illustrating the eternal formula of humanity — hope for the future and disappointment with the past. Modeling, which is associated with the idea of future progress, is turned back by Peter Bely, mainly in the 1960s and 70s, a time when one of the last utopian impulses of our era was being experienced. The hero of the project, a wooden Pinocchio doll, embodies the figure of an architect obsessed with wonderful ideas with which he hoped to remake the world. And at the same time, Pinocchio the Sixties still lives on in each of us. This is an insoluble residue of utopian ideology, once embodied in the faceless construction of the 1960s and 70s, the inevitability of the projective nature of life, which gives modernity an extraordinary fragility. Pinocchio's library is made of wood, like the hero himself, its books cannot be opened, partly it declares disappointment in knowledge as such, partly it seems like a tombstone to unnecessary knowledge. The Pinocchio Library is a memorial to utopia, which in itself is always already a memorial. When utopia is experienced, it does not seem so to its contemporaries, but is realized as utopia only after the fact. Nevertheless, Pinocchio's Library is filled with renewed hopes, and above all, that one day the wooden doll will turn into a real boy. This transformed Pinocchio lives on architectural ruins embodying social utopias.