As is often the case, this “trio” came together entirely by accident, if we assume that accidents happen in the lives of artists.
One day I forget how many years ago, the artist Maria Chuikova, the composer and musician Sergei Zagny, and I simultaneously found ourselves in the Swiss city of Zurich, where a contemporary art fair — a fairly awkward one, as I recall — which we had all been invited to participate in was being held, although, given the whole “project’s” clumsy organization in general, the way we were to participate hadn’t been properly defined at all.
Basically the only thing we understood was that we were there and we needed to do something. This was how we spontaneously had the idea of doing a collective performance in which each of us would take his or her customary role, but do so at the same time as the others.
That’s what we did. As part of her trademark “kitchen” strategy, Masha cooked spaghetti, and the spirit of cooking, as strong as it is eternally optimistic, temptingly wafted through the exhibition space. Sergei filled and organized the cooking time with his meditative music. I used various words, phrases, and sayings in my native tongue as if to let everyone know that everything happening there and then had a meaning, and that this meaning was worth the effort spent at least trying to understand and define it. It seems that this “action” struck a chord with the fairly decent number of people there. I can vouch firmly for the spaghetti, at the very least.
When we got back to Moscow, we came to an amiable decision that our spontaneously created collaboration should continue in some form or other, without making any plans about it. That’s how our project, which has been around for years but doesn’t call attention to itself very often, came about. We named after the geographical space that brought us together that day — Switzerland.
Now Switzerland is in Stella Art Foundation.
Lev Rubinstein
