“This is an artistic project of the highest quality,” said Tatyana Bokova, project coordinator from the European Commission.

Aleksey Shulgin, media artist and one of the creators of the board-in-the-woods artwork explains that “Technologies surround us, while the forest is a place where people come to escape technology. In this piece we just wanted to bring together personal experience of a modern human: the experience of being at the airport, in the very alienated and commercialized place of transition from which everyone wants to escape as soon as possible and forest where people come to relax and enjoy the nature.”

"In flames" – a work by "Project Russia" magazine editorial staff, Archstoyanie-2007 (image from www.arch.stoyanie.ru)

The show about nature has been in existence for about ten years and Nikola-Lenivets is the birthplace of Russian land art, while in the west such expositions have been running for 50 years already.

Due to the abundance of space and materials in Russia this festival has become popular with foreign landscape artists arriving to Nikola-Lenivets to set up landscapes. Even cows in the village make up parts of landscape design.

You do not need to be a fine art expert to understand the installations because, as one artist put it, “you don’t have to explain art, you only need to enjoy it.”

Mattieu Gontier, landscape artist from “Atelier 710” says that Russia attracts people of his profession because it’s big, rich and beautiful:

Bert Busschaert, landscape artist from Belgium agrees with Gontier, who invited him to the event:

“The big scale of the landscape is very interesting. In Belgium where I live it’s very small, and here it’s completely different and that’s very nice”.