I'm trembling from a combination of excitement and too much weak coffee. It's 5:16 PM on June 15th and I'm sitting on Nevsky Prospekt trying to gather my thoughts and sort out the task I've faced myself with.
I rang the bell at the Center of Contemporary Art at a little after 3:00 for my scheduled meeting with Marina Koldobskaya. On the half-hour walk over from my apartment I'd racked my brain trying to figure out what I was going to say, how I was going to explain what I wanted to do. The truth is, I really didn't know what I wanted to do (Still don't) and, though I knew it was an unrealistic expectation, I hoped for directions of some kind from her--a pretty silly thought, considering that I had practically forced myself upon her and her art center with no resumé. I kicked myself for not spending more time preparing myself beforehand, knowing that I seemed really foolish and disorganized, and rightly so. My mind was stubbornly empty. I thought up a few empty sentences to say, but I felt a little more agitated with every step when all that could come into my head were rebukes and scornful just what do you think you're DOING here thoughts. I got here 4 days ago and have hardly given my work any attention since then. I've drafted some interview questions and worked out my budget (which doesn't mean I can stick to it), but frankly my energies have been focused more in the midnight-boat-cruises, crazy-parties, cheap-champagne-and-potato-chips direction and the getting-myself-established-as-a-person-in-St. Petersburg direction. Both of these directions have been fruitful--the boat cruise was among the coolest things I've ever done in St. Petersburg, and I got a cell phone and my apartment keys --finally!-- yesterday. I got registered through a hostel on Kazanskaya Street, thankfully, which means I no longer have the threat of the Russian Government hanging over my head. Okay, okay, so I've been busy--but still, it's easy for 4 days of shiftlessness to suddenly become 2 weeks of shiftlessness without me even realizing it, and 2 weeks of shiftlessness isn't something I can afford when I'm only here for two months.
When I arrived they were in the middle of an administrative meeting and having tea, so I sat down and poured myself a cup of coffee. Marina introduced me and within moments I was translating for the proofs of her new businesscards, coming up with clean ways of compressing enormous Russian phrases into concise, comprehensible job titles in English. I felt absurdly underqualified and that made me feel even more ridiculous: the native speaker who can't trust her own tongue.
Marina and I met in her office afterwards and in a short meeting decided my fate here in St. Petersburg. Here we go!
The SCCA is starting a new website called "Art Propaganda", focused on art in St. Petersburg, and they would also like to begin sending out an Art News newsletter. My interviews will be featured on the website (and maybe in the newsletter?), in Russian and possibly also in English. This means that I will have some sort of time limit for the interviews; this means that I will have to DO them. This means I should attempt to get one interview done each week AS A MINIMUM. I'm a little disappointed that I won't be doing actual work with the CCA, but this is a really fantastic opportunity to do some interview journalism and have it published somewhere besides a senior thesis, where it would sit and rot and never be read by anyone except my thesis committee because they HAVE to read it.
So my task right now is to just get started. To start with, I need to find somewhere other than McDonald's to work; somewhere quieter and classier. A cafe with Wi-fi near my home? I suppose a twenty-four hour establishment with free wi-fi is too much to hope for.
I need to finish writing my basic interview template, but also need to compile a list of artists that I'd like to interview. This involves coming up with a list of criteria, or what kind of artists I'm looking for. And then I need to focus on specific artists, think of what I want to ask them individually, what about their work intrigues me and why I'm interested in them. I need to translate my interviews into Russian. I'll need to meet with Yuri to get in touch with other artists in his network.
And then I actually need to interview people, get the interviews transcribed, translate and edit them, and submit them (one by one) to Marina and the SCCA!
But first, I need to buy a pen and eat some lunch. And McDonald's is not the place for either of those things.
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