Nest Resident Sylvia Theuri has been visualising Volgograd, Coventry’s Russian twin city.
Last Autumn, as part of Spon Spun Festival, Sylvia sent a postcard of one of her digitally-created urban Coventry landscapes to a cafe in Volgograd.
This led to an online dialogue between Sylvia and the manager of the cafe – and then to this Nest Residency with Talking Birds, where Sylvia is spending time exploring the geography and environment of Volgograd remotely, using online photographs, maps – and making good use of Google Street View!
Here are a few photos of her studio and work in progress snapped earlier this week:
We’ve enjoyed having conversations with Sylvia about her practice and, in particular, her exploration of Volgograd – which has given us plenty of excuses to wallow in a bit of affectionate nostalgia around our visit there and our collaborations with artists in the city.
[Talking Birds has a long association with Volgograd, which began with Twin60 (marking the 60th anniversary of the Coventry-Volgograd twinning); has involved visiting artists in Volgograd and bringing musician Slava Mishin and artist Fedor Ermalov over to Coventry in 2006 to play at The Tin and take part in an exhibition at the Herbert which twinned works by artists in the two cities; artists’ talks which played simultaneously in both cities with artists communicating via Skype; an exhibition (still in situ outside Coventry library) of work by children in both cities; and the world premiere of Twin Song composed for the Volgograd Children’s Symphony Orchestra and Coventry Youth Wind Orchestra, conducted by Yuri Ilynov, which premiered at Coventry Cathedral in 2014.]
Words from the Birds 