PROJECTS People and Public Space in Contemporary Moscow: a Research of Cultural Transformations (Case study: State Museum-Reserve Tsaritsyno).(SU-HSE RF, 2010-2011) Head of the project – Dr. Natalia Samutina.

Interdisciplinary group research project supported by “Teachers and students” 2010-2011 program by HSE research fund, № 10-04-0005.

The project is carried out by a group of researchers, teachers, postgraduates and students from Institute for Theoretical and Historical Studies in the Humanities (IGITY) and from faculties of sociology and philosophy of HSE.

The main goal of the project is to investigate through detailed research and theoretical mapping some considerable changes which took place last years in the social and cultural space of The State Historical, Architectural, Art, and Landscape Museum-Reserve Tsaritsyno.

The project is aimed at the development of complicated theoretical perspective according to the characteristics of the case (using interdisciplinary methodological approaches, such as visual sociology, social anthropology, cultural studies, media studies, theories of contemporary photography). The problematic of cultural anthropology is crucial for the task. We are interested in changes in anthropological constructions of contemporary Russian and Moscow people, as far as these changes are represented in the social space of Tsaritsyno. Which means analyzing cultural constructions of “the proper visitor” presumed by the last reconstruction of the park and the museum and comparing them to the actual reception of the transformations by different groups of everyday visitors. So the task is to study the reception of the park and the museums in Tsaritsyno, the practices of consumption and self-identification, the goals and ways of visiting and moving through it – and compare this mass reception to social and cultural constructions, to ideology of public space of that kind, how it is imprinted into the conception of reconstruction itself, into the content of museum tours, into visual materials which are sold there, and so on.

There are 3 groups of research objectives set within the project framework:

• The first group of research objectives concerns the problem of historical heritage. We seek to reveal historical conception embodied in the reconstruction of Tsaritsyno park and especially in Grand Tsaritsyno Palace, particularly in the selection of museum spicemen and organization of exhibitions and excursions. And the visitors’ reception will be taken into consideration as well. Analysis of the research data comprising protocols of fieldwork, interviews, archival materials is meant to provide an opportunity to estimate the reconstruction of Tsaritsyno in the context of global and local tendencies in appropriating cultural and historical heritage.
• The second group of research objectives is related to different aspects of visual organization of space in Tsaritsyno, to its media structuring and presentation. The participants of the project are going to analyze stylistic peculiarities of Tsaritsyno images: architectural concepts, forms of presentation of the park and the museum in media (books, maps, newspaper and magazine articles, websites and blogs). Special attention will be paid to the digital photography as a new communicative tool the importance of which for commemorative and communicative practices of visitors shouldn't be underestimated. The main subjects to be explored here are interrelation and interaction of "real" and "virtual" spaces in the (post)modern culture and the role of different media in the visual construction of  ideology.
• The third group of research objectives has to do with social interactions and communications occurring in the park and the museum areas. We address the ways visitors utilize different options provided by the space: educational, ideological, sportive, of flanerie etc., and anthropological patterns represented through appearance of people, characteristics of moving crowds, talk and spontaneous reactions, communities and subcultures inhabiting the territory, ways of establishing borders and solving conflicts, etc.

A research workshop organized by the group is functioning in the framework of the project.