Public Ritual – Marina Razheva

2006

Format: public performance, happening, video documentation (44 minutes)

Location: Russia, Yekaterinburg city center and metro stations

Partners: State Center for Contemporary Art (GCCSA), ParaRam gallery

About the Project

Wedding of the Tower and the Metro is a multi-day public performance reimagining key landmarks of Yekaterinburg through the lens of local Ural traditions. The project creates a new living mythology for the city by symbolically uniting two urban giants — the Tower (he), an unfinished TV tower and prominent telecommunications structure, and the Metro (she), the city’s underground transit system.

The project unfolds as a ritual action reflecting deep archetypes and urban legends, expressing both the hopes and fears of the city’s residents. Through ceremonial acts and symbolic gestures, the performance seeks to harmonize unseen forces within the city and prevent potential catastrophe.

Background: The Question of the Tower and the Metro

Concerns about a possible earthquake in the Ural region have been growing.
For over 250 years, towers and underground spaces have been seen as the city’s main mythical and generative symbols.
Today, the unfinished TV tower is the city’s apex tower symbol, while the metro is its main subterranean presence.
These two giants effectively “meet” near the Circus area in the city center.

The Myth

The Tower and the Metro represent vast, intangible City Giants—beings with immense, mysterious bodies resting beneath the urban layers. Though currently still, their forces pull toward each other. Should they awaken suddenly or clash, disaster such as an earthquake could follow.

The myth is not just a story but includes ritual actions designed to control these forces and protect the city.

The Ritual — The Wedding

The Giants’ longing for union has reached a peak — the time has come to hold their Wedding.

If this ritual is not performed, the Giants may pass each other by, and the symbolic “Child” — the city’s future potential — will never be born. Alternatively, a chaotic union could bring disaster.

Additional Context

This myth draws from ancient, pre-Ellin traditions and familiar motifs of Titans and Titanesses. The Tower and Metro stand as symbolic Titans within the city landscape.

The myth partly explains the origins and roles of these urban forms and partly prescribes complex ritual actions that help channel and contain hidden powers, ensuring the city’s well-being.

The Performance

On August 25–26, 2006, Yekaterinburg witnessed a collective celebration of the Wedding of the Tower and the Metro.

This ritual involved local artists, residents, and guests, bringing the myth to life through a series of staged actions:

Public announcement of the upcoming Wedding (2006, August 18).

The solemn Wedding ceremony — a modern ritual binding the Giants (2006, August 25).

A communal feast — an ancient ritual that unites participants and seals the ceremony’s success (2006 August 25).

The Fertilization rite — participants crafted miniature Tower figures symbolizing the Tower’s “seed” (2006 August 26).

And discreetly placed them throughout metro stations and trains (2006 August 26).

Outcome

The action transcended artistic mystification, becoming a real and effective ritual. Just days after the event, news came that the long-frozen metro construction would resume.

Exhibitions and Screenings

September 2006 — International Festival Stop! Who’s Coming?, Moscow, special project of the Yekaterinburg branch of the State Center for Contemporary Art (GCCSA) StolpoTvorenie.

November 2006 — Video screening at the ParaRam art salon, Yekaterinburg.

2007 — As part of the StolpoTvorenie special project (Yekaterinburg GCCSA), nominated for the Innovation All-Russian competition award in the category Regional Contemporary Art Project.

2023 — Documentation of the project participated in the archival exhibition “Art without a ticket: the history of public art in Yekaterinburg” at the Ural Branch of the A.S. Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts.

August 19, 2006

Format: public performance, happening, video documentation (6:41)

Location: Russia, Yekaterinburg

Partners: State Center for Contemporary Art (GCCSA), Yekaterinburg bread factory Vseslav

The art project “The Möbius Pretzel” is part of a multi-stage process of creating an urban mythology.

It transfers a conceptual idea into public space, transforming the artistic act into a communal ritual. The mythologeme appears as an edible Möbius strip, and its consumption becomes a form of communion — a symbolic sharing of the city’s “body.”

The format of the project embodies a symbiosis of artistic performance, PR action, urban myth, and public ritual.

A record-breaking pretzel, made from a four-layer sponge ribbon (with a circumference of 4.5 meters, a height of 20 cm, and a weight of 52 kg), was generously baked by the Yekaterinburg bread factory Vseslav.

Ingredients used: Flour – 11 kg, Sugar – 8.7 kg, Eggs – 11 kg, Vegetable oil – 0.6 kg, Apricot confiture – 16 kg, Sugar syrup (for soaking) – 7.3 kg

Biscuit mass: 26 kg Exact dimensions: 1.5 × 2 meters Total weight: 52 kg
Length of the sponge ribbon: 4.5 meters

From the author:

A city is a multitude of layers — coexisting within a single whole, yet often not only disconnected, but unaware of each other’s existence.

A simplified model of the city might be imagined as a pretzel made from a multi-layered sponge ribbon, twisted into a Möbius strip — a kind of “pretzelization” of a mathematical ideal.

The Möbius strip possesses some curious properties: it has only one continuous surface, no “other” side, no inside or outside, and any object moving along it is gradually turned 180 degrees. In other words — it flips things upside down.

This leads one to think that perhaps our existence has no “reverse.” Everything — hellish abysses, heavenly gardens, mysterious depths of the spirit, and other dimensions — is already here, now, with us, on this side. That is to say: thisworldly.

To “absorb” the city, one must thoroughly chew the pretzel. This can be done extensively — gnawing on a single layer, or intensively — by biting through all the layers at once. Though in this case, of course, only within the limits of one fragment.