The Belarusian State Academy of Arts

Youth forgives everything. The Belarusian State Academy of Arts

The second series of photos of my project is connected with the dormitory of the Belarusian State Academy of Arts. A friend of mine used to live here. In the walls of this building we drank tea and embroidered our clothes with colors. Therefore, the question of what to photograph after the corridors of my native hostel of the University of Economics was quickly solved. And though my friend had already finished her studies by that time, the academicians received me quite friendly and even fed me (or rather, they gave me a drink, but it is already the cost of the profession and does not deserve special attention).

Now I will tell a little about the place itself. The Belarusian State Academy of Arts appeared in 1945 and was originally invented exclusively for actors (it was even called a theater institute). Now the academy is quite diverse, and about 2500 people study there. The BSAI dormitory underwent a major renovation in 2007, so the living conditions there are quite comfortable. There are 201 living places in the student boarding school.

Previously, only after specialized colleges one could study at the academy. Approximately since 2010, due to under-enrollment, those who graduated from secondary school also got access. Therefore, in the walls of the dormitory you can meet both old-timers and very “young and green”. First of all, a place in the room is given to foreigners, natives of the zones contaminated after the Chernobyl accident, after that - to good students and assistants of public organizations. Because of this, there are a lot of Chinese in the boarding school and people who just know each other and used to study together.

The rules here are not the strictest. Still, the management knows how difficult it is to restrain the impulses of creative natures. That is why both students and tutors meet each other and always come to an agreement.

- To be honest, I have crazy friends. You never know what you're gonna do tomorrow. So I'm sitting there one night, it's 1:00 in the morning, watching movies on the Internet. Then I get a message from a friend: “Do you want to go to Moscow?” I replied that it was fine, I could go, but it would be nice to know when. And she told me: "Great! We leave Minsk in half an hour." Well, I thought for a while and started packing. It's two o'clock in the morning. I somehow need to leave the dormitory, but the door is closed, the janitor is already asleep. I start to wake her up and ask her to let me out. The janitor starts telling me in a sleepy voice that it is necessary to warn her in advance, and of course she understands that we sometimes run to the store and go out for a smoke, but it is not very nice of us to interrupt her sleep at such a late hour. After finishing this rant, she opens the door to me and asks:

- "When are you coming back?

And I answer her:

- "I'm never coming back.

This story was told to me by a foreigner who speaks Russian with a noticeable accent.
- Once I was traveling by train. I saw a beautiful girl sitting across from me and thought, I’ve got to talk to her. Then, at the next stop, she got off. I realized that if I didn’t run after her right then and get her phone number, that would be the end of it. So I jumped off, caught up with her, and she wrote down those precious digits on a piece of paper.
A day later, I called her and invited her for coffee. She agreed. So I only took 8 rubles with me - enough for coffee. I came to meet her, and she said, ‘Let’s go to a restaurant and then to the movies.’ I said, well, I’d love to, but I’ve only got 8 rubles in my pocket. And she told me not to worry, that she’d pay for everything. Now that’s what I call real, useful feminism!
After we had a delicious meal and went to the cinema, I tried to kiss this beautiful, generous girl. But that’s when true misfortune struck. As I leaned toward her, something went wrong: I stumbled, fell, and felt something crunch in my leg. The pain was so bad that sparks flew before my eyes! My lovely lady just smiled, helped me up, and pulled me toward the cinema. I tried to tell her that I was in real pain and needed a hospital, but she only smiled and said, ‘What could’ve happened? You just fell. And the tickets are already bought - no need to waste them.’
So, clenching my teeth, I hopped to the cinema on one leg, sat through the whole film with a cold bottle on my ankle, and returned to my dorm. Then I got really scared - my leg had swollen up and the pain got worse. My roommate called an ambulance, they took me to the hospital, and I got a cast.
The next day, a St. Petersburg aristocrat - a friend of my grandfather’s - came to visit me at the dorm. He brought a fridge full of food and a bunch of top-shelf booze. We had a great time, had a few drinks, and then he had to leave - business, you know. Then my lovely lady called to ask how I was doing. When she found out what had happened, she started blaming herself, apologizing, and said she’d come over immediately.

And I was all set: food, drinks, my roommates were gone - everything was fit for a king. She arrived, we drank, ate, and then, well, things led to sex. Let me tell you, it’s an indescribable feeling - having sex with a broken leg in an empty dormitory. Painful, extreme, and pleasurable all at once.

- I remember, back in those distant days when the Belarusian State Academy of Arts still only accepted applicants from vocational schools, there lived a guy named Zh. in our dorm. Zh. had one interesting habit: he drew portraits of the dorm residents. He’d knock on doors, ask permission to make a portrait, come in, and draw. I didn’t know him back then.
One evening, I turned on some music and said, “Guys, let’s dance!” Everyone liked the idea, and soon we were having a wild dance party. Then there was a knock at the door. We opened it and saw Zh. standing there with his pencils and drawing paper, asking if he could make a portrait. We didn’t think twice - let him in and started playfully pushing him around, and he got annoyed, afraid we’d break his tools. But Zh. was a fun guy - he grumbled a bit, threw everything on the bed, and joined us dancing.
The music was blasting, and four big guys laughing and dancing - you can imagine the noise. So it’s no surprise that around three in the morning, our neighbor came over asking us to quiet down. We listened, turned off the music, and started watching the videos we’d recorded while goofing around. One of them showed a guy falling off the bed, another catching him, and a third trying to spot him - but we didn’t manage to catch him. We saw that on the screen and burst out laughing again!

It was about four in the morning by then. Then another knock at the door - this time, the same girl showed up with her boyfriend, both asking us to calm down. We told them, ‘We’re not dancing anymore, just watching videos - that’s why we’re laughing.’ But we felt sorry for them, so we called it a night and finally settled down.

Now we are having tea at a nice woman's house. She works as a teacher in this hostel and enjoys telling funny stories.

- We have a lot of Chinese living in our dormitory. And they are so strange. Almost no one understands Russian, they live by their own laws and rules, and it is difficult to explain anything to them. There was a story when I once came into the kitchen, and there was a live carp floating in a sink full of water. My eyes were round with surprise: well, what the hell is this thing? It turns out that our Asians decided to make a dish out of carp, where it should be as fresh as possible. So they put it in the sink.

- There was an interesting story when we announced a contest for the best block decoration. Here I go, check and see on the door at D. a huge portrait of Alexander Alexandrovich Blok, and on his neck he has beads of rain. Well, everything is right - Blok has been decorated.

- We were asked to repaint the walls in our room. We agreed, of course, but before that we decided to paint them with whatever we wanted for a week. We invited everyone into our room and allowed them to paint whatever they wanted. Well, of course, it was different: they drew tits, and cocks, and wrote different things. I had one friend - we called him a tractor driver - so he drew a tractor on half a wall. By the way, there's an interesting story about the origin of his nickname. This dude was from a village and studied to be an actor. Every time he came home from school, he'd say, "I'm so sick of these actors! I can't stand them!" And to calm down, he would turn on a video of a tractor plowing a field, watch and relax. Probably, he was remembering his native land. Well, we all called him the tractor driver. So, back to the story about the room. For some reason, just at the time when we jointly painted our “chambers”, the teacher decided to visit us. She came in and suddenly felt sick. In general, we have never painted a room so quickly.

- I once shared a room with two twins. They were so tall, with long braids, always wearing long skirts and turtlenecks. The sisters were obsessed with cleanliness and always asked us to clean up the smallest things, adding “KalyLaska”. That's how we nicknamed them “KalyLaskami”. We were very annoyed by this eternal order. Sometimes my friend and I even made them angry on purpose: we hung sauerkraut on the flowers, put our slippers on the other side. So, once these KaliLaski met two architects. They met, fell in love, moved into a separate room, and began to live as one cheerful Swedish family.

In this project I showed my friends, classmates and acquaintances. Student life, as it is, without embellishment. After all, youth forgives everything.