#Simon Zakharov

[itcars]

DMC DeLorean

Image by Simon Zakharov

[artwista]

Next Show: PREPARING FOR DARKNESS | VOL. 4: TRUE ROMANCE Mehr Infos zum Event im ARTWISTA.COM Hier finden Sie eine Übersichte aller Events & Ausstellungen weltweit: https://www.artwista.de/event/Preparing-For-Darkness-Vol.4:-True-Romance/232 Kühlhaus Berlin Luckenwalder Strasse 3 10963 Berlin, Germany #Abstract #LeipzigerSchule #Hyperrealism #Modernism #Conceptual #metaphysical #landscape July 17, 2019 - July 28, 2019 Opening hours: July 17-21 & July 26-28 from 3-7 pm Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Danja Akulin @danjaakulin, V-Gallery on ARTWISTA.com: https://www.artwista.de/artist/Danja-Akulin/141 Radu Baies, Maxim Brandt @maximbrandt , Konstantin Déry, Grigori Dor @grigori__dor, Tom Gefken, Lennart Grau, Simone Haack @haacksimone, René Holm, Dénesh Ghyczy, Toshio Showzen Kajima, Michal Mráz, Justine Otto @ottojustine, Dario Puggioni, Lorenzo Puglisi, Giuditta R, Michael H. Rohde, Sinta Tamsjadi & Thomas Schmidt, Sabine Tress, Julien Vinet, Sador Weinsclucker @sador_weinsclucker , Karina Wisniewska, Alexander Zakharov #artwista #artwista_gallery #art_curator_de #finearts #art #kunst #stilllife #stillifepainting #berlin #drawing #germanartist #artwork #artcollector#figurativepainting #thephotosociety #instagram #modernart #oilpainting #graphics #bestoftheday #instagramers #figurative #instaoftheday #contemporary #painting #oilpainting #oiloncanvas #artlovers #artcollector #contemporaryart #photorealism #kunst #malerei #malereiinberlin (hier: Berlin, Germany) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0DE9FBCjkJ/?igshid=rnc2v7cwaxjf

[maceikblog]

Co się dzisiaj działo? #46 15.2.2022

Krykiet, mecz jednodniowy: Nowa Zelandia (275, Suzie Bates 106, Jess Kerr 4/35) pokonała Indie (213, Mithali Raj 59, Rajeshwari Gayakwad 2/28) 62 runami

mecz Twenty20: Australia (124/4, Glenn Maxwell 39, Kane Richardson 3/21) pokonała Sri Lankę (121/6, Dasun Shanaka 39*, Masheesh Theekshana 3/24)

NCAA: Davidson Wildcats-Duquesne Dukes 72:61

Turniej ITF w Oberhaching: Martyn Pawelski-Dan Added 5:7 5:7

Turniej ATP w Marsylii: Kamil Majchrzak/Stefano Travaglia-Edouard Roger Vasselin/Artem Sitak 7:5 6:7(3) 11-13

Szymon Walków/Jan Zieliński-Romain Arneodo/Andriej Wasilewskij 6:2 6:2

Turniej ITF w Altenkirchen: Urszula Radwańska-Jule Niemeier 6:2 7:6(3)

FIBA Europe Cup: Parma Perm-Legia Warszawa 67:78

CEV Liga Mistrzyń: Lokomotiv Kaliningrad-Developres Rzeszów 3:0

Conegliano-Chemik Police 3:0

Liga Europejska w piłce ręcznej: Wisła Płock-Pfadi Wintherthur 35:27

CEV Liga Mistrzów: Projekt Warszawa-Noliko Masseik 3:1

ULEB Eurocup: MoraBanc Andorra-Śląsk Wrocław 99:65

UEFA Liga Mistrzów: PSG-Real Madryt 1:0

Sporting CP-Manchester City 0:5

Campionato Sammarinese:

Cailungo-San Giovanni 1:1

Faetano-Folgore 0:1

Premier League Pool:

Mieszko Fortuński-Joshua Filler 4:5

Mieszko Fortuński-Alexander Kazakis 3:5

Igrzyska Olimpijskie w Pekinie, Dzień 10

Łyżwiarstwo szybkie, zawody drużynowe kobiet:

1. Kanada (Ivanie Blondin, Valerie Maltais, Alexa Scott, Isabelle Weidemann)

2. Japonia (Misaki Oshirigi, Ayano Sato, Miho Takagi, Nana Takagi)

3. Holandia (Antoinette de Jong, Marjike Groenewoud, Irene Schouten, Ireen Wust)

8. Polska (Kaja Bosiek, Natalia Czerwonka, Magdalena Czyszczoń, Andżelika Wójcik)

Kombinacja norweska, skocznia duża:

1. Joergen Graabak (NOR)

2. Jens Luraas Oftebro (NOR)

3. Akito Watabe (JPN)

35. Szczepan Kupczak

45. Andrzej Szechowicz

Łyżwiarstwo figurowe, program krótki solistek:

24. Jekatierina Kurakowa (awans do programu dowolnego)

Curling, turniej kobiet:

Chiny-Rosja 5:11

Szwecja-Dania 9:3

USA-Szwajcaria 6:9

WIelka Brytania-Japonia 10:4

turniej mężczyzn:

Rosja-Norwegia 5:12

Kanada-Chiny 10:8

Szwajcaria-USA 4:7

Szwecja-Dania 8:3

Szwecja-Wielka Brytania 6:7

Włochy-USA 10:4

Norwegia-Chiny 6:8

Rosja-Kanada 7:6

Hokej na lodzie, mecze play-off mężczyzn:

Słowacja-Niemcy 4:0

Dania-Łotwa 3:2

Czechy-Szwajcaria 2:4

Kanada-Chiny 7:2

Pozostałe konkurencje medalowe:

Zjazd kobiet:

1. Corinne Suter (SUI)

2. Sofia Goggia (ITA)

3. Nadia Delago (ITA)

Biathlon, sztafeta mężczyzn:

1. Norwegia (Sturla Holm Laegreid, Tarjei Boe, Johannes Boe, Vetle Christiansen)

2. Francja (Fabien Claude, Emilien Jacquelin, Simon Desthieux, Quentin Fillon Maillet)

3. Rosja (Said Karimulla Khalili, Alexander Loginov, Maxim Tsvetkov, Eduard Latypov)

Big air kobiet:

1. Anna Gasser (AUT)

2. Zoi Sadowski Synnott (NZL)

3. Kokomo Murase (JPN)

Narciarstwo dowolne, slopestyle kobiet:

1. Mathilde Gremaud (SUI)

2. Gu Ailing Eileen (CHN)

3. Kelly Sildaru (EST)

Big air mężczyzn:

1. Su Yiming (CHN)

2. Mons Roisland (NOR)

3. Max Parrot (CAN)

Bobsleje, męskie dwójki

1. Francesco Friedrich/Thorsten Margis (GER)

2. Johannes Lochner/Florian Bauer (GER)

3. Christoph Hafer/Matthias Sommer (GER)

Łyżwiarstwo szybkie, zawody drużynowe mężczyzn

1. Norwegia (Hallgeir Engerbraaten, Allan Dahl Johansson, Peder Kongshaug, Svere Lunde Pedersen)

2. Rosja (Danill Aldoshkin, Alexander Rumyantsev, Sergei Trofimow, Ruslan Zakharov)

3. USA (Ethan Cepuran, Casey Dawson, Emery Lehman, Joey Mantia)

[centrulculturalreduta2019]

Teatrul de Artă București lansează Stagiunea brașoveană, cu două premiere: “Iepurele alb” – teatru de păpuși și “Extraconjugal” de Neil Simon

Sâmbătă, 29 ianuarie, Teatrul de Artă București lansează noua stagiune, la Brașov, cu două spectacole în premieră: „Iepurele alb”, teatru pentru copii și familie, de la ora 11.00, și „Extraconjugal” de Neil Simon, de la ora 19.00.

Sunt primele spectacole dintr-un program teatral lunar, conceput pentru Brașov, pentru întregul an 2022 și care a luat naștere din dorința de a aduce mai aproape de un public educat montări de excepție ale unor texte dramatice moderne sau clasice.

“E cel mai frumos spectacol pentru copii, pe care l-am văzut ca adult!” (Gabriela Tabacu)

 „Iepurele alb”, creație a actrițelor-păpușar Ana Crăciun Lambru și Lavinia Pop Coman, școlite și având experiență de lucru în Statele Unite ale Americii și în Rusia (cu celebrul artist păpușar Vladimir Zakharov), se adresează tuturor copiilor și sufletelor de copil cu vârste cuprinse între 4 și 110 ani.

Povestea sa fascinantă îi poartă imediat, pe micii și marii privitori, într-o lume magică, plină de candoare. La fiecare întâlnire, Iepurele alb îi descoperă cu sfială pe spectatori, și-i face prieteni, învață să aibă încredere, încearcă, plin de curaj, lucruri noi, se îndrăgostește, mereu cu pași mici, fiind aici și acum și prețuind emoția lucrurilor mărunte.

Spectacolul a fost invitat la nu mai puțin de cinci festivaluri de teatru:

***Izmir International Puppet Days, Turcia, martie 2020

***International Puppet Festival "Golden Sparkle", Serbia, mai 2020

***Festivalul Internațional de Teatru Fringe de la Beer Sheva, Israel, iulie 2020

***Festivalul de Teatru Piatra Neamț, 2019

***Festivalul Internaţional de Animaţie Gulliver, 2019

,,E fascinant să urmărești reacțiile celor mici la spectacol, să-i vezi cum intră tiptil în poveste și cum o trăiesc ei, cu toată intensitatea. (…) Printre clinchete de râs și înduioșări, copiii vor trăi o poveste despre prietenie, generozitate, iubire, visare și zbor, și câte și mai câte.” (Gabriela Hurezean, Muze și arme).

,,Iepurele Alb este un spectacol destinat celor mici, dar vă garantez că și cei mari vor fi cuceriți, pentru că este imposibil să nu te lași sedus(ă) de ochii aceia mici și negri, care capătă viață de la un moment la altul, fără să-ți dai seama prea bine de unde magia. E o artă să știi să construiești povești cu puține mijloace, dar folosite cu maximum de efecte. Iar ce fac Ana Crăciun Lambru și Lavinia Pop Coman nu te lasă să ieși din poveste decât atunci când ea se va fi sfârșit de scris. Așa că… luați în calcul un drum la Teatrul de Artă pentru a vedea Iepurele Alb!” (Nona Rapotan, Bookhub.ro).

,,Ce faci când simți că nu ți-ai trăit viața?”

BILETE la casieria Centrului Cultural Reduta. 

BILETE online:

mySTAGE: https://www.mystage.ro/spectacole/iepurele-alb-1489?af=41 

Eventbook: https://eventbook.ro/theater/bilete-iepurele-alb 

Eventim: https://www.eventim.ro/.../iepurele-alb-brasov.../event.html

„Extraconjugal” este cea mai recentă premieră a Teatrului de Artă București (septembrie 2021), o montare fresh a deliciosului text al lui Neil Simon, care tratează cu mult umor criza vârstei de mijloc.

Spectacolul spune povestea lui Barney Cashman, un bărbat însurat, gentil și fără experiență în adulter, care vrea să se alăture „revoluției sexuale” înainte de a fi prea târziu. Barney are puțin peste 40 de ani, o căsnicie frumoasă, doi copii și o afacere de succes, dar trece prin criza vârstei de mijloc. Și realizează că întreaga sa existență poate fi rezumată la cuvântul ”drăguț”. Iar ”drăguț” nu e suficient pentru el.

„Extraconjugal” îi are în distribuție pe Andreea Mateiu și George Constantinescu, iar regia este semnată de George Dogaru.

Spectacolul a fost recompensat cu două Premii pentru Cea mai bună actriță și un Premiu pentru Cea mai bună regie, la Festivalurile Comic 7B din cadrul Buzău Internațional Arts Festival, 2021 și FITIC – Festival Internațional de Teatru Independent, Constanța, 2021

 BILETE la casieria Centrului Cultural Reduta.

BILETE online:

mySTAGE: https://www.mystage.ro/spectacole/extraconjugal-2889?af=41 

Eventbook: https://eventbook.ro/theater/bilete-extraconjugal 

Eventim: https://www.eventim.ro/.../extraconjugal.../event.html

Teatrul de Artă București

Teatrul de Artă București este un teatru 100% independent și singurul din România, la ora actuală, care a câștigat un Grand Prix într-o competiție teatrală cu tradiție, din Rusia (Marele Premiu pentru Cel mai bun spectacol, acordat de juriu în unanimitate, pentru "Dureri fantomă" de Vasili Sigarev, la Festivalul Internațional de Dramaturgie Contemporană Kolyada Plays de la Ekaterinburg).

De peste 9 ani, Teatrul de Artă București, fondat de actorul brașovean George Constantinescu, își susține proiectele exclusiv din fonduri proprii și bucură publicul român din țară, dar și de peste hotare (Bruxelles, Koln, New York etc.), cu spectacole de teatru și ateliere de teatru pentru cursanți de toate vârstele.

Teatrul de Artă București este, de altfel, binecunoscut publicului brașovean, anul acesta fiind al cincilea an consecutiv în care vine cu spectacole la Brașov.

2022 este, însă, primul an pentru care Teatrul de Artă București a gândit o întreagă stagiune teatrală (ianuarie – decembrie 2022) pe care o lansează pe 29 ianuarie cu cele două spectacole de la Centrul Cultural Reduta.

[goarticletec-blog]

Best Photos from 2016 Olympics in Rio

New Post has been published on https://www.articletec.com/best-photos-from-2016-olympics-in-rio/

Best Photos from 2016 Olympics in Rio

1 of 23

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Shaunae Miller of the Bahamas dives to win gold over American Allyson Felix in the Women’s 400m.

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Usain Bolt and Andre de Grasse laugh as they approach the finish line in the Men’s 200m Semifinals.

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Usain Bolt wags a finger at Andre de Grasse after de Grasse challenges him towards the end of the Men’s 200m Semifinals.

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Simone Manuel reacts to becoming the first African-American woman to win gold in an individual swimming event, the 100m Freestyle.

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NBC + Olympics

It all goes wrong for Japan’s Hiroki Ogita on the pole vault.

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Nia Ali celebrates with her son Titus after winning silver in the Women’s 100m Hurdles.

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Usain Bolt grins at the competition during the Men’s 100m Semifinals.

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NBC + Olympics

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Chad Le Clos watches Michael Phelps beat him in the 200m Butterfly Semifinal.

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Matthew McConaughey sits by himself, absolutely loves it.

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Brianna Rollins (C), Nia Ali (R), and Kristi Castlin celebrate becoming the first American women to go 1-2-3 in the Women’s 100m Hurdles Final.

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German twins Anna and Lisa Hahner celebrate as they finish the Women’s Marathon together. Somehow, this caused controversy.

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lia Zakharov of Russia participates in the men’s diving competition.

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14 of 23

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Armenian weightlifter Andranik Karapetyan’s elbow explodes as he attempts to lift 430 pounds for the bronze medal.

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Runner Feyisa Lilesa forms a sign of protest against the Ethiopian government and its treatment of the Oromo people, a heritage which Lilesa shares.

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Simone Biles in action on the balance beam.

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Italy against Egypt was a clash of cultures on the beach volleyball court.

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Ethiopian runner Etenesh Diro continues to compete in the 3000M Steeplechase after losing her shoe.

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Ibitaj Muhammad becomes the first American woman to compete in a hijab.

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Vanderlei de Lima lights the Olympic flame.

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Pita Nikolas Aufatofua of Tonga bears his nation’s flag (and sets off the Internet swooning).

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Team USA enters during the Opening Ceremony.

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[party-hard-or-die]

Russian City’s Dazzling New Soccer Stadium Outshines Its Team

KALININGRAD, Russia — Nikita I. Zakharov leads the fan club for the soccer team in this leafy, slow-paced provincial city, and yet he keeps a cleareyed view of its place in the wider world of soccer.

“We cannot really boast of soccer success,” he said mournfully. The team, Baltika, plays in a second-tier Russian league. In its 64-year history, it has won the championship once — in 1995, “the golden year!” exclaimed Mr. Zakharov — and came in second twice, in 1959 and 1961.

Its biggest win, it turns out, was not so much on the field as with a field. Rising out of a formerly undeveloped swampy area in the city, a gigantic, glistening $280 million stadium appeared this year, one of six new arenas Russia built for the World Cup.

It is a bumper crop of new stadiums that, even by World Cup standards, appear out of proportion with the small crowds drawn by local teams like Baltika, which will use the venues after the tournament.

Their construction, at a cumulative cost estimated at $11 billion along with related infrastructure, illustrates how sports, as with the oil and mining businesses, has become integral to how the Kremlin and Russia’s ultra-wealthy financiers, known as the oligarchs, do business together.

World Cup stadiums became a means to reward well-connected businessmen, said Ilya Shumanov, the deputy director of the anticorruption group Transparency International.

“Authoritarian regimes love megasports projects,” Mr. Shumanov said. “Huge sums are distributed from the budget. It’s bread and circuses at the same time.”

The lucrative deal in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland, went to the company of Aras Agalarov, who is one of Russia’s wealthiest men. Mr. Agalarov also had a commercial relationship with Donald J. Trump, having partnered with him in 2013 to host the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.

“The Agalarovs are very well connected, in Azerbaijan, in Russia and in the United States,” Mr. Shumanov said.

The stadium in Kaliningrad is among those that went to cities with no top-tier soccer team. In one instance, a stadium with 45,000 seats went up in Saransk, a city with a population of 297,000.

The designs of the new stadiums nod to local pride. In Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg, both port towns, the stadiums’ look hints at ships. Mastlike towers suspend the roofs. The flying-saucer-shaped Cosmos Arena appeared in Samara, a center of the space industry.

Kaliningrad’s residents have been scratching their heads over what to do with the stadium when the World Cup is over.

The 35,000-seat venue will host four tournament matches in June and then pass to team Baltika, which last year drew an average of 4,000 spectators to matches. These were low-key events, according to videos of the games, where tepid fans munched sesame seeds and watched their blue-and-white clad soccer heroes play and, sadly, often lose.

“There are just not so many soccer lovers here,” said Vadim Chaly, an associate professor of philosophy at Kaliningrad University, and an authority on Immanuel Kant, a city native from the time Kaliningrad was German and called Konigsberg.

The oversize stadium, Mr. Chaly said, would have flummoxed the philosopher, who in his “Critique of Pure Reason” wrote of the need to derive knowledge from the cues in the world around us.

“The idea of achieving some higher goal using enrichment as a motive is absolutely contrary to Kant,” Mr. Chaly said, referring to stated benefits of the World Cup stadiums beyond sports, like boosting Russia’s image internationally. “He always thought morality was the higher goal, nothing else.”

Zoya Bondarenko, a clerk at a convenience store near the new stadium, found it less perplexing.

Her door overlooks 200 acres of packed sand in the filled-in swamp, with the white, maritime-themed stadium in the distance, looking like a beached cruise ship.

“The Forbes list is growing longer,” she said nonchalantly of the scene, and the businessmen making money here.

Anton A. Alikhanov, the regional governor, said in an interview that the stadium and related soccer spending will only benefit Kaliningrad. It helped pay for new ribbons of asphalt on roads, an airport upgrade and the filling of swampland.

“The island was a swamp where nothing but cattails grew,” he said. “If we hadn’t built a stadium, we would never have built anything there.”

And Mr. Alikhanov praised the work of Mr. Agalarov’s company, Crocus Group. Crocus, which won the contract in 2014, did not reply to a request for comment on the stadium work.

Adding to the perplexity is the fact that Kaliningrad already had a stadium.

Opened in 1900, it is one of the oldest soccer arenas in Europe. It was first named after the German philanthropist Walter Simon, who donated money for its construction. As Mr. Simon was Jewish, the Nazis renamed it after a Nazi and it became Erich Koch Arena. Then the Soviets, who tried to scrub the region of its German past, renamed it again, to Baltika Stadium.

The site’s layered history is evident. Metal garlands festooning the stadium once held swastikas; the Soviet Union knocked out the Nazi symbols but kept the nonpolitical decorative elements.

Until 1991, when some bleachers were removed to allow access to a used car lot, it seated 22,000 people. The lot has since closed, but the seats, unneeded in any case, were never returned.

Refurbishing this stadium would have been far cheaper, critics say. But saving money on sports construction has not been the goal in recent years, according to a study by the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a group led by the opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

It found that 19 of 24 major construction contracts for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi went to companies with ties to senior officials, including a company led by a former judo sparring partner of President Vladimir V. Putin. Construction costs, on average, ran four times higher than initial estimates. Mr. Navalny’s group calculated that each Olympic event cost $510 million to prepare.

“Ideally, the Olympic venues should have been constructed only by experienced companies with the lowest price quotations and all necessary financial and operating resources,” the study said.

Still, soccer fans could not be more pleased. After lean years of little recognition for team Baltika, they feel the tide turning.

Mr. Zakharov runs the fan club from an office with a cracked linoleum floor, and decorated with a “Miss Baltika” calendar, open to Miss May, a scantily clad brunette.

He said a group of about 100 people from his fan club turn out at every game, stomping and chanting the team’s rallying cry: “From Moscow to the Baltic, there is no team as strong as Baltika!”

They will now show up to chant at the new stadium, he said.

“I’m really happy,” he said. “We didn’t build. But we will use it.”

The post Russian City’s Dazzling New Soccer Stadium Outshines Its Team appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2kvs0MQ via Breaking News

[newestbalance]

Russian City’s Dazzling New Soccer Stadium Outshines Its Team

KALININGRAD, Russia — Nikita I. Zakharov leads the fan club for the soccer team in this leafy, slow-paced provincial city, and yet he keeps a cleareyed view of its place in the wider world of soccer.

“We cannot really boast of soccer success,” he said mournfully. The team, Baltika, plays in a second-tier Russian league. In its 64-year history, it has won the championship once — in 1995, “the golden year!” exclaimed Mr. Zakharov — and came in second twice, in 1959 and 1961.

Its biggest win, it turns out, was not so much on the field as with a field. Rising out of a formerly undeveloped swampy area in the city, a gigantic, glistening $280 million stadium appeared this year, one of six new arenas Russia built for the World Cup.

It is a bumper crop of new stadiums that, even by World Cup standards, appear out of proportion with the small crowds drawn by local teams like Baltika, which will use the venues after the tournament.

Their construction, at a cumulative cost estimated at $11 billion along with related infrastructure, illustrates how sports, as with the oil and mining businesses, has become integral to how the Kremlin and Russia’s ultra-wealthy financiers, known as the oligarchs, do business together.

World Cup stadiums became a means to reward well-connected businessmen, said Ilya Shumanov, the deputy director of the anticorruption group Transparency International.

“Authoritarian regimes love megasports projects,” Mr. Shumanov said. “Huge sums are distributed from the budget. It’s bread and circuses at the same time.”

The lucrative deal in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland, went to the company of Aras Agalarov, who is one of Russia’s wealthiest men. Mr. Agalarov also had a commercial relationship with Donald J. Trump, having partnered with him in 2013 to host the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.

“The Agalarovs are very well connected, in Azerbaijan, in Russia and in the United States,” Mr. Shumanov said.

The stadium in Kaliningrad is among those that went to cities with no top-tier soccer team. In one instance, a stadium with 45,000 seats went up in Saransk, a city with a population of 297,000.

The designs of the new stadiums nod to local pride. In Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg, both port towns, the stadiums’ look hints at ships. Mastlike towers suspend the roofs. The flying-saucer-shaped Cosmos Arena appeared in Samara, a center of the space industry.

Kaliningrad’s residents have been scratching their heads over what to do with the stadium when the World Cup is over.

The 35,000-seat venue will host four tournament matches in June and then pass to team Baltika, which last year drew an average of 4,000 spectators to matches. These were low-key events, according to videos of the games, where tepid fans munched sesame seeds and watched their blue-and-white clad soccer heroes play and, sadly, often lose.

“There are just not so many soccer lovers here,” said Vadim Chaly, an associate professor of philosophy at Kaliningrad University, and an authority on Immanuel Kant, a city native from the time Kaliningrad was German and called Konigsberg.

The oversize stadium, Mr. Chaly said, would have flummoxed the philosopher, who in his “Critique of Pure Reason” wrote of the need to derive knowledge from the cues in the world around us.

“The idea of achieving some higher goal using enrichment as a motive is absolutely contrary to Kant,” Mr. Chaly said, referring to stated benefits of the World Cup stadiums beyond sports, like boosting Russia’s image internationally. “He always thought morality was the higher goal, nothing else.”

Zoya Bondarenko, a clerk at a convenience store near the new stadium, found it less perplexing.

Her door overlooks 200 acres of packed sand in the filled-in swamp, with the white, maritime-themed stadium in the distance, looking like a beached cruise ship.

“The Forbes list is growing longer,” she said nonchalantly of the scene, and the businessmen making money here.

Anton A. Alikhanov, the regional governor, said in an interview that the stadium and related soccer spending will only benefit Kaliningrad. It helped pay for new ribbons of asphalt on roads, an airport upgrade and the filling of swampland.

“The island was a swamp where nothing but cattails grew,” he said. “If we hadn’t built a stadium, we would never have built anything there.”

And Mr. Alikhanov praised the work of Mr. Agalarov’s company, Crocus Group. Crocus, which won the contract in 2014, did not reply to a request for comment on the stadium work.

Adding to the perplexity is the fact that Kaliningrad already had a stadium.

Opened in 1900, it is one of the oldest soccer arenas in Europe. It was first named after the German philanthropist Walter Simon, who donated money for its construction. As Mr. Simon was Jewish, the Nazis renamed it after a Nazi and it became Erich Koch Arena. Then the Soviets, who tried to scrub the region of its German past, renamed it again, to Baltika Stadium.

The site’s layered history is evident. Metal garlands festooning the stadium once held swastikas; the Soviet Union knocked out the Nazi symbols but kept the nonpolitical decorative elements.

Until 1991, when some bleachers were removed to allow access to a used car lot, it seated 22,000 people. The lot has since closed, but the seats, unneeded in any case, were never returned.

Refurbishing this stadium would have been far cheaper, critics say. But saving money on sports construction has not been the goal in recent years, according to a study by the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a group led by the opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

It found that 19 of 24 major construction contracts for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi went to companies with ties to senior officials, including a company led by a former judo sparring partner of President Vladimir V. Putin. Construction costs, on average, ran four times higher than initial estimates. Mr. Navalny’s group calculated that each Olympic event cost $510 million to prepare.

“Ideally, the Olympic venues should have been constructed only by experienced companies with the lowest price quotations and all necessary financial and operating resources,” the study said.

Still, soccer fans could not be more pleased. After lean years of little recognition for team Baltika, they feel the tide turning.

Mr. Zakharov runs the fan club from an office with a cracked linoleum floor, and decorated with a “Miss Baltika” calendar, open to Miss May, a scantily clad brunette.

He said a group of about 100 people from his fan club turn out at every game, stomping and chanting the team’s rallying cry: “From Moscow to the Baltic, there is no team as strong as Baltika!”

They will now show up to chant at the new stadium, he said.

“I’m really happy,” he said. “We didn’t build. But we will use it.”

The post Russian City’s Dazzling New Soccer Stadium Outshines Its Team appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2kvs0MQ via Everyday News

[cleopatrarps]

Russian City’s Dazzling New Soccer Stadium Outshines Its Team

KALININGRAD, Russia — Nikita I. Zakharov leads the fan club for the soccer team in this leafy, slow-paced provincial city, and yet he keeps a cleareyed view of its place in the wider world of soccer.

“We cannot really boast of soccer success,” he said mournfully. The team, Baltika, plays in a second-tier Russian league. In its 64-year history, it has won the championship once — in 1995, “the golden year!” exclaimed Mr. Zakharov — and came in second twice, in 1959 and 1961.

Its biggest win, it turns out, was not so much on the field as with a field. Rising out of a formerly undeveloped swampy area in the city, a gigantic, glistening $280 million stadium appeared this year, one of six new arenas Russia built for the World Cup.

It is a bumper crop of new stadiums that, even by World Cup standards, appear out of proportion with the small crowds drawn by local teams like Baltika, which will use the venues after the tournament.

Their construction, at a cumulative cost estimated at $11 billion along with related infrastructure, illustrates how sports, as with the oil and mining businesses, has become integral to how the Kremlin and Russia’s ultra-wealthy financiers, known as the oligarchs, do business together.

World Cup stadiums became a means to reward well-connected businessmen, said Ilya Shumanov, the deputy director of the anticorruption group Transparency International.

“Authoritarian regimes love megasports projects,” Mr. Shumanov said. “Huge sums are distributed from the budget. It’s bread and circuses at the same time.”

The lucrative deal in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Lithuania and Poland, went to the company of Aras Agalarov, who is one of Russia’s wealthiest men. Mr. Agalarov also had a commercial relationship with Donald J. Trump, having partnered with him in 2013 to host the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.

“The Agalarovs are very well connected, in Azerbaijan, in Russia and in the United States,” Mr. Shumanov said.

The stadium in Kaliningrad is among those that went to cities with no top-tier soccer team. In one instance, a stadium with 45,000 seats went up in Saransk, a city with a population of 297,000.

The designs of the new stadiums nod to local pride. In Kaliningrad and St. Petersburg, both port towns, the stadiums’ look hints at ships. Mastlike towers suspend the roofs. The flying-saucer-shaped Cosmos Arena appeared in Samara, a center of the space industry.

Kaliningrad’s residents have been scratching their heads over what to do with the stadium when the World Cup is over.

The 35,000-seat venue will host four tournament matches in June and then pass to team Baltika, which last year drew an average of 4,000 spectators to matches. These were low-key events, according to videos of the games, where tepid fans munched sesame seeds and watched their blue-and-white clad soccer heroes play and, sadly, often lose.

“There are just not so many soccer lovers here,” said Vadim Chaly, an associate professor of philosophy at Kaliningrad University, and an authority on Immanuel Kant, a city native from the time Kaliningrad was German and called Konigsberg.

The oversize stadium, Mr. Chaly said, would have flummoxed the philosopher, who in his “Critique of Pure Reason” wrote of the need to derive knowledge from the cues in the world around us.

“The idea of achieving some higher goal using enrichment as a motive is absolutely contrary to Kant,” Mr. Chaly said, referring to stated benefits of the World Cup stadiums beyond sports, like boosting Russia’s image internationally. “He always thought morality was the higher goal, nothing else.”

Zoya Bondarenko, a clerk at a convenience store near the new stadium, found it less perplexing.

Her door overlooks 200 acres of packed sand in the filled-in swamp, with the white, maritime-themed stadium in the distance, looking like a beached cruise ship.

“The Forbes list is growing longer,” she said nonchalantly of the scene, and the businessmen making money here.

Anton A. Alikhanov, the regional governor, said in an interview that the stadium and related soccer spending will only benefit Kaliningrad. It helped pay for new ribbons of asphalt on roads, an airport upgrade and the filling of swampland.

“The island was a swamp where nothing but cattails grew,” he said. “If we hadn’t built a stadium, we would never have built anything there.”

And Mr. Alikhanov praised the work of Mr. Agalarov’s company, Crocus Group. Crocus, which won the contract in 2014, did not reply to a request for comment on the stadium work.

Adding to the perplexity is the fact that Kaliningrad already had a stadium.

Opened in 1900, it is one of the oldest soccer arenas in Europe. It was first named after the German philanthropist Walter Simon, who donated money for its construction. As Mr. Simon was Jewish, the Nazis renamed it after a Nazi and it became Erich Koch Arena. Then the Soviets, who tried to scrub the region of its German past, renamed it again, to Baltika Stadium.

The site’s layered history is evident. Metal garlands festooning the stadium once held swastikas; the Soviet Union knocked out the Nazi symbols but kept the nonpolitical decorative elements.

Until 1991, when some bleachers were removed to allow access to a used car lot, it seated 22,000 people. The lot has since closed, but the seats, unneeded in any case, were never returned.

Refurbishing this stadium would have been far cheaper, critics say. But saving money on sports construction has not been the goal in recent years, according to a study by the Anti-Corruption Foundation, a group led by the opposition politician Aleksei Navalny.

It found that 19 of 24 major construction contracts for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi went to companies with ties to senior officials, including a company led by a former judo sparring partner of President Vladimir V. Putin. Construction costs, on average, ran four times higher than initial estimates. Mr. Navalny’s group calculated that each Olympic event cost $510 million to prepare.

“Ideally, the Olympic venues should have been constructed only by experienced companies with the lowest price quotations and all necessary financial and operating resources,” the study said.

Still, soccer fans could not be more pleased. After lean years of little recognition for team Baltika, they feel the tide turning.

Mr. Zakharov runs the fan club from an office with a cracked linoleum floor, and decorated with a “Miss Baltika” calendar, open to Miss May, a scantily clad brunette.

He said a group of about 100 people from his fan club turn out at every game, stomping and chanting the team’s rallying cry: “From Moscow to the Baltic, there is no team as strong as Baltika!”

They will now show up to chant at the new stadium, he said.

“I’m really happy,” he said. “We didn’t build. But we will use it.”

The post Russian City’s Dazzling New Soccer Stadium Outshines Its Team appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2kvs0MQ via News of World

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Next Show: PREPARING FOR DARKNESS | VOL. 4: TRUE ROMANCE Mehr Infos zum Event im ARTWISTA.COM Hier finden Sie eine Übersichte aller Events & Ausstellungen weltweit: https://www.artwista.de/event/Preparing-For-Darkness-Vol.4:-True-Romance/232 Kühlhaus Berlin Luckenwalder Strasse 3 10963 Berlin, Germany #Abstract #LeipzigerSchule #Hyperrealism #Modernism #Conceptual #metaphysical #landscape July 17, 2019 - July 28, 2019 Opening hours: July 17-21 & July 26-28 from 3-7 pm Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Danja Akulin @danjaakulin, V-Gallery on ARTWISTA.com: https://www.artwista.de/artist/Danja-Akulin/141 Radu Baies, Maxim Brandt @maximbrandt , Konstantin Déry, Grigori Dor @grigori__dor, Tom Gefken, Lennart Grau, Simone Haack @haacksimone, René Holm, Dénesh Ghyczy, Toshio Showzen Kajima, Michal Mráz, Justine Otto @ottojustine, Dario Puggioni, Lorenzo Puglisi, Giuditta R, Michael H. Rohde, Sinta Tamsjadi & Thomas Schmidt, Sabine Tress, Julien Vinet, Sador Weinsclucker @sador_weinsclucker , Karina Wisniewska, Alexander Zakharov Position: Simone Haack, "Sisters" #artwista #artwista_gallery #art_curator_de #finearts #art #kunst #sadorweinsclucker #stilllife #stillifepainting #berlin #drawing #germanartist #artwork #artcollector #instagram #modernart #oilpainting #graphics #bestoftheday #instagramers #figurative #instaoftheday #contemporary #painting #oilpainting #oiloncanvas #artlovers #artcollector #contemporaryart #photorealism #kunst #malerei #malereiinberlin (hier: Berlin, Germany) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0HDC4Di26V/?igshid=1r7h8icqje9f5

[artwista]

Next Show: PREPARING FOR DARKNESS | VOL. 4: TRUE ROMANCE Mehr Infos zum Event im ARTWISTA.COM Hier finden Sie eine Übersichte aller Events & Ausstellungen weltweit: https://www.artwista.de/event/Preparing-For-Darkness-Vol.4:-True-Romance/232 Kühlhaus Berlin Luckenwalder Strasse 3 10963 Berlin, Germany #Abstract #LeipzigerSchule #Hyperrealism #Modernism #Conceptual #metaphysical #landscape July 17, 2019 - July 28, 2019 Opening hours: July 17-21 & July 26-28 from 3-7 pm Curated by Uwe Goldenstein Danja Akulin @danjaakulin, V-Gallery on ARTWISTA.com: https://www.artwista.de/artist/Danja-Akulin/141 Radu Baies, Maxim Brandt @maximbrandt , Konstantin Déry, Grigori Dor @grigori__dor, Tom Gefken, Lennart Grau, Simone Haack @haacksimone, René Holm, Dénesh Ghyczy, Toshio Showzen Kajima, Michal Mráz, Justine Otto @ottojustine, Dario Puggioni, Lorenzo Puglisi, Giuditta R, Michael H. Rohde, Sinta Tamsjadi & Thomas Schmidt, Sabine Tress, Julien Vinet, Sador Weinsclucker @sador_weinsclucker , Karina Wisniewska, Alexander Zakharov #artwista #artwista_gallery #art_curator_de #finearts #art #kunst #stilllife #stillifepainting #drawing #germanartist #artwork #artcollector#figurativepainting #thephotosociety #instagram #modernart #oilpainting #graphics #bestoftheday #instagramers #contemporary #painting #oilpainting #oiloncanvas #artlovers #artcollector #contemporaryart #photorealism #kunst (hier: Berlin, Germany) https://www.instagram.com/p/B0EV8lFClnz/?igshid=5lb49iqjp7xf