Counselors of the Kamchatka children's camp about modern teenagers

According to the apt expression of psychologist Meg Jay, Adults often talk not with teenagers, but about them: discuss their future (or put a cross on it), criticize hobbies and in other ways erect barriers between themselves and children instead of making friends with them. We are sure that everything is fine with modern children (just as it was with us, and maybe even better), and asked the counselors of the Kamchatka international children's art camp to tell us what teenagers are cooler than how to find a common language with them adults can learn from them.

Once Philip Bakhtin sent me a message, I don’t remember exactly what it was about, but there was something about children, happiness, running in latex suits through the night forest and some other nonsense. In general, about everything that I love. That was four years ago. Bakhtin called me co-counsel to his detachment. Kamchatka was still in Pskov. I didn’t communicate with teenagers in my life and didn’t care for children, I was scared, I didn’t know how to behave with them, but I won the interest and I agreed. I traveled by car to Pskov and all the time I was running a dialogue with my squad in my head. How can I communicate with them better? About smart talk or about important? Or more joking? Or even leave them alone? Everyone says: teenagers are hard, children are hard. I always thought it was nonsense. All people are complex. Adults what, simple? Definitely not. I never believed that it was impossible to agree with teenagers and children. And to find a common language with them, to convey to them some things that are very important for me, to show them that denial is not always the best way, it was very important for me. In the first couple of years, I was terribly lucky: I had a detachment in which the children were smarter and more talented than me a hundred times. Working with them was pure happiness. Now these are my friends.

All counselors have their own approach to how the creative process should be arranged. Someone gives all the initiative to the children and just sends them a little and helps them. I sometimes speak like a Cerberus and say to the children "no, this is nonsense and we will not do it this way" But not because I want the children to do only what our councilors and I have come up with, but because I want to set some kind of bar. I want them to feel this bar and then it would be interesting for them themselves to steam up, strain themselves, but not to make a children's craft, but something a centimeter higher than children's crafts. When they understand what can be done better, they have a responsibility, their eyes light up, they are ready to go sleepy somewhere night and wander along a dark street in search of the right frame.

This year, my fellow Soviets Ilya Krasilshchik and Maxim Nikanorov had a completely new squad, all our buddies went to the university. And the first few days there was a feeling that we speak with children in different languages. We tell them: look, here is the creativity, art, we can do cool stuff. And they: "Excuse me, but breakfast tomorrow at nine again?", "And when will they give the cookies?" At some point it seemed that nothing would work out. And then we talked with them very frankly three times in a row and slowly all were involved. On the last day, these were not 16 separate children, but a detachment for whom it is important that we come and chat with him. And then again, and more. And this is real happiness.

I don’t have a clear answer in my head about exactly how to communicate with children and teenagers. As with people. Honestly, probably. This year I was convinced that, for example, I could shout only at the squad I trust. When I see that everyone doesn’t care what I say, no one wants to do anything, my hands fall and I just leave. Probably the most important thing for me in communicating with them is talking about something important. I tell them a lot about myself: about what I was afraid of and afraid, for example. Because children and adolescents are not particularly accustomed to the fact that adults are frank with them. And when you say - well, look, I am fifteen years older than you, and my problems are mostly the same. I am also afraid that nothing will work out; I also do not know how to tell that guy that I love him; I am also afraid that I don’t understand that the most important thing in life. I am the same. When they hear such words, they are revealed.

I really like to listen to them. And do foolishness, which children do all the time, but for some reason the adults stop. This year, for example, with the son of one of our counselors, Kirill Ivanov, Vasya, we began to measure everything with a tape measure: fence, bush, ear, hand, two girls. And they quickly realized that we encountered many similar quantities. The fence is 3 meters - and the motorcycle is 3 meters, the ear is 6 centimeters - and the sheet is 6 centimeters. We understood that these are friends. But then we got one tree, its height was 2 meters 37 centimeters. So, we measured the whole camp, we were engaged in the whole shift, but could not find a friend's tree. On the last day a friend was found. A rope whose length was also 2.37. Looking for Vasya with a friend for the Christmas tree was for me no less, and maybe more important, than making a movie or setting a play.

This year, at night, I showed the film “One Hundred Days after Childhood” to children and talked a little bit about childhood and why it was such an important time for me personally. Because, despite the complexity of growing up, on the complexes that constantly climb out of you, on the fears and parents, who occasionally have to fight, childhood is a time when happiness can be very simple. Here you are driving football with friends - and you are happy, or you sit sad on the bench, and the girl passed by with a friend and looked at you in a special way - and you are happy again. In Kamchatka, everyone — both adults and children — happens to have such a simple, but very honest happiness. Therefore, probably, I go there and come back year after year.

The ideas of the children from my squad for filming the film as part of the "Day of the Cinema" on the hashtags # suicide, # unfair society and # me in no one understands: 1) films in which the main character shoots himself in the final because of unhappy love - 1 piece; 2) films in which the protagonist in the final is heated in the sea, because “he doesn’t feel anything” / “he can’t do anything” (sic) - 2 pieces; 3) films in which the main character runs from himself / society - 2 pieces; 4) films in which the music of Joy Division is used as a soundtrack - 3 pieces.

As always, modern teenagers are a crowd of absolutely different, but equally happy little people. You lock yourself with them on a tiny Estonian island, and your whole life ultimately boils down to the airtight world of the two tent cities and the rye field between them, which the noise from your ordinary life does not penetrate at all. When I went there, I was going to think about work, try all sorts of projects, quit smoking. But after a few days it all seemed completely meaningless, because other things are more important and more interesting in the coordinate system of children.

It seemed to me that the teenagers are very well tuned detector false and bulshy. Therefore, you either become more frank, more sincere and honest with them, or go and drown in the sea. I recommend the first option: yes, you have to open up and become more vulnerable, but as a result you have a unique space with the guys where you share ideas and feelings. Your common mind. I have no idea how to replicate this feeling in the adult world.

Another funny thing is that you turn off the ability to normal reflection. It seems to me that you, too, are hooked up by teenagers. But due to a change in perspective, many things still become clearer - for example, at some point I, for one, began to feel less embarrassed about my ideas, to fear the snobbery of others, and to resort to constant self-analysis. Hope the kids too.

I love working with teens. They are cool and interesting. Even the most difficult ones. It’s hard for small children because they mostly want to run and shout, and it’s interesting to talk with teenagers. They ask uncomfortable questions, argue, doubt and already face the same problems as me.

There are a few things that I believe in, for example honesty as a way of building relationships. You cannot demand from a person to reveal a soul, if you don’t even do a little of it yourself.

On the first day, when we were making verbatim, my group got the theme "The moment when I was happy." Nothing works if you offer them to turn out the soul on the first day, but to sit and write for themselves. I believe most in equal communication. I am not a parent or a teacher. I am here to spend time with them, engage in creative work and chat about everything in the world, as I would chat with my friends.

I also believe that the goal to influence someone is egoistic and meaningless. The guys come for a couple of weeks once a year, so all you can do is provide an opportunity to show what happens somehow differently. And maybe someday someone will remember or respond to your words or deeds today.

For example, Misha Levin and I spent the evening talking about gender stereotypes (what is it, who faced what) - and this was one of the most interesting conversations during the shift. Or I told them about the experiments of Elizabeth Loftus and the formation of false memories and explained how these mechanisms work not only on a personal, but also on a state level.

In general, the camp space is a unique chronotope, where a million things happen, where there is no time for reflection, but only here and now. This “here and now” is filled with meaning and feelings, feelings and experiences that will be understood later. This is the time and place where the most correct strategy is just to be, fully aware of yourself, aware that nothing will happen again. What will happen next year, will be the next camp and then there will be something similar, but completely different.

Lilya Brainis called me to Kamchatka four years ago, but then I had time to think, I turned on the social phobia and did not go. Then secretly regretted a whole year. Because in 2013, when Ilya Krasilshchik wrote to me five days before departure and offered to go, I took it and agreed. I worked quite a lot in the hall of our store, so by itself, communication with teenagers was not very scary for me. Well, no more than communication in general. Even now I am a little nervous every time, going out to the public. And a squad is always a crowd that looks at you rather wary.

I used to think that teenagers are some particularly cheeky and arrogant. As it turned out, even the fastest hooligan inside is just as cautious and even shy. We discussed a lot with how to find the correct intonation in communication with another counselor, Vasya Sharp-Sighted. It seems to me that there are conditionally two registers: the “bottom” one, when you share their interests without any value and they like it so much that you are an adult dude, but in reality they are the same; and the "top" when you separate their problems from the perspective of an adult. The first way is easier and sometimes necessary, the second is more difficult, it is easy to turn on the "guru", but if you manage to slip through, it turns out very cool. The more insecure you are, the easier it is to slip into the “bottom”, to get a simple feed of your ego. I only managed to work since the third year in the upper register sincerely so that it would not look moralizing. Admittedly, I had never received such powerful feelings from communication as this year. In general, for me this camp had some kind of Hollywood dramaturgy, with a spectacular takeoff at the beginning, a crash in the middle, an incredible support that pulled out of this crash, and a mighty emotional boost in the final. So far it seems that during all this I have learned to be a little more open and sincere.

It seems to me that childhood is generally quite a universal thing. Of course, adolescents now have slightly more opportunities, but the emotions from games, resentment, or first love are exactly the same. What are their hobbies? The same that were with each of us. Football, cartoons, music, board games - remember what you were fond of as a child, most likely there was a child with similar interests in this shift of "Kamchatka".

It is usually difficult to predict which of the children will show themselves where. On the most difficult day of the cinema theater, where the children actually turned out to be VJs, the youngest girl in the detachment stood behind our console and lit it the way I could not. In the same way, you do not know who will be a talented actor, cameraman, multiplier, or simply can voice anyone.

The level of romantic tension in the camp does not go off scale - most of the participants need exactly what to be friends with. Well, or not much more. For the rest, we just try to set the framework from the very beginning, formulate the rules and see that they are respected. However, we must understand: if they really want something, we do not have one hundred percent chance to prevent it. Even if you walk behind the handle with each over-excited teenager, at some point you will sneeze, turn around - and he has already escaped. However, such stories are always an exception - we do not have all the hell that appears in the head at the words “summer camp”.

My friend and founder of the camp, Philip Bakhtin, called me to Kamchatka. I did not hesitate. What could be better than twelve days to work with children all in a row? Make movies, put on plays and walk on your head.

Honestly, I don’t know any prejudices about teenagers. They are quivering, often not knowing where to put themselves and apply, creatures. They, like everyone else, need attention and caress. Adults want to love their children and be friends with them when it is convenient for them as adults. Children, of course, it seems unfair.

It seems to me that teenagers do not have to climb, impose. Exactly, fun, perky. It is necessary to spend more time with them and chat about exactly the same thing that you talk to your peers about - music, video games and fooling around. We want the children to spend these twelve days in an atmosphere of friendship, joy and stupid fun, and try to do with them what we ourselves are interested in. In fact, everyone likes to invent and do something together - even an installation, even a performance. Everything is simple with children's problems - they are not listened to, adults are often not up to them.

What is the current children cooler than we are? Hard to say. But they have more steepness, of course, more: they have a lot of cool consoles, iPads, games. As a child I would have dreamed of such friends. Their hobbies are the same as ours: music, games, wacky chatter. Everything that we grew up on, everything that we love to this day.

Photo: Ksenia Plotnikova / Project "Kamchatka"