The Society of The Spectacle

Guy Debord's arguments about the society of the spectacle seem especially relevant when you look at the Soviet newsreels. Now this is not just chronology of the past, it's rather show the degree of involvement of people into performing ideologically prescribed social roles. In this quasi-documentary material it's often difficult to know whether you are see a staged farce of propaganda or a fragment of real life. Because even the presence of a camera or a stern look of supervisor had always been able to change the situation and feelings of it's characters, making them show unnatural behavior in an atmosphere of total simulation.
Digitall video, resolution: 1920x1080, frame rate: 25, duration: 06 min 00 s, 2013.

Play Without Rules

The wide use of the word “simulation” as a term led to naming a learning process or a children’s game “the simulation of reality”. But when children play war, something else happens; if this is even a simulation of reality, no one can prevent learning from it.
What would such game teach children in the country where war is ongoing? To engage in warfare or to live beside the danger of war? How real is the danger of war cult in this case? It is obvious that the danger of glorifying war emerges in reality created by adults, not in a children’s game. The children who were lucky not to see the war can hardly be aware of what they play, just like the adults next to them.
What do we do then? Do we make a forbidden fruit out of war symbols, do we interrupt children’s game with rude intervention and serious talk, or do we leave everything as it is – along with the obsessive fear of unexpected result?
Martin Heidegger has a concept of fear and horror, according to which fear is always based on specific threat one can foresee or recognize, and horror is the consternation in front of the unknown, i.e. the danger one cannot understand. Such horror is possible if everything you know about war is children’s game, or even worse – when you don’t even know the game. This does not allow us to consider the game with a symbolic danger positively useful, but doesn’t let us to believe it is totally harmful, either.
That is why there are two unsolved issues remaining here: do children have the right to choose a game able to spur horror among adults, and how dangerous is the transformation of war artefacts into an amusement ride?

The video was filmed in 2016 in Kyiv, in park dedicated to World War II.

The Recreational Zone

This video filmed on the south Crimean coast in 2004 unwittingly became a good material
for anthropological investigation on point of life on peninsula before and after its occupation.
It seems the building plan of this recreational zone was really fundamental the same as the many other projects of soviet times. But preservation of the natural landscape was not exactly included in it. Therefore, people who like this area now have to undress under the
scorching sun in among the concrete, steel rods and building pebbles.
Willy-nilly the question arises: does these people really couldn’t find a better place for themselves? But ironically, this is one of the most popular holiday destinations in the south
of the Crimea. Most of the tourists have been preparing for a year to be on this beach, so
they do not have time to think did they get lucky with the conditions, because the competition for a place under the sun always been quite hot here.
Today, after the occupation of the Crimea, this concrete beach is heated by the sun almost without people, because now being here it is not just a recreation experience in the construction site atmosphere, but also the experience of being in a gray zone where human rights are not respected, and everyone can be imprisoned if they don’t like, something here. For this reason, the CRIMEA now associated rather with the word CRIME
than with a place for a holiday. The same as area filmed on video, not just the beach but
also the silent monument of the epoch, fully corresponding to its name — The
Recreational Zone.
Digitall video: 720x576, frame rate: 25, duration: 08 min 31 s, 2004-2012.

The Flip Side

This project focuses on interpretations of conditions what may be accepted as good or bad and illusions people often have about it? These birds seems have residence that not every human on Earth may got, but is it really a good habitat for the pink flamingos?
Understanding another mind is a hard work. Different ambience and a sensory experience of each creature build up an invisible perception barriers. For some, they may stay being not yet overcome, and all what is left to do in this case is just to look at other like through the glass. But getting used to it bring a risk to appear not as the subject, but as the object of someone's observation, which is perhaps based on stereotypes too.
Digital photo: 2592x3888, 20x30 cm, 2015; digital video: 1920x1080, frame rate: 25,
duration: 07 min 42 s, 2015.

20th of January

Understanding the nature of the will is impossible without regarding the pain threshold of the mind and the body. When it is overcome in a social conflict, people ceases to behave themselves as usual and begins to defend what someone is trying to deprive them. Best way to resolve the conflict, is creating a parity dialogue even if one of the sides has a preponderance in power, and especially if it is about the relationship between the ruling political elite and the society. But in the case of this video it is not only about a violation of parity in communication, it’s about public's reaction to the regime’s intimidation of protesters which stand against the usurpation of power.
This video was filmed in a short span of time: 4 days after the adoption of the laws de
facto prohibiting any form of public protest against the government’s policy and 2 days
before the first deaths of the protesters.
Digitall video: 1920x1080, frame rate: 25, duration: 06 min 19 s, 2014

Zero Rate Credit

Public space in modern cities is overloaded with messages promoting consumption as a lifestyle. They activate the part of the brain that make people chase after luck and not to miss the chance for a change in life. Sometimes this really changes people. But more often in a way that nothing else pleases them, except attractive advertising and purchases of new goods. It looks like a passion, which even gives the chance to take mind off problems and feel like a full-valued person, but this full-value does not last too long, just until a new discount.
Digitall video: 1920x1080, frame rate: 25, duration: 07 min 52 s, 2013.