• Interactive Installation
• Description
• Artist Commentary
• About The Music

The installation consists of three parts, assembled as a whole unit. The unit is 17 meters long, 3,5 meters broad and 7 meters high. The first part, i.e. beginning of the installation and the entrance into the installation, represents a wooden structure, conforming the 'constructivist'style of the 1920's. It is built in the form of complex, multicomponent stairs, leading up - in fact, it is the way up, toward outer space, toward heaven, toward the brilliant future. The upper end of the stairs is decorated by numerous flags, banners and slogans - there is a festival going on in heaven.

Behind the stairs one finds 'The Red Wagon'. It is a 9-meter-long wooden box, reassembling a wagon, painted in dark red colors and mounted on short wooden platforms instead of wheels. Instead of windows, the wagon has paintings, marked with the touch of 'Socialist- Realist' style. When the spectator enters the wagon, he finds himself in a rather dark and oblong compartment. On the left side there stands a bench, stretching all along the wagon wall. On the right there is a structure, looking like a scene behind a barrier. It looks like some performance is about to begin on the scene. The rear part of the scene is brightly illuminated. One sees a beautiful landscape painted there, with endless woods in perspective. In the frontal plain of the painting one sees people enjoying that landscape. Spectators, who have entered the wagon, sit down on the bench, waiting for the performance to begin. But 5, 8, 10 minutes pass - and nothing happens. No one appears from within the two high boxes, aligning the scene from two sides. Nothing but the absurd gloomy uncertainty, the dull waiting process (this process constitutes the main 'contents' of the wagon). The spectator leaves the wagon through the door opposite to the one he had entered, after having waited in vain for as long as his patience permits.

Behind the wagon's door he finds short stairs, but it is hard to descend them because they are broken, and one has to clutch the railings tightly in order not to fall down. Chaos and disaster reign behind the wagon. One sees big heaps of rubbish and garbage, torn shreds of paper, pieces of plywood, empty boxes, deserted containers - things that usually remain after big construction projects have been finished. The spectator is familiar with all this rubbish - he sees whatever has been used and left after the construction of the previous two parts of the installation: the stairs and the wagon. The garbage is either about to be cleaned and thrown away, or it will be cleaned later or it is just forgotten and left here forever - the whole business is rather unclear, but one can tell for sure, judging by the garbage heap's dimensions and origins, that it constitutes the integral third part of the installation as a whole.

By 1985 some strange decline and apathy in the Soviet society made me and many of my friends feel, that some important period of our 'Soviet history' has come to an end. Some new and 'non-historic' era had begun. As for me personally, I felt, that not only a certain period, but also the 'Soviet history' as a whole, starting from October 1917, is ended and will never come back. Things that were expected to last forever, were quietly blown up and leaked out like pus from an old and aching putrescent fistula.

And it became extremely important to realize this 'Soviet time' from its first to its last moment, and somehow to reflect, depict and 'memorize'it, as nothing like it ever had been or will be in human history. But how does one represent the Soviet history visually in its development? In my imagination it could be best portrayed as a kind of an arch, a 'bridge.' A First period of faith and enthusiasm, hopes for building a luminous future, corresponds to the first portion - the ascending one.

Chronologcally it may be defined as the period from October 1917 to 1932 - the year, when the'Triumph of Socialism' was proclaimed at the XVII Communist party congress (afterwards nearly all delegates of that congress were executed by Stalin). The next period is the one of the eternal 'Soviet Stalinist Paradise,' when the remote future instantly came true and became the eternal beautiful 'now.' Time has stopped, as it always happens in Paradise, and everything started blossoming forever under the sun of Stalin's Constitution and his vigilant eye. That was the period from 1936 till 1963, and it can be represented as the medium section of the bridge - its plain, horizontal part. And finally there is the third period from 1963 to 1985, when everything started moving towards the inevitably nearing end, as if descending the bridge. It is the 'Brechnevian' period, a time of accelerated decay and decadence, marked by the decline and fall of the four 'Foundations,' on which the 'great and mighty Soviet Union' seemed to dwell eternally. The Foundations were ideology, economy, foreign policy and military strength. My generation has caught up with the 'victorious' second period, then lived throughout the entire phase of decline and decay - thus gaining the opportunity to view the whole 'horror fairy tale' from the end to the beginning retrospectively.

But it also became clear to me (especially after Boris Groys's book "Stalin's Total Artistic Oeuvre" was published) that the three periods mentioned above correspond with the three stages of Soviet art development in the 20th century. First came the avant-garde, then Socialist Realism started to blossom and finally the unofficial art (like the 'sots art' et al.) emerged. None of the three contradicted the previous - on the contrary, the three of them represent integral stages in a total and consistent sequential process.

That is why all 'soviet history' could be portrayed as a 'bridge,' as a specific combination and merger of the three art styles, displaying these styles both in their dissimilarity and in their likeness.

But such a scheme would have been too simplified and illustrative to provide a basis for a consistent and bright image of the history as a whole. It required a more complex and elaborate solution, where all the three components of the 'arts bridge' would have been represented more delicately, forming a new and unique whole.

'The Red Wagon' installation seems to be such a solution. It marks the way that the spectator must go to physically experience the beginning, the middle and the end. He is to fail in the effort to reach the heaven, then live through period of frustrating and fruitless anticipation - only to find himself standing in heaps of rubbish and junk at the end of the road.