INFRASTRUCTURAL ETHNOGRAPHY
A collaboration by Yakutsk-based artist Antonina Shadrina and
Max Sher for Permafrost, a group show at National Museum
of Arts, Yakutsk (November 2016)
The project tackles the idea of shifting the focus when looking
at a landscape from the ethnically-specific to the universal
workings of power, still at the same time recognizing the
impossibility of ignoring the mythological "screen". It includes a
200 x 145 cm acryl painting on banner cloth with a digitally
pre-printed infrstructure map of the city of Yakutsk on it (heat,
water, electricity, sewage) and three YouTube-mined videos with
late Soviet public service cartoon ads "Keep it Warm" dating from
1986-88. Due to permafrost, all the infrastructure (still largely
State-run) in Yakutsk is laid above the surface of the ground which
makes locals call it "A city with guts inside out", providing a
metaphor of something normally "hidden" or "out of sight" that
strangely reveals itself to the watchful eye. The infrastructure
map is "animated" with Yakut imagery of gods, Tarot and other
symbols of power/conspiracies, including the main character
Ulu-Toyon - the Great Lord - one of the incarnations of power,
patron of shamans and evil spirits, a crow who never sleeps.
Read more about this project here (so far in
Russian)