Work Text
“Oh my God,” Belarmino said, covering his black face with his black hands. We showed him a video in which we walk along Burakova Street in Moscow through thick snow blackened by dirt. Marika wore alpine snowshoes. Anton had a floor-length black goatskin coat bought at the Udelka flea market in Saint Petersburg and Sámi sealskin shoes. We lived in Reutovo and every night travelled home for an hour and a half by tram, always without a ticket, then made our way on foot beyond the Moscow Ring Road. Behind a humming power line stood our house; behind the house were garages, and beyond them began the taiga.
We had almost no money then. Our daily budget was seventy roubles: at the Atak shop it bought a carton of milk, half a loaf of bread, two bananas and fourteen roubles’ worth of halva. We had lived like this for about six months. The four or five thousand roubles left after we bought materials for a foundation-funded project carried us for another month, until spring, when we hitchhiked to Budapest. To avoid having to explain what we were doing, we planted seedlings in four hundred plastic cups as a diversion. While the grass grew, we could quietly observe what was happening in the studio and what might be done there.
At that time we began working with the idea of media delirium. The studio’s feverish atmosphere suited it perfectly. We leave the detailed account of the dramatic events unfolding before our eyes to other authors. For us the residency continued an uninterrupted fall in the form of a dance, which was what we were doing then. We built a wire cube as a spatial score for the dance and shot a film from which nothing came out.
We dragged ourselves to an apartment in Russia. Behind the window is -30 and ice falling all the time. We don't go out because it's scary.
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