The Spell of Trukhliashechka: Working through Soviet Enchantment Now

• In Event: Second-Hand Beliefs: Recycling Culture in Post-Soviet Russia

Abstract

The paper explores several visual projects by the contemporary visual artist Danila Tkachenko. During last five years, he produced a set of striking photography-based series in which iconic Soviet structures were digitally augmented and spatially recontextualized. The paper will provide a close reading of these projects in order to expose the role of these structures in the artist’s attempt to “break down” the spell of Soviet trukhliashechka, as he called it. I am interested in understanding stylistic devices and aesthetic messages that this engagement with the remains of the Soviet period evoke. I am also concerned with the larger ideological implications that such projects of controlled restoration and negative nostalgia generate.

Author

• Serguei Alex. Oushakine, Princeton U