Director:Katherina Sadovsky

Bio: Katherina Sadovsky (1985) is a Russian contemporary artist. Her diverse approach to art practice encompasses art media such as video, CGI, 3D, sculpture, photography, AI, installation, sound, site-specific practices.
In her projects, Sadovsky explore questions of the future, ecology, the relationship between humans and Nature, the possibilities of human interaction and connection with other forms of existence.

Film: Experimental video work in which the artist explores how art and culture become tools of military propaganda, working for the authorities. And how in modern Russia, they are trying to start a second wind of Soviet monumental propaganda, justifying and supporting the war in Ukraine.

The film is built on alternating long, slow shots of Soviet architecture of the 30s. One place in Moscow is shown – the VDNH park, built by Stalin in the 30s as a utopia for the Soviet people, as a future city in which we were never destined to be. Here architecture is seen as monumental propaganda before World War II. The use of baroque elements, massive columns, and other details of unthinkable dimensions was supposed to inspire horror and a sense of the worthlessness of a person before the authorities. And that means complete submission.

The heroes of the film are monuments of the military and workers, smoothly flowing from the video to CGI and 3D models, on which shiny bloody, silver, black, and gold crystals grow, the characteristic colors of the resources of the Empire (blood, gold, silver, titanium, oil, etc.). The crystals slowly wholly cover the surface of the monuments, turning them into something that looks like a tiny shiny decoration.
Many details in the film show the era of the USSR when all the constituent republics were friendly. A golden fountain with a central girl in a wreath symbolizes Ukraine.
Then, on the roof of the building, this girl militantly raises a wreath over our heads. At some point, military spaceships from other galaxies appear above the palaces of the Empire, hovering slowly over monuments or gliding like lidar drones that scan the area. The aesthetics of monumental propaganda suddenly mixes with elements and aesthetics from popular culture and computer games, as if devaluing the Bloody Empire, reminding that it is also under surveillance.