Authors

Egle Rindzeviciute⁴; Irina Sandomirskaja¹; Pavel Otdelnov²; Alina Legeyda³; Dmytro Legeyda³;  ¹ Sodertorn University, Sweden;  ² Artist presentation, Sweden;  ³ University of Newcastle, UK;  ⁴ Kingston University London, UK

Discussion

Back to the initial definition of the future as tempus irrealis, i.e., as undefined, unspeakable, and unpredictable, in the final discussion the Russian artist in exile Pavel Otdelnov is presenting his art projects Hometown and Acting Out. Representing the USSR’s historical path towards a future – “the beautiful faraway” from a children’s song -- is a red carpet, an allusion at the same time to the revolutionary avantgarde and the Soviet state’s corridors of power: it is a path leading nowhere and ending in a blank wall. The state’s failure to fulfil its obligations as the guardian and guarantor of the future is allegorically represented in the image of a mass of Soviet paper money dumped and rotting in a disused nuclear missile silo. At the time of the Russian Federation’s war against the “fraternal nation” in Ukraine, the artist is settling accounts with the many promises and betrayals the generation has had to go through in search of a different, not so “beautiful”, but politically, economically, and ethically sustainable “faraway”.