My star, Ordzhonikidze part 1/ Звезда моя, Орджоникидзе

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The project is primarily focused on an attempt to understand the identity of my generation, to look into our subconsciousness isolated by locked doors of our childhood. To be honest many of us, people born in the Soviet Union, hardly remember words of the new Russian anthem - the grip of the spirit of Developed Socialism which we met in the happiest period on our lives is too strong. The memory of original version of the first lines of the anthem is above ideology and politics. That was a time of very strong and essential feelings, when we were perceived to be who we were and the time of first love experiences, and it makes us want these feelings back.
That's why there's no surprise that my heart glorifies Ordzhonikidze, the former capital of North Ossetia multinational Caucasian city where I was born and which still evokes reverence. The city which name twice appeared on the map like a snow in summer, and then ran away from us like Kerensky ran from sailors.

The city which was renamed from Vladikavkaz to Ordzhonikidze after Georgian revolutionist and Stalin's friend, the city once founded by Prince Potemkin as a fortress located on both banks of Terek river on the beautiful land poured with blood, which appeared on the way of many conquerors. That was the Warm Siberia for freedom-loving enemies of the Empire, and then the resort for citizens of the USSR, and millions years ago that was just a bottom of the World Ocean. In a low voice I sing the anthem to this city in its different tones, materials, versions, colors, objects, images most of which I bravely bought on the flea market.
I say names, words, rumors, I recall talks, stories, I cling to details - tags attached to babies in maternity hospitals, old toys, newspapers, photos, ammonites, fabrics colored as red banner or with complex textures, criminal tattoos, badges, wallpapers, iconic figures of communism, objects of soviet mode of life etc... And the whole exhibition space of the project is a part of the wall of the city's Nature museum and its exhibits which are both spectators because silence is the knowledge of the secret and mute witnesses, and ideally they are also highly competitive objects proudly statuesque in unreal concord. Everything here must emphasize and confirm obvious and sad impossibility of returning to the past, it's polyphonic and incredible complexity and of course my rapturous and sorrowful respect to it.