S4413KZTP / С4413КЗТП

On May 10, 2019, several events took place in St. Petersburg in the same place. A new underground venue opened to the public — Studio 4413. At its opening, the group Techno-Poetry, little-known at that time, presented its album “Let's Get Our Hands Off the Vagina of Culture”. The presentation was accompanied by performances by two very popular bands: Krasnye Zori and Joan Brooks.

This documentary series tells the story of the far-off 2019, the sad (or not) experience of self-organization and the underground of that time, the further fate of the participants in the epoch-making presentation and whether they would like to go back to the past.

Many thanks to the Central Archive of Contemporary Art for the opportunity to work with media documents and personally to Irina Ignatyuk.

A list of all episodes

1. Russia 2019.
2. Studio 4413.
3. Techno-Poetry.
4. Acquaintance.
5. Preparation for the presentation.
6. Performance by Krasnye Zori.
7. Performance by Joan Brooks.
8. Performance by Techno-Poetry.
9. Feedback on the concert.
10. What happened next with Studio 4413.
11. What happened next with Krasnye Zori.
12. What happened next with Techno-Poetry. Part one.
13. What happened next with Techno-Poetry. Part two.
14. On the desire to return.

And now, an explanation.

A mockumentary web series whose title is fully derived from an acronym formed by combining the names of its three main participants. Studio 4413 functioned quite literally underground and, for a certain period, became a refuge for activist, musical, and other collectives in Saint Petersburg. At its opening, two underground groups, Krasnye Zori and Techno-Poetry, actually performed.

Together with the other participants in this event, I wanted to conduct a psychological experiment: I asked them to give interviews from the perspective of their successful future selves. I wanted to learn how these people imagined their future. I also interviewed myself in the same way.

All of this was framed as one large concert video, in the style of those released for major band anniversaries. Only with time did the absurdity, or even the unattainability, of our fantasies about the future become visible, since they rarely coincide with reality.

The series was filmed before the COVID pandemic, before Russia’s war against Ukraine, and before the forced emigration of all those interviewed. At that time, none of them could have imagined such a scenario for themselves.

14 videos, in total 2h

2020-2021