The movie is based on the Strugatsky Brothers’ novel of the same name. Distant future. Several researchers set off from the Earth to the planet Arkanar. The inhabitants there lives in the Middle Ages. The aim of the scientists is to cautiously steer the alien society along the humanist path. They cannot kill. But in the whirlwind of bloody developments the protagonist Rumata Estorsky makes his choice to save local “bookworms” from perdition. Disregarding the rules he stops being a mere observer.
The ancient city-state Gamsutl is an abandoned Avar settlement cut in the rocks to make it self-sufficient and impregnable for conquerors. It is situated at one of the forks of the Great Silk Road and is known for its jewellers and armourers.
Videorecording of plastic compositions accompanied by noise machines and theatrical recitation made on the 5th and 6th of November 2013. The project was completed as part of the DNK (Dom Novoi Kultury / House of New Culture) initiative by the Moscow crew and young dancers and musicians rom Yekaterinburg.
The film opens with a diary entry by the main character. He is suffering from an unnamed illness and leaves the hospital to search for the famous “baths of youth”. His seemingly tourist-like itinerary passes through a local botanical garden, a unique open-air swimming pool with sea water and the forest-covered foothills on the south bank of the Crimea.
A video essay, a part of the project dealing with human memory. The work is constructed like a telegraph: an off-screen voice reads some text and the video “responds” to it.
The author worked with Vladimir Sorokin’s short story “Queue”, trying to construct a situation where the boundaries of time are fluid and vague. Thus she intended to concentrate on the themes that are most important to her – impermeability, hysterics, dependence and clanship.
It is a manifesto of an artist, a young artist. A manifesto of honesty to herself and the world. A manifesto of being part of art and performing practice. A manifesto of presenting her real self, beautiful or not, charming or disgusting, with all her doubts, quests, whims and prejudices.
“Thanks to language a poem has the capacity to disappear, nothing in it can any longer be mistaken for something solid, objective, materialized” writes Charles Burnsitn in his essay about introective poetry. In Anna Tolkachyova’s work the poem of Burnstin himself is divided into repetitive elements.
The work has been made as part of the project of the cultural centre “Bactria” “Artist – Society”. On the 6th of October 2011 the authors met at the Gafurov airport near the ancient town of Khujand (the present Leninabad) to find a certain person.
