VItalii Atanasov

Desalinate A Sea, Build A City, Blow Up The Sun

2023,
video installation, 15'12''

Within this video installation, the artist weaves together Soviet chronicles, fragments drawn from Ukrainian TV archives, and found footage. These elements come together, illuminating a personal connection to the depicted geographies. Profound human impact, with extensive earthwork, immense water manipulation, and significant energy consumption, has led to a local disaster, ushering in a new environmental reality. Here, emerging communities adapt, and the lines between natural and artificial blur. Picturesque landscapes find no place within this perspective, etched from the soaring flight of a drone and normalized amidst the crucible of warfare's impact. The video embarks on an exploration of societal imaginaries across various epochs. It grapples with the haunting specter of nuclear conflict, rekindled from the ashes of the Cold War, casting a shadow over our societies. In the USSR, the juxtaposition of utopian ideology with environmental consequences contributed to shaping what we now identify as the "developed" Anthropocene. Later, neoliberal managerialism converges with the realms of extractive capitalism and normalized corruption. This work weaves narratives, embracing the environment, non-human entities, and former collective farmers intricately bound to local ecologies. The video unveils an alternate realman - an ever-evolving seascape, shaped over millennia. A core theme emerges, highlighting disparities in time, space, and species. Amidst this backdrop, we cannot overlook the harsh reality of the fossil fuel empire's brutal war.