labor Camp can be viewed as an attempt to create a projective utopian situation: colonization of Venice by Russia resulting in transforming the Venetian Isles into VeniceLag (Venetian labor Camp).
The model of Venice is a complex exchange of forms and identities referring to three dimensional models by suprematists and constructivists. In terms of genesis the work is close to Armahani’s social criticism and cities by Simonds and Thomas Schutte and serves as a dark warning: our culture will bear traces of destruction and evil until we confess our totalitarian past.

A model is a visualization of social behavior. The status of the model serves here as a reference point as in Tatlin’s and Van-Dujsberg’s models where in can have some practical value. So there is still a myth about penal camp economy and slave labour having economic attractiveness despite its unprofitability and eyewash.

Drafts of devises developed by Austrian psychoanalyst and mystic Vilhelm Reich serve as a crucial supplement. They help to control behavior of the citizens and their needs and wants. These analogs of modern mass media are also presented at the exhibition, for example the Cloudbuster — a super powerful wave generator. Orgonic Power is a term used by Vilhelm Reich to describe the imaginary universal power of life connected with desire. The device made of brass pipes and magic crystals accumulates desire and takes certain values to crisis, generating dizziness and chaos.
Exhibiting drafts and models the author presents the creative process from the original concept to the final result of the imaginary future showing flexibility and softness of historic memory, historic process being incomplete and variable.

Venetian Penal Camp Model, wood, wire, LEDs

 

Inversion Painting on rusty iron, neon