Hopes and Echoes

A rural district near a city of Vladivostok was recently overtaken by promised futures. The project follows how they take shape in local myths, odd scenes and in Sputnik, a city always almost there.

«Lead a cow to the edge of the forest, hang a basket on its horns. The next day the cow will come out of the forest, and the basket will be full of fresh berries». This is how one early Soviet manual described "working" with peasants from central Russia, whose resettlement to the Far East was part of governmental efforts to develop sparsely populated territories such as the Nadezhdinsky District (literally District of Hopes) near Vladivostok. The existence of this manual is not confirmed by anything except a story told by a local.

The district was recently overtaken by promised futures. A bridge built for an APEC summit opened it to development. Since then a city called Sputnik has been announced, living only in press releases and marked on strange road signs. It hasn't been built. People live around it anyway, following their routines, telling stories and making sense of a future that appears everywhere except in reality.

In «Hopes and Echoes» I reconstructed scenes from conversations with residents, returning to the same locations and using earlier images as drafts for re-shooting. I also made a series of souvenirs bearing Sputnik's road sign. These objects confirm a place exists even when it only lives in headlines. Around these promises, a layer forms of local myths, inherited explanations and scenes that look staged even when they were not.