<Welcome to Communi-pitalism: Encounters in the Shadow of the Wish Machine>
WELCOME TO COMMUNI-PITALISM: ENCOUNTERS IN THE SHADOW OF THE WISH MACHINE vimeo.com/19878904
is a video essay inspired by the Russian science fiction novel, Roadside Picnic, by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. This work revisits Cold War narratives, post-utopian landscapes, and the 1980’s, through reexamining the visual cultures of the former USSR with the US from this period.
Culled from archival footage, speech excepts from Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, home movies, field recordings, and time-lapsed footage shot both in the Russian Federation and the US; these Cold War chronicles narrate the brutal history of these two former superpowers. This video was created in 2011 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the formation of the Russian Federation. As both Cold War structures crumbled, people dreamt of a third way between socialism and capitalism. Are there lessons to be learned now by venturing into Andrei Tarkovsky’s “zone?”