Ostalgia
Ostalgia
is a photographic series developed during 2 years, between 2010 and
2012, born in the aftermath of a work of documentation for the Museum
of Architecture from Vienna. As a photographer, I was part of a
research group coordinated by the Museum whose mission was - under
the name "Soviet Modern" - locating, rescue and study the
Soviet archives related to the architecture that was promoted by the
former USSR in its 15 republics between the ‘60s and the ‘80’s.
The buildings documented in my travels for the purpose of this
research group, are most often large structures of heroic air
accompanied by huge oppressive public spaces where individuals are
swallowed. They may have been designed and built as an expression of
triumph while excessive public space and its correspondent small
private spaces show a will of control over individuals’ public and
even private life. Buildings, promoted by the regime, have bold
designs, sometimes experimental and were favored by the search for an
image of power, progress, prestige and economic success that should
have been able to legitimize any plans and actions of the leading
political powers. Big buildings that now may stand alike ridiculous
giants, big dreams invalidated by history while the decadent
atmosphere that reigns today in the former Soviet republics create a
physical and virtual space on which it is easy to project anxiety,
myths and nostalgia.
Pain of East
- if we insist on making a literal translation of the word and
concept Ostalgia - was born in 1989, after the fall of the Berlin
Wall. If there before, we did not appoint it until the former East
Germany, faced with rapid changes necessary for integration with its
western half, felt homesick for its old identity in the process of
dissolution. This yearning along with a certain sentimentality of the
West to the just rediscovered East created a new mythology about the
former East Germany and by extension, about East, of the former
Soviet bloc. In German, Ost means East. In Greek algos means pain.
Ostalgia is a linguistic alloy as impossible as the same desire to
reconstruct something that might not have ever been there.
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