Modular storytelling, wherein various parts in various media interconnect through associative links - installation, newspaper article, live talk supplying on the one hand different content and interpretations of an event, and on the other containing links set up between the different parts.

Mafiya

Two-part videoinstallation, based on events that took place in Moscow, spring 2003. Five screens, sound, drawings, wall sign.

Mafiya is a videoinstallation based on an encounter with an alleged sub-section of the Russian mafiya, comprised of a group of deaf people who had made the trainstations and local railwaylines in Moscow, specifically Kurskij station, into their own territory. The installation is an act of illusion both in form and in narrative, both of which the audience will physically move themselves through and simultaneously re-edit. Part of the illusion stems from the use of actors playing both themselves and a character at the same time, and also from the use of locations which are geographically and esthetically distant from but economically linked to Moscow.

The imagined film has been split up into its' component parts, consisting of filmed actors, footage of locations, sounds, and subtitles. The subtitles for the conversation of the handsigning actors at the railway bar are placed in the room next to the film, and is comprised of quotes taken from various criminal manifestoes. The sound for the installation is the same for both rooms, and ties them together: trashy Russian pop played from the loudspeakers of a railwaystation, occasionally interrupted by a voice announcing train arrivals and departures at various platforms.

The locations used for the film are found in two areas of Istanbul with a heavy Russian influence. One of these areas is Laleli, where Russian women come as suitcase traders to buy up cheap clothes, which are then smuggled into and sold at outdoor markets in Russia. Signs in the area are written in Russian, and young Russian-speaking men from Moldavia are hired as doormen for retailers and smallscale freight companies. The other area is Karaköy, where three Russian orthodox churches have been built on the roofs of apartmentbuildings, to be kept out of sight during the reign of former governments which were strongly secularised. This is where Russian women working illegaly in Istanbul, in private health and child care, come to meet during weekends. Russian words painted directly on the walls of the apartment buildings lead them up the stairs to the church on the roof.

Also included in the installation is a wallsign in stainless steel, and some drawings with a map of the territory and with the facade of the station.

Recorded fall 2009 during a residency at the IASPIS studio at Platform Garantì in Istanbul. Premiered at Kalmar Konstmuseum. 

Bonus material: storyboards for a melodramatic silent movie, following two guys from the people at the tables in video one. Trailer detailing my first encounter with the people at Kurskij railwaystation.

Storyboards (unused):

Stills from trailer (unused):