Pavel Romaniko - Nostalgia Project

NOSTALGIA > TEXT

STATEMENT
The project "Nostalgia" consists of large photographic prints, objects, and video projections. The project is ongoing reflection on the forced migration and inherent interdependency of collective and private. With this work I explore solidity of perceptions based on images and their impact on collective memory and forgetting. Employing methodologies of early propaganda, and relying on archives of existing images, both public and private, I revisit some of the more iconic, historically, and politically significant spaces and recreated them out of paper and chipboard and then later photographed to only exist as images.

In the moments of cultural turmoil, when concepts and perceptions of truth are questioned and manipulated at the highest levels, examples of some of the worst social experiments in human history should stand illuminated. The work Nostalgia was started in 2008 as reflection on such historical precedents. At that time the president Putin of Russia in a push to keep power increased his pressure on the country's remaining institutes of democracy, while maintaining the appearance of pseudo democratic state. Putin's grasp on power reminded of the porosity of monolithic concepts of freedom, truth and justice in still very young democratic state. Putin Russia's ruling elite seemed longingly keen on returning to the shores of its Soviet past, systematically and meticulously encroaching onto its own peoples' freedoms and liberties.

With the instinct of a constrictor snake, the state stifled the remaining free mass media, publishing industry, and any other dissent, and unleashed text-book propaganda to incite public opinion, both internally and abroad. The majority of the country, as if it were an unfortunate coma patient that had never fully regained consciousness, was returned to its life support–a collective euphoria of Soviet past grandeur. Echoing and even surpassing the magnitude of Soviet-day propaganda, leaflets, posters, radio broadcasts and newspaper headlines migrated to the digital walls of social media networks and high definition television screens, flooding them with disinformation and fake news. As a rule, propaganda relies on marginalizing the physicality of perception and false logic. It focuses one’s attention on images as a primary source of interrogating the world, constantly reinforcing the collective euphoria. In that frenzy, one no longer acts, recollects, and forgets alone; one does all of these things as a whole–as a nation and as a fine-tuned collective body and mind that resides in one big communal apartment with a shared kitchen and bathroom.

The separate rooms of the collective and private are not connected by a corridor, as one may perceive. Neither do they seamlessly lead into each other or symbiotically interact. Quite on the contrary, the collective and private collapse onto one another, and weave into a single plane of fabric that if torn will rupture and expose the cogs and mechanisms of manipulation, orchestration and tyranny of the propaganda machines. In an attempt to pull apart some of this fabric, the images, objects, and videos that makeup Nostalgia put into question concepts of personal recollections and private spaces, comprising a schematic of personal bewilderment.
RUSSIA
PORTRAIT
COMMISSIONS
PHANAGORIA
PRINTER EXERCISE
DIY JOSEPH KOSUTH
FILM
VIDEO
BIO
PRESS
CONTACT

Untitled (Accident), 2016

Untitled (Accident), 2016
archival pigment print
16x20

Untitled (Cup 2), 2016

Untitled (Cup) v2.0, 2016
archival pigment print
27x35

Untitled (TV II), 2016

Untitled (TV II), 2015
archival pigment print
16x24

Untitled (Celebration), 2016

Untitled (Celebration), 2016
archival pigment print
27x35

Untitled (Leak), 2016

Untitled (Leak), 2016
archival pigment print
18x24

Untitled (Tile), 2017

Untitled (Tile), 2017
archival pigment print
18x24

Untitled (Room), 2015

Untitled (Room), 2015
archival pigment print
24x35

Untitled (TV), 2014

Untitled (TV I), 2014
archival pigment print
25x36

Untitled (Kitchen)

Untitled (Windows), 2016
archival pigment print
30x45

Untitled (Room III), 2014

Untitled (Room III), 2014
archival pigment print
25x40

Untitled (Room), 2014
archival pigment print
25x40

Untitled (Kitchen), 2009
archival pigment print
22x32

Untitled (Meeting), 2014
archival pigment print
24x36

Untitled (White Room), 2014
archival pigment print
24x50

Untitled (Petrograd), 2016
archival pigment print
36x26

Untitled (Smolny), 2014
archival pigment print
44x30

Untitled (Stairwell), 2008
archival pigment print
24x30

Untitled (Work Desk), 2008
archival pigment print
30x24

Untitled, 2008
archival pigment print
24x32

Untitled (Dobychina's Bureau), 2008
archival pigment print
22x32

Untitled (Kuntsevo), 2010
archival pigment print
24x34

Untitled, 2008
archival pigment print
24x31

Untitled (Cage), 2012
archival pigment print
20x25

Untitled, 2008
archival pigment print
30x25

Untitled (Radio), 2011
archival pigment print
22x30

Untitled, 2008
archival pigment print
24x32

Untitled, 2008
archival pigment print
24x30

Untitled (Lesnaya Street), 2010
archival pigment print
22x32