MFA Razavi Bita

Outlands: The Museum of Soviet unpleasantness and future landscapes

Tieteellinen tutkimus ja taiteellinen työ / niihin pohjautuva työ | Yksivuotinen

Outlands: Museum of Soviet unpleasantness is a portable museum. Since 2015 I have been discovering and photographing abandoned houses in Baltic area. The starting point was the attempt to understand the growing xenophobia that affected me in a personal level. The xenophobia that raised with the arrival of the new wave of refugees in 2015. What caused the panic and outrageous fear of the refugees in East Europe? Why have these people forgotten that many of their own citizens were once refugees? More I’m investigating this xenophobic nationalism, more I find it connected with the succession of national traumas of historic proportions in the region. In eastern Europe, where borders were frequently redrawn, the nation is still widely seen as an ethnic entity rather than a political one, and cultural and ethnic homogeneity is regarded as an asset that helps to prevent the disintegration of the state. During the World War II, and Soviet era, millions in the region have sought to escape from oppression and genocide and left their houses behind. I study and photograph these abandoned houses and try to connect with the lives of people who emigrated from the region. My other work, Outlands: Future landscapes, consists of a series of photographs, game playing videos, and lectures by teenagers. It deals with different forms of control from various systems such as state, institutions, or digital domain over human. These super organisms that beyond any individual's power rule us and embed