LOST TERRITORIES
Lost Territories is project about former soviet republics by Sputnik Photos
Lost Territories
Over the course of the past eight years (2008–16), members of the international, Poland-based Sputnik Photos collective have set out to separately survey the physical, political, and sociocultural terrain of a post-Soviet region in which timelines don’t always agree to unfold chronologically and a spectral Empire, a quarter century after its fragmentation, refuses to be consigned to the dustbin of memory. In the process, the collective’s journeying photographers have amassed an archive comprising several thousand photographs geographically and thematically spanning the breadth of the former Soviet Union. The basis for exhibitions, monographic photobooks, and site-specific installations, these images have now been gathered together under Sputnik’s overarching Lost Territories Archive { LTA } project.Bright Night
{ LTA 4 }Bright Night is a new on-line show by Adam Pańczuk. You can find it here.
I was long searching for a key that would help me render the 25 years which passed since the Soviet Union collapse but also allow me to indicate what will happen next. The other day I came across Erich Fromm’s “The Forgotten language” and in the foreword I read that the nightmare of the World War II was actually envisaged in people’s dreams a decade before it broke out. I found out that in the 30s of the last century German patients of the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustaw Jung suffered from nightmares with obsessive symbols of fear and desperation mixed with symbols of violence. These images were obviously envisaging the coming war. Now, when Russia’s imperialistic ambitions revive I am curious how this is reflected in the subconscious of the citizens in firmer Soviet Union republics. I want to tell astory about fears, hopes and the reality filtered through the subconscious. I have already visited the Baltic States, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Belarus, and Tajikistan.Supported by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
Installation preview
The New End
{ LTA 4 }International Meetings of Photography, / Plovdiv, Bulgaria / 16.10-31.10.2020
{ LTA 4 } City Art Gallery, Plovdiv (BL) / Curator: Sebastian Cichocki Extensive photographic archives, and Sputnik Photos are one of them, permit almost any kind of statement – they are easily reconfigured, reshuffled, and their meanings are adaptable. The photos selected for the New End show staged by the Arsenal Gallery have provided a basis for a narrative with an explicitly cautious, eco-political tone. The adopted futurological perspective presupposes geological time (applying to rock formation processes) and, consequently, rejects the concept of time that is measured with individual human lives. This exercise in imagination – viewing a photographic archive what it could be like in the future, in several hundred or even thousand years – turns the collection into a prophecy; it can be looked at through the prism of a slowly approaching catastrophe that will sooner or later hit the human race exploiting natural resources, damaging the environment and exterminating more and more species (including itself). This is a set of hypothetical ‘postcards’ sent to us from the era that will come after the Anthropocene, or the geological period characterized by massive expansion of Homo sapiens.Supported by the Polish Ministry of Culture and National Heritage.
Installation preview
PALIMPSEST
{ LTA 10 }Scotiabank Contact Photography Festival / Toronto, Canada / 29.04-31.05.2019
Over the course of eight years, from 2008 to 2016, members of the international, Poland-based Sputnik Photos collective set out independently to explore the physical, political, and sociocultural terrain of post-Soviet regions. In the process, the collective built a composite documentary record comprised of several thousand photographs that geographically and thematically span the breadth of the former Soviet Union. Rather than adopting a photojournalist or documentary approach to generate visual narratives, Sputnik Photos have approached their archive conceptually, compiling images into the overarching Lost Territories Archive (LTA) project. LTA is the basis for an ongoing sequence of exhibitions, books, and installations by the collective. Each of the emerging themes touches upon an important aspect of the post-Soviet area. Curator: Bonnie RubinsteinInstallation preview
RIBOCA 1/ Art Biennal
{ LTA 9 } Riga International Biennal of Contemporary Art , Riga Latvia (LV) Former Biology Faculty / State University of Latvia Curator: Katerina GregosWordbook/Exhibition
{ LTA 7 } Pix House Gallery, Poznań (PL) / Curator: Rafal Milach Wordbook, for which Sputnik commissioned nearly one hundred short texts from twenty-one authors (essayists and journalists, novelists and poets, political scientists and historians, artists and curators—and sometimes the journalists are poets and vice versa) charged with the express mission of drafting, oddly enough, a Soviet and post-Soviet lexicon with missing words in order to compile a dictionary with missing definitions. Although upon closer inspection, the Wordbook in fact reveals itself to be a dictionary of missing definitions, crazy-quilted together from the kinds of “truth told slant” illuminations you’re unlikely to find in a definitive reference book or citable treatise. Ranging from the analytic to the anecdotal, and encompassing both epochal shifts and diaristic asides, the polyphonic dispatches contained herein share in common the potential to remind us that far from distorting the truth, the filtering of an objective reality through a subjective literariness may help to intuit that truth’s most unfathomable recesses and to grasp its most elusive contours. Stefan LorenzuttiPhantom
{ LTA 6 } Arsenal Gallery, Kiev (UA) / Curator: Katheryna Radchenko A white sheet of hopes and imposed persuasion of ideal existence are one of the signs of the Lost Territories, or state systems engendering simulacra of reality – phantoms. Jean Baudrillard compares the map of the territory with the territory itself – with the original. He says that the map (as a simulation) is no longer a simulation of the territory, but a synthesized model of a real without origin or reality. The territory no longer precedes the map, nor does it survive it. To simulate means to pretend that you have something you do not really have. The simulation calls into question the distinction between "true" and "false," between "real" and "imaginary." Thus, new content forms old systems. A path to an ideal system of existence goes through the creation of illusions on the social level or in everyday life, through belief into new images and symbols, which results, sooner or later, in the collapse of the system, the images, and the ideas. This exhibition brings together the works which reflect the idea of formation an ideal social space, casts doubt on the long-term viability of utopian systems, and visualize transformations in the former Soviet states.Control
{ LTA 5 } Fotohof Gallery, Salzburg (A) / Curator: Sputnik Photos in collaboration with Gordon Macdonald & Paweł Szypulski Until recently, nearly 30 years after the fall of the iron curtain, history seemed to have left us for good. As a result, the Sputnik Photos photographers started to look for its remnants in the lost territories of the former Soviet empire. On the border between Europe and Asia, we were revisiting our childhood traumas of being fed by gross propaganda, believing that our own experience gave us a unique tool – the right cognitive perspective. We were the West and the East at the same time. We were you and them at the same time. To our surprise, we soon found that history started to return quickly and unnoticed. The mechanisms of authoritarian systems we remembered and were investigating in the post-soviet republics started to re-appear in our own, ‘western’ reality. The dictatorships of Central Asia or the Caucasus use the same methods of fear management and dividing society as those present in the politics of right wing parties in France or Germany, and even more so, in Poland or Hungary. The Lost Territories project was conceived as a study of the post-soviet countries 25 years after the fall of the Soviet Union. Initially, we planned to look at how the authorities of the distant republics disciplined their societies and created monuments of their own glory. Meanwhile, LTs have become a mirror of the profound changes in the modern world – it denies the concept of the ‘end of history,’ and witnesses the return of nationalisms, as well as the growingly sophisticated methods of control over societies.The New End
{ LTA 4 } Arsenal Gallery, Bialystok (PL) / Curator: Sebastian Cichocki Extensive photographic archives, and Sputnik Photos are one of them, permit almost any kind of statement – they are easily reconfigured, reshuffled, and their meanings are adaptable. The photos selected for the New End show staged by the Arsenal Gallery have provided a basis for a narrative with an explicitly cautious, eco-political tone. The adopted futurological perspective presupposes geological time (applying to rock formation processes) and, consequently, rejects the concept of time that is measured with individual human lives. This exercise in imagination – viewing a photographic archive what it could be like in the future, in several hundred or even thousand years – turns the collection into a prophecy; it can be looked at through the prism of a slowly approaching catastrophe that will sooner or later hit the human race exploiting natural resources, damaging the environment and exterminating more and more species (including itself). This is a set of hypothetical ‘postcards’ sent to us from the era that will come after the Anthropocene, or the geological period characterized by massive expansion of Homo sapiens.Fruit Garden
{ LTA 3 } Published by Sputnik Photos (2016) / Edited by: Rafal Milach Initially a strip-mined cross section of the consequences of anthropocentric appropriation, Fruit Garden begins to unfold as a photographic field guide of sorts, albeit one that leads the viewer less to bird than to cage; less to tree than to coil of wire painfully binding its bark; less to Arcadian landscape than to post-Soviet landfill; and less to primordial habitat than to the slabbed pavement beneath which primeval memory has been suppressed. Tweezers in hand, Fruit Garden’s archaeological dig of a survey extends to a meticulous scrutinization of the doctrinal mindset underpinning Michurin’s axiom; and of the ways in which, during the reign of the Soviet Union, its repeated and obsessive implementation on a society-wide scale left in ideology’s wake a razed expanse of human ecologies and psychologies, here represented by unseen tribes of damaged individuals, scarred for life by a regime’s dehumanizing regimen of invasive scientific experimentation, and yet doggedly clinging to some semblance of a makeshift existence going forward. But the psychic and subcutaneous wound (a deep one) continues to fester, and the branding of objectified body and degraded soul has yet to fade. Clinically detached research can indeed be unspeakably violent, and a tour of its archive a veritable horror show.“We cannot wait for favors from Nature. To take them from it – that is our task.”
Ivan Vladimirovich Michurin*Sediment
{ LTA 2 } Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw (PL) / Curator: Paweł Szypulski The presentation in the Centre for Contemporary Art in Warsaw is the first of a series of exhibitions, which will be created under the project "Lost Territories." In a period of eight years (2008-2016), members of the Sputnik Photos worked in the former USSR. An archive consisting of several thousand photographs was created, entitled "Lost Territories Archive," which became the basis for exhibitions, books, and installations. Each of the emerging narratives will touch upon another important aspect of the post-Soviet area.Wordbook
{ LTA 1 } Wordbook, for which Sputnik commissioned nearly one hundred short texts from twentyone authors (essayists and journalists, novelists and poets, political scientists and historians, artists and curators and sometimes the journalists are poets and vice versa) charged with the express mission of drafting, oddly enough, a Soviet and post-Soviet lexicon with missing words in order to compile a dictionary with missing definitions.Phase Zero
{ LTA 0 } Cricoteca, Krakow (PL) / Curator: Paweł Szypulski Before setting off on their journey, the photographers struggle through a thicket of signs. They find points of reference and inspiration, as well as the clichés they will need to confront. They study documents and books, browse through iconic and utterly unknown images, and watch film classics and YouTube videos. Based on the words of others, they build a foundation for their own expression—phase zero of their own project. The installation Lost Territories on Kraków Photomonth "Phase Zero" is an attempt to capture the moment in the development of a project when everything is still fluid and possible, when new images start to form out of a cluster of overlapping meanings or interlocking and interacting quotes. It is a model of a small fraction of the complex ecosystem out of which the Lost Territories photographs have grown.JAN BRYKCZYNSKI
Born in 1979, is a documentary photographer based in Warsaw, Poland. In his work he often focuses on rural regions of Europe. Jan graduated from the Faculty of Photography at the National Film School in Lodz. In 2014 he has published his first book “Boiko” on rural life in Ukrainian Carpathian Mountains followed by “The Gardener” book, published by Dewi Lewis.
ANDREI LIANKEVICH
Andrei Liankevich, photographer, lecturer and art manager, based in Minsk (Belarus). In 2004-2005, he studied at the Caucasus Media Institute in Yerevan. Andrei teaches a photography course at the European Humanities University in Vilnius (Lithuania). He has presented his photographic work at more than 60 exhibitions in Europe, Asia and the USA.
MICHAL LUCZAK
Michal Łuczak works in Warsaw, lives in Katowice, and often draws on his Silesian roots. In photography, he concentrates on close-by, intimate and often seemingly trivial stories. He is a graduate in photography from the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava (Czech Republic) and in Iberian Studies from the University of Silesia (Poland).
RAFAL MILACH
Rafal Milach (1978) photographer, book artist and curator based in Warsaw, Poland. He graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice (PL) and the Institute for Creative Photography at the Silesian University in Opava, (CZ) where he currently lectures. Rafał has published several monographs such as “The Winners” (GOST 2014), In the Car with R (Czytelnia Sztuki 2012) and 7 Rooms (Kehrer 2011)
ADAM PANCZUK
Adam Pańczuk (1978) lives in Warsaw. In his work, he travels to wherever he can find an interesting subject. He attended the Warsaw School of Economics and studied photography at the Multimedia Communication Department, Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan. In his projects, Pańczuk seems to be asking both direct and metaphorical questions about identity, consciousness and the attitude towards life of the people he meets along the way. His unique ability to tell gripping, yet intimate stories with images has to date won him many prestigious awards.
AGNIESZKA RAYSS
Agnieszka Rayss freelance photojournalist based in Warsaw, Poland. She received her Master’s degree in Art History from the Jagiellonian University (Krakow, Poland). She then switched to photography. Her interests include post-communist societies in their attempt to follow Western models, pop cultural aspects of the transformation, female and gender issues.
ANDREJ BALCO
Andrej Balco is based in Bratislava, Slovakia. He received his Master’s degree in photography from the Institute of Creative Photography in Opava, (Czech Republic). His work has been exhibited at the Prague House of Photography, the Leica Gallery (Prague), the Festival of Photography in Lodz (Poland), as well as in England, Australia, the Netherlands, Finland, Brazil and Japan. Andrej is the winner of a PhotoDocument.sk grant and a fellow of the IPRN Changing Faces international programme.
Pawel Szypulski
Curator, visual researcher and artist interested in a wide variety of archival materials. Regularly cooperates with the Krakow Photomonth festival. Anthropologist by education, specialized in the analysis of visual and written personal testimonies. Author of the book "Greetings from Auschwitz”.
Ania Nałęcka-Milach
Book designer (alias Tapir Book Design), collaborating with Sputnik Photos.
Marta Szymańska
Vice-president in Archeology of Photography Foundation – organization involved in the protection of archives of Polish photographers. Since 2005, she has been working for Fotofestiwal – International Festival of Photography in Lodz, becoming it’s Program Director for years 2010-2014. An author of a portal for photographers www.phototogo.pl which collects current information about the most important international cultural events. Works with Sputnik Photos collective.
Marzena Michałek-Dąbrowska
Sputnik Photos project coordinator. She has graduated from University of Warsaw at the department of Cultural Studies and cultural animation. She is involved in various cultural events and educational programs for children and adults.
Magdalena Gorlas
Specializes in promotion of projects and cultural institutions, among others, Fotografia Kolekcjonerska Project, Foundation of Archeology of Photography and the Photo Festival – International Photography Festival in Lodz. She's been cooperating with the Sputnik Photos collective for many years. Also, she's freelance journalist. So far published, among others, in the "Chicago Tribune", "Polityka" and "Wysokie Obcasy"
Vojtech Veskrna
Photographer and video artist based in Warsaw, Poland. He graduated from Film and Tv School of Academy of Performing Arts in Prague, Czech Republic. For more than 7 years he is working on topics related to technology, his dreams and future.