Tkachenko Danila

Born in 1989 in Moscow. Graduated from the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia (2014). Received a number of international prizes, including the European Publishers Award for Photography and a Burn Magazine grant. Was listed as a Foam Talent (2013, Amsterdam). Lives and works in Moscow.

Planetarium

Travelling through the abandoned cities and towns of the far North, I explore the phenomenon of Russia’s internal colonization. The historian Vasily Klyuchevsky considered the internal colonization of Russia a key factor in the history of the country: “The history of Russia is the history of the country which is being colonized.”
The Soviet Union was a prime example of internal colonization, practicing the forced relocation of entire peoples to distant and previously unpopulated lands. The Soviet utopia, which promised social justice and a happy life, had aspirations far beyond the limits of developed territories — reaching to the far North and to outer space.
Large-scale projects to develop the North mostly proved useless, leaving behind the traumatic traces of abandoned cities, created by the totalitarian will and the regime’s need for resources, built by the hands of prisoners in the permafrost.
Using portable flashes, I light up empty apartments in memory of the lives snuffed out by a totalitarian utopia.