The Empire of Never
[the text is censored for obvious reasons]
This series is a natural reaction of the body to the changes unfolding in Russia. My homeland is a corporation controlled by shareholders. My homeland is a poverty of hope amid technological abundance. Silence, steeped in fear. We are trapped in a cyberpunk dystopia.
Even time here loses its continuity, dissolving into a formless, viscous loop of waiting for something. The illusion of free will mirrors computer games: scripted narratives with limited choices. Non-player characters, passing cars, the wind—everything moves along its own animation cycle, maintaining only the appearance of life. Cyclical time without the possibility of choosing actions is the absence of time at all. Nothing in the game can truly die, and as long as humanity exists, the game itself—like any digital product—can persist indefinitely.
This series is an act of violence born from mercy. Using a thermal-print toy camera, I wrench people, walls, and trees from their digital purgatory into physical reality. The thermal printing process allows me to preserve the discrete nature of digital objects and their main function — to be an image, to depict — transmuting the binary code zeros and ones, into their physical analogue — black and white.
Printing unleashes time. Time brings death. Due to the chemical properties of the thermal paper, the image begins to fade immediately after printing, with the speed of decay depending on external factors such as temperature and direct sunlight.
By triggering time, I trigger death.
And at last, I let them die.
