Collection

The “Zaum Tractor” installation is a suggestive picture of post-Soviet Russia created by a duo of artists working in Australia: Sonia Leber (b. 1959) and David Chesworth (b. 1958). “Zaum Tractor” was presented at the Venice Biennale in 2015. This two-channel installation, created during the artists’ residency in Rostov-on-Don, consists of fragments of archival recordings with propaganda images of Soviet modernisation, intertwined with recordings of a contemporary drill of Cossack cadets, festivity, playtime and a concert of church bells. The whole is complemented by recitations of poetry in the abstract “zaum” language created by one of the Russian futurists, Alexei Kruchenykh (1886-1968) – the phrases of the “transrational” language (from the Russian word “zaumniy”) are spoken against the background of paintings depicting the constructivist architecture of the Soviet Union, today largely neglected and derelict. The pathos of Great Russia and the communist utopia are confronted in a clash with a language devoid of meaning and images of post-Soviet erosion. The work shows how innovative film solutions (multi-channel screening or video installations involving the viewer) allow us to create a multi-channel and often fragmentary narrative, which allows us to look at remembrance and history in a revisionist way.