Forever lost: Nostalgic Series of Lost Futures is an interdisciplinary two-part project exploring nostalgia, ghost futures, and collective memory through the lens of creepy post-Soviet rituals.
First part is the solo dance performance, Do You Really Wanna Live Forever, created by choreographer Yulia Arsen in collaboration with experimental musician Wassily Bosch, where movements echo folk dance, Soviet athletic propaganda aesthetics, and postures shaped by cheap drug use. These collide with fragmented sound — distorted pop hits, ambient noise, and personal artifacts — creating a purgatorial space where time feels frozen, as if the artists are trapped inside a memory capsule — or have become that capsule themselves. At the heart of this experience lies an inability to truly express oneself or break free. This work embodies the absurdity of existence, where repetition, irony, and sincerity merge into a melancholic, yet strangely optimistic, loop.
The second part — Utrennik — is a multidisciplinary collective work by nine artists, where sound takes center stage — merging with video and performance into a form of total installation. It delves into the “utrennik” — a Soviet-era children’s “morning performance”, a ritual where cheap costumes and scripted magic barely concealed a deeper emptiness. For many who grew up in post-Soviet countries, the “utrennik” became a symbol of exhausting repetition, creation without creativity, happiness without hope. Here, it reemerges as a metaphor for broken promises and futures that never arrived. Time folds in on itself. Performers drift like ghosts. Nothing begins. Nothing ends. The space remains ambiguous — a school auditorium, a classroom, a New Year’s party, or a graduation ceremony? The audience is free to roam or linger quietly by the wall — like at those festive occasions where you never quite wanted to join in.
