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Olga Kisseleva 26-10-2015
In St Petersburg we lived in a strange society: people were going to work and received their wages, but they could not buy anything with this money, because there was nothing in the shops. It was the State which gave everyone a ration: to eat, to dress, to fill a room or have a bed. Sometimes, the wealthiest could even have a car or a dacha, but not because they had earned more money by working, rather because they had connections within the Party Committee. And also, the government was sending all those who wanted to be different to prisons or mental hospitals.
One day we decided that it could no longer continue like this, and we made our perestroika. First there was more freedom, and there was nobody in prison, neither dissidents, nor thieves. We even turned some of the hospitals for mentally ill into hotels. Lately the government has again begun to put dissidents in prisons, but there were no more places for thieves.
It was then that money started to exist in Russia. First, thieves who were bored, and then some others, mounted joint ventures, start-ups and cooperatives. They brought from abroad some lots to sell and they earned a lot of money. Often, they killed each other because of that money. I think that right now many residue pieces of Troll’s Mirror entered their hearts. And the more fortunate started to use the largest pieces of the Mirror to make their windows and mirrors in their rooms.
Olga Kisseleva: , 26-10-2015, in: Archive of Digital Art In St Petersburg we lived in a strange society: people were going to work and received their wages, but they could not buy anything with this money, because there was nothing in the shops. It was the State which gave everyone a ration: to eat, to dress, to fill a room or have a bed. Sometimes, the wealthiest could even have a car or a dacha, but not because they had earned more money by working, rather because they had connections within the Party Committee. And also, the government was sending all those who wanted to be different to prisons or mental hospitals.
One day we decided that it could no longer continue like this, and we made our perestroika. First there was more freedom, and there was nobody in prison, neither dissidents, nor thieves. We even turned some of the hospitals for mentally ill into hotels. Lately the government has again begun to put dissidents in prisons, but there were no more places for thieves.
It was then that money started to exist in Russia. First, thieves who were bored, and then some others, mounted joint ventures, start-ups and cooperatives. They brought from abroad some lots to sell and they earned a lot of money. Often, they killed each other because of that money. I think that right now many residue pieces of Troll’s Mirror entered their hearts. And the more fortunate started to use the largest pieces of the Mirror to make their windows and mirrors in their rooms.
Olga Kisseleva 26-10-2015
Each piece of Troll mirror is composed of a part of a regular mirror, and part of a spherical mirror, like those that are used in a popular "hall of mirrors". This spherical part has a form of the U.S. dollar’s sign, as an international symbol of money. Thus, anything that is reflected in this part of the mirror is distorted, as the presence of money distorts our perception of the world. Faced with the installation, the viewer, who serves as a "filter", is confronted with the deformation of his own image, due to his choice of position in relation to money.
I was about five years old, when one winter evening, in snowy St Petersburg, my grandmother read me the story of the Snow Queen. In this Hans Christian Andersen story, the Troll mirror, in which everything that was good and beautiful becomes ugly and worthless, is broken by the Devil into millions of pieces as his servants fly to heaven in an attempt to show the Angels the mirror. These fragments of the mirror, now dispersed across the world, break and settle in human being's eyes and hearts making them see only that which is bad in the world or turning their hearts to ice. The window of my room was completely icy; it was impossible to see out, and I started to feel afraid of receiving a piece of the Troll’s mirror in my eye or in my heart. But at this time I wasn’t able to imagine what this mirror could look like.
Olga Kisseleva: , 26-10-2015, in: Archive of Digital Art Each piece of Troll mirror is composed of a part of a regular mirror, and part of a spherical mirror, like those that are used in a popular "hall of mirrors". This spherical part has a form of the U.S. dollar’s sign, as an international symbol of money. Thus, anything that is reflected in this part of the mirror is distorted, as the presence of money distorts our perception of the world. Faced with the installation, the viewer, who serves as a "filter", is confronted with the deformation of his own image, due to his choice of position in relation to money.
I was about five years old, when one winter evening, in snowy St Petersburg, my grandmother read me the story of the Snow Queen. In this Hans Christian Andersen story, the Troll mirror, in which everything that was good and beautiful becomes ugly and worthless, is broken by the Devil into millions of pieces as his servants fly to heaven in an attempt to show the Angels the mirror. These fragments of the mirror, now dispersed across the world, break and settle in human being's eyes and hearts making them see only that which is bad in the world or turning their hearts to ice. The window of my room was completely icy; it was impossible to see out, and I started to feel afraid of receiving a piece of the Troll’s mirror in my eye or in my heart. But at this time I wasn’t able to imagine what this mirror could look like.
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