Guerilla Gardening Video, 2018
Digital HD video 13:30
NB! The artwork does not have fixed measurements
Guerilla Gardening Video (13:30) was inspired by an archival photograph from besieged Leningrad. To survive hunger people used the city flower-beds to plant vegetables. As it is known now, there was strict censorship on depicting the everyday life of the city. Only a few photographers were commissioned to make stage shots for mostly propagandistic usage. One could see smiling people surrounded by rich crops, and only statistics of hunger victims could show the real horror behind the scenes. The artist’s performative video depicts a repetitive ritual of harvesting. Conflating a contemporary culture of guerrilla gardening with a historical reenactment, she makes interventions in the flowerbeds nearby recognisable landmarks in several European cities. As a sound work, she recites the excerpts from the Siege diaries, where she takes an enumeration of food items which were common for hunger times.