This piece is a video loop montaged from found footage of televisions, observed in Soviet films of the 1970s–80s. The audio consists of appropriated audio from USSR promotions for then-new TV models, together with sounds of domestic background noise appropriated from Soviet films.
Incidental Television in Soviet Films is an extension of an ongoing study of domestic objects in Soviet films, focusing on the background, or mise en scène, of fictional spaces that were designed to be relatable imitations of domesticity in delivering family and socially oriented dramatic narratives. This piece investigates the fictionalization and idealization of domestic life in manufactured culture, comparing the melancholic or inward space of private domesticity with the broad scope of socialist propaganda. Thinking beyond the surface of cultural nostalgia prevalent in post-Soviet diasporic experience, the piece evaluates the cultural narrative of an era and its potentiality to implicitly carry ideological memory and imagination through to the present time. Although the subject matter comes from a cultural experience specific to post-communist diaspora, my motivations are also ontological, addressing parallels to broad concepts of materialism, consumerism, and ideologically-driven production of culture in general.
Sasha Opeiko 