Models for the New Old Future

Abstract

The Geological Trilogy by Dmitry Morozov (::vtol::) is a contemporary interaction with the Soviet colonial project. The artist explores the ambiguity of the Soviet through construction of robotic models that turn out to be models of social processes: the production of the present on the material process of the ancient or recent past. Each of the installations of the trilogy is based on a physically repeatable process: the phase transition and cooling of a meteorite (Guest), the drying and filling of takirs with water (Takir), the drilling of solid earth (“12,262”). Spatially, the works construct a model of the Soviet modernist project of the colonization of nature: from the cosmic heights to the earth to 12 thousand kilometres deep. Each of these objects is transported to the original site in order to verify the accuracy of the physical model of the place and transcend its abandonment. We must be careful when we examine parts of the trilogy for we may find ourselves looking upon an abandoned future.