"Still Life with a Suitcase"

An interactive, mixed media installation on Russian transnational migration.

Still Life with a Suitcase is an interactive video installation. It is based on forty-five interviews with Russian transnational migrants conducted in Moscow, Paris, Berlin and New York.

The installation is set up on multiple projection surfaces: a video plays on a screen and it is simultaneously video-mapped onto a suitcase, which stands in front of the screen. This suitcase is a family heirloom that lay dormant under the bed of our Moscow apartment for the last 40 years. Since I began the installation project, I have been traveling with it, first using it to transport all my film equipment during production of the installation, and now, carrying all the projection and electronic equipment needed to exhibit it.

Exhibitions

Solo:

CASCA-Cuba: Contrapunteo-Counterpoints. Santiago de Cuba, Cuba. May 16-20.

Group:

Toronto Media Arts Centre. July 25-August 9, 2019. Exhibited with Imagined Places: four linoprints based on digital composites mapping my research and migration trajectories.

Special Presentations:

Anthropology Graduate Student Association. The University of British Columbia. Vancouver. January 10, 2019.

CityLab: Berlin. Norwich University. Berlin. December 1, 2017. Group exhibition: Digital Anthropologies/Anthropologies Numériques. (World Premiere). Paris. November 15-19, 2017. (preview)

Trailer

Installation documentation

Whenever I arrived to interview installation participants, I brought the suitcase along, asking them to momentarily place an object they found significant to their migration journey inside it. Filming us as we engaged in this "staged encounter," I also asked participants to describe the significance of their chosen object, later editing these conversations into short vignettes.

Still Life with a Suitcase is also a multi-media project, because in my effort to engage with my participants' stories, I recreated a dozen objects participants chose for our interview using clay. Because the original objects were no longer accessible to me, I created these artifacts using images from our interviews. Walter Benjamin argued that the process of photo-mechanical reproduction results in the loss of "aura," (1936:22), replacing the authenticity of the original objects with "trace" (1936:21). By creating artifacts from digital images, I metaphorically tried to restore the objects' "aura".







Finally, Still Life with a Suitcase is an interactive project, because each clay figurine was programmed to synchronize with the edited vignette related to the participant who contributed the original object. I set up the suitcase to digitally "read" these objects working together with a digital media specialist, Adam Siroky. Adam designed and programmed object-recognition hardware, placed inconspicuously inside the suitcase, which launched a corresponding vignette each time an object came within range of its sensor. This meant that when an audience member placed an object into the suitcase, a video corresponding to this object began playing on the screen, showing videos of research participants as they talked about and placed their objects inside the suitcase.

Installation images