Kathie Halfin

In this project I represent the lack of privacy and impossibility to avoid public intervention and propaganda into private space. The analysis of constructivist ideas and the Stalinist epoch provides a background for my work. Since the beginning of the twentieth century constructivists regarded personal space as a platform for revolutionary ideals. Later it turned into the persecution of people who didn’t adhere to this ideals and resulted in a full-scale massacre during the Stalinist epoch.

​

In my work I combine formal components of domestic reality and constructivist theatrical elements. The shape of the megaphones disturbs the consciousness, but their outdated appearance resembles more of a toy then a real object. Their past revolutionary function is mixed in a weird surrealist combination with the domestic textures of linoleum, small fetishized plants, and long legged night tables.

I used the sound of knocking, which I produce in the space, as a metaphor to mental and physical interventions into the private space. I refer to the memoirs of Russian people who struggled with and suffered from the system. They were threatened by a real possibility to be interrupted by the sound of knocking of secret police officers and to be thrown into prison at any moment.The threatening sound of knocking comes from different locations and creates the sense of instability and dislocation.  I aim to cope with collective fears, habits, and myths that still haunt people and provide sense of personal slavery and inaction.