Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi (both 1942) have been celebrated pioneers of working with archival film material since the 1970s. Committed to making ruptures in history visible, they don’t consider their practice a form of archeology; rather, they approach historical materials as an object of the present.
Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi travelled to Leningrad/St. Petersburg in the late 1980s, at the time of Perestroika. Part of their quest was to meet the last living representatives of the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s and 1930s, to record their memories without political overlays, before they disappeared forever. In addition to the films, many watercolour illustrations were made by Ricci Lucchi, accompanied by notes of their impressions.
Their ‘Journey to Russia’ (1989-2017) comprises six screens (with 88 minutes of video material from different sources) and a 10-metre long watercolour scroll. The work was originally realised for documenta 14 in Kassel.
This IFFR video-installation was on view alongside the video exhibition In a World We Can’t See.