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Катюша (Katyusha) is a three channel video piece based on material collected at Pyramida, a show-case community established in 1928 by the Soviet Union in the Svalbard international territory in the high Arctic. At its peak Pyramida was home to more than 1000 Ukrainian coal miners and their families. It was evacuated in two days in 1998 leaving a ghost town.
Катюша (Katyusha) presents three fictional characters who personify different aspects of Pyramida. The Guide takes the form of a gray sea bird, the Northern Fulmar. As the piece progresses we discover clues to the identity of two Lovers, a ballet dancer and a basketball player. The elaborately painted floor of the basketball court in Pyramida is a central motif, as is the abandoned ballet studio in the northern most corner of the town – once the most northerly ballet studio on earth. Time becomes unreliable as the viewer jumps back and forth uncontrollably between two time periods. In the 1980s the lovers meet as adolescent young pioneers in the idyllic summer forests of Ukraine. After the evacuation a mysterious love token is left behind on the tundra amongst the empty shells of Pyramida. The third unspoken time period is only hinted at – always skipped over, never shown – the time that the lovers spent living happily in the northernmost town on earth. The lonely voice of a Soviet “numbers station” recites the names of the missing.
The story of Pyramida is complex and paradoxical. The project was simultaneously idealistic and coercive. Life in the Arctic was challenging, conditions in the mine were harsh and dangerous, and yet Pyramida was a highly desirable posting which provided workers with a higher standard of living than other parts of the Soviet Union. The entire community was under constant surveillance by KGB officials, and yet my research paints a picture of a vibrant community. Former inhabitants came away with many happy memories despite the hardships they must have faced. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 the story of Pyramida has only become more complex as we consider a community of Ukrainians, mostly from the Donbas region, living in a Soviet show-case community outside the borders of the Soviet Union. Pyramida becomes a stage for shifting senses of Ukrainian, Soviet, Russian and Donbas identities. Катюша (Katyusha) addresses the complexity of the Pyramida project at many levels, starting with the title which refers to the national song of the Soviet Union during World War II. The song “Katyusha” is a love song, and yet it is only known in Russia as a nationalistic military song forever associated with the Great Patriotic War. The song also gave its name to the type of rocket launcher system which helped the Soviet Union defeat Germany. The soundtrack of Катюша (Katyusha) returns the song to its origins as a love song, a young girl singing to her lover, a soldier on the far frontier, her grey eagle of the steppe. As a counterpoint to these Soviet themes the core of Катюша (Katyusha) is a magical dream sequence, a reverie of the love affair. The soundtrack of this sequence is built around the song “Chervona Ruta”, one of the most popular songs in the Ukrainian language. The song was a hit in the 1970’s, telling the story of a lover who seeks his beloved in dreams, “on forgotten paths through the forests of green”. In the context of the trench warfare currently taking place in Ukraine the lyrics acquire darker undertones, mirroring the way that Катюша (Katyusha) reimagines the Soviet war song as a love song.
There was no practical reason for Pyramida to exist, the coal mine it was built around only ever produced enough coal to fuel the town itself. Pyramida existed as a reification of the ideals of the Soviet social and political system. By creating a vigorous town at odds with one of the most hostile environments on earth the Soviet Union intended to prove the superiority of its system over its Western rivals. When the Soviet ideal failed Pyramida no longer had a reason to exist. As a relic of a failed ideal Pyramida is all the more poignant because real people were used as markers in a contest of ideologies.
Катюша (Katyusha) is a three channel video piece based on material collected at Pyramida, a show-case community established in 1928 by the Soviet Union in the Svalbard international territory in the high Arctic. At its peak Pyramida was home to more than 1000 Ukrainian coal miners and their families. It was evacuated in two days in 1998 leaving a ghost town.
Катюша (Katyusha) presents three fictional characters who personify different aspects of Pyramida. The Guide takes the form of a gray sea bird, the Northern Fulmar. As the piece progresses we discover clues to the identity of two Lovers, a ballet dancer and a basketball player. The elaborately painted floor of the basketball court in Pyramida is a central motif, as is the abandoned ballet studio in the northern most corner of the town – once the most northerly ballet studio on earth. Time becomes unreliable as the viewer jumps back and forth uncontrollably between two time periods. In the 1980s the lovers meet as adolescent young pioneers in the idyllic summer forests of Ukraine. After the evacuation a mysterious love token is left behind on the tundra amongst the empty shells of Pyramida. The third unspoken time period is only hinted at – always skipped over, never shown – the time that the lovers spent living happily in the northernmost town on earth. The lonely voice of a Soviet “numbers station” recites the names of the missing.
The story of Pyramida is complex and paradoxical. The project was simultaneously idealistic and coercive. Life in the Arctic was challenging, conditions in the mine were harsh and dangerous, and yet Pyramida was a highly desirable posting which provided workers with a higher standard of living than other parts of the Soviet Union. The entire community was under constant surveillance by KGB officials, and yet my research paints a picture of a vibrant community. Former inhabitants came away with many happy memories despite the hardships they must have faced. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2014 the story of Pyramida has only become more complex as we consider a community of Ukrainians, mostly from the Donbas region, living in a Soviet show-case community outside the borders of the Soviet Union. Pyramida becomes a stage for shifting senses of Ukrainian, Soviet, Russian and Donbas identities. Катюша (Katyusha) addresses the complexity of the Pyramida project at many levels, starting with the title which refers to the national song of the Soviet Union during World War II. The song “Katyusha” is a love song, and yet it is only known in Russia as a nationalistic military song forever associated with the Great Patriotic War. The song also gave its name to the type of rocket launcher system which helped the Soviet Union defeat Germany. The soundtrack of Катюша (Katyusha) returns the song to its origins as a love song, a young girl singing to her lover, a soldier on the far frontier, her grey eagle of the steppe. As a counterpoint to these Soviet themes the core of Катюша (Katyusha) is a magical dream sequence, a reverie of the love affair. The soundtrack of this sequence is built around the song “Chervona Ruta”, one of the most popular songs in the Ukrainian language. The song was a hit in the 1970’s, telling the story of a lover who seeks his beloved in dreams, “on forgotten paths through the forests of green”. In the context of the trench warfare currently taking place in Ukraine the lyrics acquire darker undertones, mirroring the way that Катюша (Katyusha) reimagines the Soviet war song as a love song.
There was no practical reason for Pyramida to exist, the coal mine it was built around only ever produced enough coal to fuel the town itself. Pyramida existed as a reification of the ideals of the Soviet social and political system. By creating a vigorous town at odds with one of the most hostile environments on earth the Soviet Union intended to prove the superiority of its system over its Western rivals. When the Soviet ideal failed Pyramida no longer had a reason to exist. As a relic of a failed ideal Pyramida is all the more poignant because real people were used as markers in a contest of ideologies.
