STATESCAPE∞ — Vicki Thornton

STATESCAPE∞ (2020)

Documentary research project

STATESCAPE∞, the third collaboration by Vicki Thornton & Adam J B Walker, takes as its starting point Mezhyhirya, the palatial former home of deposed Ukrainian President Victor Yanukovych, in its myriad physical, imagined, historical, represented, political, virtual, economic and personal forms. Connected through these networks, the site and our encounter with it becomes a lens through which to examine broader questions of inequality, aspiration and care; questions within which we are all fluidly situated.

Grainy footage shows Yanukovych’s helicopter departing from the Mezhyhirya helipad in pre-dawn darkness on February 21st 2014. Later that day, people arriving from Maidan took control of Mezhyhirya. Inside the estate, the new occupiers found a zoo, real-size model galleon, golf course, spa complex, huge collection of vintage cars and more. All within a huge park surrounding a newly-built mansion. Now a national park, the estate is popular at weekends. Visitors come to walk, relax, have wedding photos taken in front of the mansion, and see the illegally acquired wealth. Mezhyhirya continues to be run by some of its initial liberators. Their flag has flown above the mansion for the past five years.

STATESCAPE∞ simultaneously presents itself as a game, and an attempt to figure out what the game is. The viewer is led through a series of levels, linked through a reflexive dialogue between us as artists as we attempt to understand the game, and what our role is. The game keeps changing. It is global capitalism, but also the simulatory experience of walking through Mezhyhirya. STATESCAPE∞ shifts back and forth between the material and the abstract.