In the work Backup from Temporary Untitled Files Sarokin works with material from his family video archive and music samples from popular Russian tracks of the late 90s and early 2000s. The visuals consist of shots from a prom night – a ritual of transition from youth to grown-up life. The chosen tracks and samples refer us to the time of their creation – a time of the euphoria of transition, a feeling of “the beginning of something new”, anticipation of “big changes”, which were expected to be brought about by the advance of technology, by a new political order and new freedoms. Blurred, obscure, deformed images recall the nature of memory itself – fading, discordant and fragmented. By coordinating memories and their material embodiment – sound and video – the artist problematises “hauntology” as defined by Mark Fisher and Simon Reynolds and the idea that culture is obsessed with the thought of “lost futures” and at the same time has lost its forward momentum, that is to say has got stuck in endless stylisation and retrospection.

Link to playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJM9X-QYmpG-M5BdT9fk7Nsrt24nFc2F-