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My Journey 1983-2020 by Soviet Astronaut Christmas Decoration

director: Suzanne Treister

original title: My Journey 1983-2020 by Soviet Astronaut Christmas Decoration

country: United Kingdom

year: 2020

running time: 12 min.

synopsis

The unapologetic monologue of a Christmas ornament who, to her own surprise, has regained consciousness, takes us through her life, from her memories of her birthplace in a Siberian holiday decoration factory, to her transport in a box and her encounter with another, to her grounding in the rhythms of a Soviet household and her unwitting emigration. A strong Russian accent lends tenderness and humanity to the robotic voice through which the shiny cosmonaut figure tentatively gropes at historical events and his own fate.

“I am trying to create a futuristic poetics of data, AI and space travel. As meditations on the universe and future life on Earth, I see these as radical alternatives to the invasive agendas of private or corporate enterprises and government programmes, such as the exponential rise in human-data harvesting which are driving us towards the Singularity and societal control…”

Quote source: Frieze

biography

Suzanne Treister (born 1958), after studying at Chelsea College of Arts in London, established herself as a painter and became a pioneer of new media in the early 1990s. Her often collaborative projects usually last several years. She works with a variety of media – from video, the internet and interactive technologies to photography, drawing and watercolour – using eccentric narratives and fantastical reinterpretations of possible realities.

more about film

director:	Suzanne Treister
producer:	Suzanne Treister

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