RESEARCH /Towards a Water-based Archive of the Moscow Canal,
2019-2021

The diverted course of the Volga River, 2021

Literal Incision of the Moscow Canal, 2021

A map locating camp settlements and graves by Valentin Barkovsky, 2021

The diverted course of the Volga River, 2021
The research explores the Moscow Canal and its waters as the matter that bears witness to the violence experienced by human and nonhuman actors during the waterway’s construction between 1932 and 1937. By attending to the Canal’s flow, it argues that water flow can operate as an alternative archive, expand the limits of what is currently considered unarchivable, and contribute to more conventional forms of documentation. The project has two chapters. The first chapter develops the operative concept of material witness by Susan Schuppli and investigates the artificial flow through three functions: registration, disclosure, and preservation of the residues that remain present underwater yet missing from the Moscow Canal narrative. The second chapter approaches the Canal as infrastructure and analyses its archival capacities through the infrastructural lens.
PROJECTS
Towards a Watery Archive of the Moscow Canal
Hydraulic Seas on the Volga River
Stories for the Hydraulic Seas on the Volga
TALKS
Soviet Materialities Conference, Jesus College, Cambridge, 2022
The Studies and Problems of the 20th Century Russian Art, postgraduate seminar, Moscow State University, 2020