Colonial wars are associated with the conquest of land—through the names of cities and rivers, through strategic coordinates, through percentages of territory captured or defended. Still, contemporary invasions spread out in time no less than space. In her performance, Anna Engelhardt explores the unique temporality of the Russian war machine.
Anna Engelhardt, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.
Although the Russian military claims to use high-tech weaponry that ushers in a future of remotely controlled digital battles, these weapons often malfunction in the material world. Tanks get stuck in the mud; military phones have no reception; ‘precision’ weapons are guided by pen and paper. These weapons are obsolete as soon as they are deployed – yet Russian colonial violence persists. These intergenerational wars subject their targets to repeated cycles of fear and violence. As the dead of one war haunt the dead of another, Engelhardt considers how to further the hardwired obsolescence of the Russian war machine.
Anna Engelhardt, 2022. Still from the performance: destroyed Russian tank in Grozny, Ichkeria (now Republic of Chechnya, Russia), during the Russian attack on Grozny, winter of 1996.
Speaker’s fee will go to support a humanitarian charity of their choice.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Anna Engelhardt for the cover of Mixte Magazine #29. Photographer Liz Collins. 2022.
Anna Engelhardt is a Russian research-based media artist and writer. Her primary interest lies in decolonial approaches to cyberspace which she advances in his PhD on Russian cyber warfare as a colonial enterprise. Her investigations take on multiple forms of media as they develop over time, including publications, videos, websites, and physical objects. Engelhardt has shown her works at Transmediale 2022, Venice Biennale Architettura 2021, Ars Electronica 2020, Strelka Magazine, 67th International Short Film Festival Oberhausen, and Kyiv Biennial, among others.