Directing
Forensic science is scrutinised when a fictional investigator questions procedures and motivations in the politicised 1999 bombings of flats in Russia.
Examining interrogation as a performed scene, staged through gesture, repetition, set-up, and technical props. Taking the polygraph as its recurring prop, the work traces the script that structures interrogation. The formulaic scenes from police training films and film noir are punctured by a near-human test figure that shadows the characters’ movements, pulling their choreography into view. Across these fragments, interrogation reads like rehearsal. Repeated often enough, its staged action turns into procedure.
A demon roams through an ominous synthetic environment, reconstructed from satellite images of Russian air bases: Khmeimim in Syria, Baranovichi in Belarus, and Belbek in Ukraine. This parasitic force pervades the air bases, passing through their deserted corridors, interrogation rooms and electricity substations. Devastation follows in its wake. In this single-channel video installation, Engelhardt and Cinkevich use an unholy alliance of medieval demonology, open-source intelligence and CGI animation to uncover the hidden life of these military outposts.
Adversarial Infrastructure is an investigation into the volumetric history of the Crimean annexation that employs deepfake technology as a research method. Dissecting the Crimean Bridge, the crystallised artefact of Russian colonial violence that spans through cyberspace no less than an offline landscape, this film aims to assemble the new image of logistical infrastructures as a type of hybrid warfare.
