BETONIUM is an ongoing project, which explores contemporary identity in Eastern Europe and former USSR countries in relation to the architectural heritage — residential blocks from panels.

People live in houses created during the Soviet period, but their worldview and ideological component are already developing in a different environment from the socialist one. In this situation, they form new urban rituals, practices and meanings.

The project involves travelling along some countries (incl. Poland, Slovakia, Germany, Georgia, Belarus, Slovenia, Lithuania etc) of the Iron Curtain, which is understood as the former political barrier erected from 1946 which divided the Soviet Union from the West during the Cold War.

By juxtaposing residents’ social rituals from different countries and integrating printed on curtains block house buildings from one country in another, I am looking for a comprehensive understanding  of how the identity has been shaped. What are the differences in each of the country and yet what forms a unique  mutual, distinct from its “Western” counterparts, identity.

The project consists of several chapters, including documentary and conceptual parts (performance, still nature, video). Zine is released.

P.S. Photos are not in the sequence, just a representation of the working directions.