12 pairs of old Soviet sandals featuring city names on their soles. Purchased at the Cracow flea market, they are an addition to my collection of objects and photographs testifying to the emergence of special type of collectivism, in this case manifest in in-sync fitness sessions, symbolizing the new social order.

The old photos depicting groups of children from the socialist period come from Ukrainian, Russian, Byelorussian and Polish family albums, but to find out the geographical details, youʼll have to ask me. Moreover, if the need arises, you can also find out where the soil samples in these compositions come from, exactly as you would ask a person about their background, which can help you categorize and label that person without finding out anything specific or actually important about them.

This installation makes no statements and provides no answers. On the contrary, it seeks to identify and ask new questions about the mechanisms behind people’s coexistence in society and how they came about.

The installation consists of 24 metal boxes with photos from my personal collection, soil, and 12 pairs of sandals, as well as digital reworkings of these photos, a photo album with old photos; silhouettes drawn on walls based on these photos, depicting the communities in question; boxes with photos placed against the backdrop of the silhouettes.