Nobody Knows for Certain is a point-and-click game created as part of the eponymous research project for Garage Field Research.
The starting point for the project was the popularity of Soviet children’s books in India during the Cold War. Artist Afrah Shafiq studied book exports made as part of cultural exchange between the USSR and India. She focused on the subjects and illustrations of folk tales from various Soviet republics and stories by Soviet writers that were translated into English and most Indian languages and distributed across the country. Thanks to their availability, Soviet books are a significant part of the childhood of the generation that grew up in India from the 1960s to the mid-1980s.
Afrah Shafiq did not limit herself to communist propaganda images but explored various aesthetics that influenced children’s book illustration, including lubok prints, lacquer miniatures, textile and decorative art, the imagery of the World of Art group, the aesthetics of Russian art nouveau, and the artistic language of the Russian avant-garde and constructivism.
In the game Nobody Knows for Certain, the artist created a unique space filled with fairy tale characters, and narrative motifs and worlds. Shafiq supplements the characters from books with her own, such as the Cat Without A Tail and the Empty Matryoshka. Using the emancipatory potential of free narrative, she critically re-examines the morphology of folk tales and introduces philosophical and political dimensions to the game.
The presentation will take place via Zoom in English with simultaneous translation to Russian in the format Let’s Play. Artist Afrah Shafiq and curator Valentin Diaconov will play the game.
The work will be published on the Garage Digital platform and will be accessible in the World Gone By computer class.
