Sasha Puchkova Time Without Forecasts

Sasha Puchkova works in the genre of art fiction with a particular focus on technological environments and objects in our everyday life, sci-fi strategies and their influence on the human image, and the possibility of imagining history.

The installation Time Without Forecasts is part of her research project Baikonur: Outside of and Within Time, in which she considers the past and present of the cosmodrome city from an imaginary future, exploring its complex social, cultural, economic, technological, and historical connections and layers. Artistically reworking scientific theories and experiments, she mythologizes them along with her own early memories (she was born in Baikonur). The project is built around Puchkova’s research trips, interviews with local people, autofiction narratives, and sci-fi scenarios.

Time Without Forecasts is a look from a space that exists both in our reality and in a parallel universe of space amazons. Its inhabitants’ strange ways of being, as they gradually create a new form of life based on femininity and imitation of plants, draw on actual Soviet scientific research. One part of the installation, for example, is based on the real Soviet invention of the human-tissue-equivalent phantom mannequin FM-2, a biological model of a human for testing the effects of radiation exposure in space. The story of the characters’ metamorphosis is elaborated using quantum theory and the cryptography tradition connected to it.

The installation expands with the sound landscape created by composer Kira Weinstein, which references the age of the Soviet conquest of space.

The work is complemented by a video essay in which the artist focuses on possible futures and, through them, returns to Earth: from space travel to a conversation about the problems of tourists in the city, the ways in which various groups exist there, and impressions of its specific rhythms.