Alena Tereshko
The Girl from the Ural
16×9, 1280x720p, H-264, AAC, HD
00:09:04
The performance took place in Moscow, within Pavel Braila’s workshop, organized by Vladimir Smirnov & Konstantin Sorokin Foundation.
In the video the author is sitting at a table. There is a huge bowl of Russian dumplings in front of her. Dumplings are very popular in Ural. The girl starts eating the dumplings while singing a sad old Russian folk song – “My mother wanted me to get married.” There obviously are too many dumplings for the girl, but she has to eat them all as she is supposed to. It is really difficult to eat and sing at the same time, so it doesn’t look attractive. The idea of the work is to combine singing and eating.
“Uniting all in one and having as much as possible underlies a genuine Russian character which causes astonishment and compassion. The song (repeated three times) is endless and the dumplings are endless, and that pain because the girl cannot marry for love is endless, too.”