In 1992, a year after the collapse of the Soviet Union, hundreds of people lost their lives in the war of Transnistria, defending a de jure non-existent country of 4 000 sq km in the heart of Europe. Officially part of Moldova, the territories on the left bank of the river Dniester declared themselves as PMR – Pridnestrovskaya Moldavskaya Respublika, aka Pridnestrovie, and were governed for twenty years by one of its leading founders – president Igor Smirnov. A new generation of young men born in this authoritarian quasi-state are prepared to die for the formation that is balancing between political fiction and reality.

 

4 000 Square Kilometers of Europe focuses on visual reflections of ongoing processes of creation of material and immaterial legacy – monuments and rituals – aimed at keeping up the national idea hinging on the memory of the 1992 War of Transnistria, and sustaining the political myth of victory and victimhood.

 

The artwork comprises two videos based on documentary and found footage collected in Transnistria – Governing the Dead and Governing the Living, as well as Untitled, a transparency in a lightbox.