BLACKOUT COLLECTIVE
BLACKOUT COLLECTIVE
Blackout was formed by Valeria Lakrisenko and Alexander Belov in 2021.
Valeria Lakrisenko
Born in 1992 in St. Petersburg, Russia.
Alexander Belov
Born in 1981 in Leningrad, USSR.
Blackout is our way of speaking about nostalgia, longing, and lostness. We view memory as a landscape: sometimes a city, sometimes skin, sometimes a sheet of paper on which past routes are etched. We are drawn to things in which the past lingers longer than usual: to floor plans of houses that cannot be returned to; to alleys and paths that can never be retraced; to the imprints of bodies on the edge of a bed, to the traces of those who have passed. Surfaces become the relief of memory, and "floating," inaccessible points on Google Maps and photographs become rehearsals for future encounters with what was. For us, longing isn't just about migration and inaccessible places where return is forbidden. It's also a longing for dream topographies that cannot be entered, and for an impossible future where social and political constructs have a different, revolutionary architecture. Sometimes it's a longing for a different sensibility or for an elusive connection—for relationships that haven't yet been conceived.
We move between the archive and the field. Walking becomes a method, mapping a mode of conversation, and collected oral histories the material for new forms. We speak with neighbors and strangers, listen to what hurts, and carefully return what we hear to the urban space: in voice, image, and text. The work is built on consent and trust; everyone retains the right to pause and remain silent, and the materials are returned to those who donated them.
Media changes along with the task. When we need air, we sing—a "heretical fado," in which the voice doesn't so much illustrate loss as navigate it and chart a path. When capturing it is important, we film—photos and short videos capture subtle gestures of absence, folds of fabric, cracks in the asphalt, shadows on the wall. When slow reflection is needed, we draw and write—floor plans turn into memory maps, courtyard diagrams and relationship charts form a private atlas. Text accompanies the image, sometimes arguing with it, sometimes whispering to the side.
All this is an attempt to transform the impossibility of return into the possibility of shared presence here and now. Personal memory takes on a shared form when it can be sung, shown, redrawn, spoken aloud; when one person's route becomes another's route; when someone else's story is suddenly recognized as one's own.
