Action game
Katya Salnikova
stones, drawing paper, sound (Morse code dictation for beginners—grab a pen and paper)
The playing field: 12 stones. The player’s task is to arrange the pebbles into a tower of 12 stones.
Katya Salnikova invites the viewer to solve a simple challenge: build a tower from stones she found in the ruins of a fortified structure inside a hill in the P. area. What began as a childhood memory of children playing inside strange hills during summer led the artist to question whether memories can be trusted, whether the coordinates on a map match the territory, and whether archival materials and sources align with the true state of things. What once seemed like a meaningful game in childhood now became filled with doubtful information: whether it be a book from a local library, a website of urban explorers, the memories of a distant relative, or a conversation with a flea market vendor. Every fragment enters into a dispute with the memory: whether the place existed at all, or whether what is now a landfill once held a certain secret. Just as ruins of a bomb shelter and a missile installation may appear similar, over time, memories and new data blend together into a single recollection.