Well/Колодязь
Is modernity a purgatory?
When I enter decaying modernist buildings of former Soviet hospitals, I feel a special kind of fear: like in my childhood, in my grandma’s country yard, peering into the dark bottom of deep well. As I had been told by my parents, a monster lived there.
Modernist external form of state hospitals, medical scientific and research institutes (NII) and polyclinics in Kyiv often results in odd and complicated internal structure – buildings have several entrances that implicate into labyrinth from stairs and dark corridors with dead ends and dark corners. Cracks in walls and outdated furniture in areas that survived renovation emphasize the feeling of frozen time and horror that embraces inside. Old things carry the memory of pain, sorrow, despair, suspense, boredom, hope, salvation, fear of death… These feelings are captured in scratches on furniture, dirty laundry, invisible fingerprints on instruments – in everything that carries experience of doctors and patients touching them, curing with them or being cured by them.