Sergey Bratkov
Wiepersdorf (for Artist Friends) (2023)
Courtesy of the artist
Summertime bugs become Russian soldiers running for the trenches. Lines of white powder stand for tracks in the eternal Russian snow. A familiar song from the Soviet 1970s about the Volga accompanies the melodramatic poses of a homemade music video. Sergey Bratkov’s Wiepersdorf is a video diary delving into the darkly ironic imagination of a former Soviet subject.
Wiepersdorf is part of a growing body of similarly structured works collaging short, quasi-photographic smartphone clips with fragments of texts, songs, and voiceovers in a DIY aesthetic. Bratkov created it as a means of communication to make up for the lack of a common language with his neighbors: the other, much younger artists-in-residence at Schloss Wiepersdorf. Once the estate of Bettina von Arnim, a Romantic writer and human rights activist, this historic site was later a refuge for artists persecuted by the Nazis.
Sergey Bratkov (1960, Kharkiv, Ukraine) is an artist who works with photography, video, installation, and performance. His works often combine various elements of the “folk kitsch” that emerged after the collapse of the USSR into absurd and melancholy everyday collages. After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he left Moscow, where he had been teaching at the Rodchenko School of Photography and Multimedia. With the help of the Artist-at-Risk Program, he moved to Germany in 2022, where he is continuing his career. Bratkov lives in Berlin.
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’24
HD video, stereo sound, 12:43 min.
Commissioned and produced by steirischer herbst ’24