‘Zemelki’ was a popular game amongst the post soviet youth, a knife game. A circle is outlined on the ground and divided into equal parts decided by the number of players in the game. Each player takes turns throwing a knife toward the circle on the ground. If the knife sticks to the ground inside an opponent's area, the player who threw the knife expands their area by pushing the opponent out of the circle. The goal is to push all the opponents out of the circle and take over the whole circle. This topic is of particular importance in the context of Russia's aggressive invasion of Ukraine. The fetishization of the territory and attempts to carry out aggressive external expansion, in a sense, turn the very foreign policy of the Putin regime into a kind of ‘Zemelki’ game. Two aspects are important for the artist in the work. The first is the materiality of the project. The anthropogenic factors of silicone, glass, plastic and rubber refers to the colonial exploitation of territories. The industrial potential of the metropolis is used to develop the resources of the colonies, which, in turn, are necessary for the reproduction and building up of its technological capacity. In this sense, technologies in themselves and the benefits generated by them become the engine of external expansion, a tool for controlling territories. The second aspect is related to the symbolic content. Images of human bodies, military equipment, and edged weapons are used as material for producing a specific artistic game, a metaphor that is built around such concepts as will, courage, resistance, and submission.
