A short speculative film set in the ice of Magadan, Far Eastern Russia, in 2050. An archaeologist explores the frozen wastes of the automated port of Magadan and finds mysterious traces of ‘xeno-feminists’ whose identities and quirks were accidentally frozen into the supply chain decades earlier.
Created at Strelka Institute, Moscow in response to seminars with filmmaker Liam Young. A collaboration with:
Solveig Suess, Swiss filmmaker
Asia Bazdrieva, Ukrainian researcher
Tomas Clavijo, Spanish architect
Daria Stupina, Russian architect
Synopsis:
In December 2050 a supply chain archaeologist explores the ‘xenoboxes’ that dot the wintry landscape of old Kolyma Port. She accesses unintended archive-fragments (‘data fossils’) in the data storage of the boxes that narrates the lives, memes and visions of the nomadic avto-provodnitsas whose supervisory work was necessitated for a time by the transition of shipping networks to full automation.
As the xenoboxes were only intended to store localised data about discrete parts of the system, our archaeologist finds only fragmentations of communications and media in the domestic-scale xenoboxes. She hopes to piece together the ethnographic story of the avto-provodnitsas from these clips but instead discovers evidence that their collective impact on the larger system was much greater and more deliberate than anticipated.The video oscillates between the silence of the now deserted destination node of Magadan and the fullness of the fragmented archives that capture its evolution from a place of extraction to a place of archive. It emerges from statistical and interview-based research into port automation and the global inversion of gender patterns in supply chain employment.
PAUL VAN HERK 