SOSкa Group. Dreamers. 2008
Work Description
The project marks a new approach to collaboration between the collective and various communities and groups of contemporary Ukrainian society. This time, the artists invited representatives of the emo youth subculture, whom Hanna Kryventsova found on online forums. She wrote to them under the nickname Interstella 5555, inspired by the anime musical of the same name, produced by the electronic duo Daft Punk. Later, she invited them to a casting, during which the group simultaneously recorded test video material for the future project.
The artists aimed to capture the moods of the youth of the 2000s, their interests, and cultural markers. It was important to get to know the teenagers better and trace their interests: they discussed the project together, listened to emo band music, and attended concerts. The first part of the work consists of videos where emo teenagers shout important messages in screaming and growling techniques, which they themselves proposed to the artists (“Hard to breathe!”, “My heart is full of tears”, “I trust no one!”). The second part is photographs of the same young people levitating, trying to break free from the gray panel Kharkiv high-rises. Collaboration with emos highlighted the feelings of confusion and phantomness of the Ukrainian youth of the 2000s and society in general.
Now, almost two decades after the creation of the work, Mykola Ridnyi recalls that at the beginning of the 2000s, artists clearly felt a rupture with the Soviet past due to the emergence of new stories, fashion, values, but due to the lack of an articulated position, expressions often relied on slogans and messages borrowed from mass culture [1]. The practice of the SOSka group at that time was focused on diagnosing and recording socially important issues, rather than on consistent critical articulation of the political context. The method of social provocation carried over into the artists’ subsequent works both within the collective and in individual practices, gradually transforming into consistent statements.
- From a research interview with Mykola Ridnyi in April 2025.
