Warning sirens sound through the city. Deafening shots echo in the school corridor. Horror and fear – the subject of this disturbing study uses footage recorded by Russian teenagers on their smart phones from behind their desks.
The artistic collective known under the pseudonym Angie Vinchito uses online videos found on YouTube and social networks. Without any wider context, they assemble seemingly unrelated scenes into a mosaic showing the intimidation, mental and physical bullying, and propaganda found in educational institutions across Russia. Young people who stream their lives online almost nonstop unwittingly capture the reality of the authoritarian system under which they live. But when their efforts to resist are suppressed by the state, their inner frustration and confusion turns to paranoia, the brutal consequences of which are stored in the bottomless archive of the internet.