Paris debuts ‘Stalinist’ reality show, set in an artificial Soviet universe populated by ordinary people
- For years, ordinary people lived in a fake Soviet world – away from modern life and its luxuries – with their every move being filmed
- The bizarre artistic undertaking resulted in 700 hours of footage being unveiled in Paris under the name DAU
Imagine setting aside two years of your life to work, sleep and procreate in a fake Stalinist physics lab. A place where secret police or hidden microphones monitor every utterance. Where you’re not allowed to check your phones or don modern underwear, or mention anything that’s happened in the last half-century – or acknowledge that the whole thing is really just a film set.
This is the world of “DAU”, a bizarre artistic undertaking unveiled in Paris in recent days in two hollowed-out theatres and the Pompidou Centre modern art museum.
Visitors are invited to immerse themselves in 700 hours of film footage of an artificial Soviet universe, talk to shamans or scientists about the experience, roam blood-red corridors lined with propaganda posters and eat borscht from 1950s-style aluminium bowls.
It’s taken DAU – brainchild of Russian director Ilya Khrzhanovsky – more than a decade to reach the public, and cost countless millions of dollars. Its long-awaited opening was marred by glitches.
Now it’s up to the public to decide whether this is artwork of unparalleled ambition and genius, highlighting the dangers of totalitarianism at a particularly opportune moment of modern history – or a colossal waste of time and money on a social experiment gone deeply wrong.