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Opening Titles
Part of the Image Diplomacy project
5 archival pigment prints on Hahnemühle Bright White paper mounted on dibond, 50 x 60 cm each, 2016


The work consists of a sequence of opening titles from the 16 mm short films that were distributed regularly through the international network of Soviet exhibitionary complex during the period of the Cold War. These newsreels usually included several reportage pieces and were intended to communicate the virtues and advantages of a different political project to the citizens of the capitalist countries.

After the dissolution of the USSR, the networks of cultural diplomacy that had been established with the countries of the First, Second and Third Worlds collapsed. Nowadays the films reels remain disseminated all around the world, occasionally preserved in various archives but more often neglected.
Opening Titles examines closely how design is capable of shaping the political imaginary. The representation of a map of utopia, the choice of translation and typefaces in different languages, all is crystallised in a frame with a film title.

The installation is formalised as a spatialised film-strip and re-mediates an unnoticeable filmic element into the historicity of the photographic medium. It acts as a prelude and an entry point to the Image Diplomacy project, concerned with the relationships between images, history and politics.