Catalogue > At random

This short film is made of archival footage shot at the Yalta conference (1945) - a historic meeting between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin shortly before the end of the WWII. The film mimics the style of a TV documentary and shows behind-the-scenes of the conference through the eyes of a fictitious character, whose possible involvement in espionage and unexplained disappearance comprise the mystery, which the film attempts to resolve, - albeit unsuccessfully. The fictional narrative provides possible reasons and motivations behind the random collection of recordings in the original footage, weaving together several important historical themes associated with the Yalta conference: the deep cultural divide between the Soviets and the Western Allies; the eavesdropping and espionage attempts made by the negotiators, and the premonitions of the upcoming Cold War.

Tatiana Istomina is a Russian-born US artist working in video, painting and drawing. She holds a PhD in geophysics from Yale University (2010) and MFA from Parsons New School (2011). Her works have been shown in the US, Russia and Canada; she had solo shows in New York and Houston. Istomina has completed several artist residencies, including the Core Program (Museum of Fine Arts of Houston) and the AIM residency (The Bronx Museum of Arts, New York). She was nominated for Kandinsky prize and Dedlaus foundation fellowship and received awards such as the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award and the American Austrian Foundation Prize for Fine Arts.