Untitled / ‘From our chains we will forge the metal to brandish the sword of freedom’

Eastern Siberia, this ‘Far East’, where the shaped landscapes, wild and organic seem to be swallowed up by the inexorable work of time, as if all traces had to be dissolved… Russia 14 December 1825, date of the uprising led by aristocrats, officers in the Imperial army and intellectuals. If this event marked the history of Russia, it is not so much due to this attempt at a coup d’état, which failed, but as to the start of punitive policy applied in response to it, which from then on became part of its authoritarian culture. This important group which became known as The Decembrists was banished to forced labor for life. This action was the first mass deportation in the history of Russia, the premises of later gulag policy, control over politics and over citizens’ freedom of expression and of opinions. I am interested in this event because of those noble souls who fight for more just humanist values at a time when the present sometimes turns a radical page on the its past, which, though from another time, still has the power to reason.