Legends: part I of the The Big Game project

The project The Big Game consists of three parts. It explores the space and time of global changes in the country through one single and bright point on the map – the city of Sochi and it’s neighborhood during the separate period of history – preparation, conducting and heritage of Winter Olympis games. The first part of the project called “Legends” started 6 years ago. The centuries-old principle of Sochi territory development can be described as "from the mountains to the sea". From the ancient time the local inhabitants of this lands had being fighting between themselves for the territory. But they also had being defending the land from the external conquerors. Stories about aggression, seizures of land, evictions and resettlements gave birth to numerous myths. For example, as a result of the Caucasus War of 1817-1864 the native inhabitants - the Ubykhs - were relocated to the Ottoman Empire, and by now have lost their national identity. The recent history of the Sochi city is connected to the 2014 Winter Olympics, which also fostered new myth-making. Surprisingly, those new myths and legends are somewhat similar to ancient ones, which confirms ​​the cycling of time. The modern information space is full of the new city legends and rumors: local residents’ resettlement from the sites of future Olympic facilities, the foreign labor inflows, national parks’ territory reduction and related ecologists protests, the Mzymta river irrigation to allow new highways construction, weather manipulations to allow better conditions for construction works, and the shoreline destruction. The first part of the project is an attempt to interpret and visualize this new mythology of this place and time.