GREEN FOG

The work was created for the exhibition project “I’m Glad I Came, I’m Glad I’m Leaving…” by the curatorial group FRIDAY which explored the concept of “offside” (in football) as a metaphor for everyday life in the city, through its sonic environment. The curators invited artists to produce works inspired by or based on field recordings of urban sounds that constitute the “infrastructure of everydayness.”

The audio tracks recorded on buses from Kolomenskaya — the street where I grew up — reminded me of this peculiar fact about local bus routes: once, route 156 circled the neighborhood, running from the terminal stop at Nagatinsky Zaton, along Kolomenskaya Embankment, past Taganskaya Metro, all the way to the Illusion Cinema. It was one of the most beloved and reliable routes, distinguished by its strict, city-enforced schedule— the kind of orderly rhythm that urban life was meant to follow. Yet, no matter how faithfully you relied on that timetable — or on the GLONASS system tracking buses in real time on the map — you could never be certain you’d actually board the bus. The system would show the bus approaching the stop, but nothing would arrive. The number “156” would simply vanish from the map, leaving the very notion of order “out of play.” 

 This gave rise to an association with the Bermuda Triangle — where ships disappeared from radar without a trace. Interestingly, Kolomenskoye Park has its own “Bermuda Triangle”: a ravine where, according to local legend, a green mist clings thickly in the air. Those who step into it vanish — for years, sometimes decades — trapped in a temporal loop, only to reappear later, unchanged, as if no time had passed at all.