This issue of Sreda online magazine publishes a work by the Irkutsk-based choreographer, video artist, and performer Anastasia Lonshakova, a participant in the artist residency programme at GES-2 House of Culture.

Sarma is the result of research for a master’s degree conducted in 2016. In this work, shot on Lake Baikal in Siberia, Lonshakova explores the relationships between man and nature that break the boundaries of verbal communication. Since ancient times, non-verbal forms of communication such as movement and dance have been seen as allowing for contact with the non-human side of the world.

At the same time, Lonshakova searches for points of intersection between the language of dance and the language of film: each movement, each new camera angle or cut becomes a part of the dance composition. Thus, the video installation is both a documentary and plastic account of a week spent by Lonshakova and the film crew on the ice of Lake Baikal, near the village where one of the strongest Northern winds, the Sarma, arises.

A symbolic embodiment of a frozen round dance is also present in this video, namely the labyrinth devised by the LabirintLab group of artists and researchers, whose work pays particular attention to the sacred geometry and architecture of labyrinths.