Polina Medvedeva | The Champagne Drinkers (2018)

Coordinator documentation 2018-12-13

Polina Medvedeva, coordinator of current Temporary Programme Shadow Channel (2017-2019) and alumni of Main Department Design (2012-2014), presented her film The Champagne Drinkers: Russia's Informal Economy from the Back Seat of a Taxi as part of Stedelijk Museum Mini story on 23 Nov 2018.

The Champagne Drinkers is simultaneously a travelogue, documentary, and journalistic essay. Medvedeva draws on her personal experience growing up in Pskov, where her father drove an unlicensed taxi he created with parts from two separate cars. While she spent her first twelve years in Russia, she has lived in the Netherlands ever since, and thus occupies a unique position as both an insider and outsider when she returns to her hometown. Though we never see her, the artist is a constant presence in the film via her voiceover, which provides English translations of her subjects’ statements in an aloof and authoritative tone meant to mimic the poorly dubbed Western films she watched on television growing up.

Presented for the first time as an installation, The Champagne Drinkers is accompanied by an arrangement of car seats, between which the artist has placed smartphones displaying short videos of everyday life in Pskov. In contrast to the footage of taxi drivers moving through the city, these clips—which the artist recorded earlier this year with a smartphone—depict the activity that takes place between rides, when drivers deliver pizzas or go fishing.

More information: https://www.stedelijk.nl/en/digdeeper/polina-medvedeva