Engineers of the Soul is an investigation into the news reports broadcast by four Russian federal TV channels during the week leading up to the 2018 presidential elections. Borrowing its title from Joseph Stalin's address to cultural workers of USSR, the project is a hallucinatory collage compiled from the supporting footage used by the contemporary propaganda and socialist realist painting of the Stalin era, revealing the recurring and echoed archetypes, narratives and simulated realities instrumentalised by the state.