Seven Characters
Ayla Dmyterko on the Politics of Imagination at Samizdat Film Festival
Ilya Kabakov (1988) ‘The Man Who Flew Into His Picture’.
Total Installation. In: ICA London (1989) Ten Characters, Plate 3.
Total Installation. In: ICA London (1989) Ten Characters, Plate 3.
Introducing: Politics of the Imagination
Samizdat translates to self-published; think PAMphlet but when artist-led independent publishing was strictly illegal. A dissident activity, the concept originally appeared across the former Eastern Bloc in post-Stalinist slippage in the form of secrets, forbidden manifestos, ephemeral actions and exhibitions in the private apartments of unofficial artist confidants. Samizdat was borne out of refusal: to take part in Soviet Socialist State art protocol, to follow the rules of state-operated art institutions, to repeatedly depict strong, hardworking collectivized citizens or a colonist cosmic post-religion. In these communist times, if you refused, you were out of work. If you were caught making anything else labelled art, you were out of society.
These words are written after my visit to TaM, a Contemporary Arts Venue that operates in the former Club of Cultural Figures (KDK) in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria. The Soviet restrictions that festered in these types of buildings, have since collapsed. However, what survived this subsidence lives on as unbroken proof that artists survive best in an autonomous, dialectic wilderness. Volya (воля) is a lexical lacuna in the English language, it is the will to exist beyond societal constructs, to be wildly emancipated.
Running for its fifth year, Scottish-based Samizdat Film Festival celebrates contemporary and historic cinema from Central and Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus. Politics of the Imagination: Animations of the Eastern Bloc (1958–1992) is a crowd favourite, and collaged stills from this programme are emblazoned across the official festival T-shirt, we are living in late-capitalist times, after all. In a sold-out theatre in Glasgow’s GFT on 6 October 2026, these short animations rang with renewed relevance in a geopolitical climate increasingly described as ‘Cold War II’ [1]. A lesson to be learned in how to armour from totalitarian tyranny; these works were made in communist times.
Throughout the evening, it was not particular narratives that hit, but rather characters in the animations that drew upon universal tendencies. Under censorship, words are literal, even evidential. The animators rely heavily on tactics of defamiliarization, using image and sound as covert devices of innuendo to surpass restrictions and accent truths. These animations are homages to the hinterlands of the mind’s desires when forced into isolation, breathing through boredom and its subsequent paranoias. They are testaments to the power of human’s capacity to dream itself out of captivity, into relationality.
Born in Dnipro, Ukraine, Ilya Kabakov (1933 – 2023) is the man who flew to space from his apartment. Deemed the Father of Soviet Conceptualism, he pioneered the Total Installation [2] alongside his partner Emilia Kabakov. They are celebrated internationally for their playful ingenuity and scenographic storytelling. Their work is unique in that it neither followed the rules of socialist realism or the opposite side of the spectrum in the west—modernism—although they were exposed to both.
Prior to his emigration to New York in 1988, one year before the fall of the Berlin wall, Ilya worked part time as an official artist of the Soviet State. During his service he illustrated over one hundred children’s story books. In his free time, he was a real artist, convening in Samizdat and he held private apartment-art exhibitions for his community of unofficial artists.
Ilya Kabakov described his work as:
‘having to do with consciousness, with forms of a continuous, irreconcilable contradiction, the abyss that divides the two sides of our existence, our psyche and our attitude towards culture and its various meanings. This contradiction stems mostly from the deep discrepancy between language and contents, i.e., what the language is trying to convey… I see this fundamental contrast, a language without meaning and a meaning not shaped by language, all around me, and mostly within myself. Therefore in my art—paintings, albums, installations and other works—I aim to demonstrate the various manifestations of this contradiction.’ [3]
Below, I present seven characters in response to the seven animations presented in Politics of the Imagination: Animations of the Eastern Bloc... Inspired by 10 Characters (1988) by Ilya Kabakov, my writing is a mise-en-abyme; a homage to homages. As he gazed from Eastern Europe to the West, I gaze from the West to Eastern Europe. Both are voyeuristic sketches of characters that represented ‘truth’ as a tessellating polyphony, rather than ‘truth' as singular and all seeing.
Seven Characters
Lost in limbo are shining stellar specks, remnants of past worlds filled with irreconcilable contradictions that have since detonated to infinite dust, surfaces reflecting shards of time.
Happy End/Srečen Konec, (1958) Vatroslav Mimica, Zagreb, Yugoslavia.
The CyrillistBound up in lamentation, the weathered terrain of The Cyrillist’s melancholic psyche is filled with semiotic weather warnings, an eschatological poetic that they record in draconian strokes of ennui. Miasma fills in the muted palette they traverse. The hollowed landscape depicted is a rubble of recognition, strewn with skeletons in final rest upon the detritus of civilizations’ past. The Cyrillist’s subdued history is now a cave painting, recorded in lines of loose pigment held via lime miracle. Incessantly, they circumnavigate their derelict reality filled with foreboding hums of fear engulfed in lost hopes. There’s no place like home, mutated; there’s no place that is home—wherever you go, amok, there you’ll be. The ticking clock, the impending Wizard of Doom.
Labyrinth/Labirynt (1962) Jan Lenica, Warsaw, Poland.
The Disembodied Diasporic
As a child, The Disembodied Diasporic learned of the Greek mythological figure Icarus, the mortal who fabricated wings like an angel’s from feathers adhered to his scapula with wax. Icarus was warned not to fly too close to the sun, for its rays would melt the wing wax. Growing over-confident, Icarus approached the orb, and as fated, fell to earth. If the sun symbolizes power, this myth becomes an allegorical class critique. Always one to defy gravitas, The Disembodied Diasporic decided to reckon with this cautionary disenchantment. It’s simple, apply more wax. Learning to keep bees during Soviet times was deemed vocational, it was free. Our character enrolled at the Kharkov Apiculture Research Station and got to work collecting bricks of wax while simultaneously gleaning feathers, wood slats and other potential aviator debris. You see, it was not about remaining in flight, it was about momentary moments of escape. Just enough time to propel their body outside of society, an untethered interloper, like a piece of plywood over Paris. [4] During their flights of fancy, they observed citizens partaking in many new scientific experiments in cranial therapy for unstoppable evolving cortexes. Their laughter above the lobotomies echoed like thunder from the sky, for not only had they mastered the art of beeswax bricks, but it doubled as a form of healing. The buzz of the bees, that honey balm—two birds, one stone—many flights, more bricks.
If you want peace, prepare for war/Si vis pacem... (1975) Zofia Oraczewska, Warsaw, Poland
The Emissary turned PacifistHard hat, laced boots, parachute, sent out to shoot. Acquiescing for the motherland, The Emissary turned Pacifist territorially rationalizes as they wade through the trenches, weighed down by regalia. After a well-deserved nap in the foxhole, they wake in the crosshairs of a spitting image. It is a sabotage via hard hat, laced boots, parachute, sent out to shoot—different arm patch. In that moment they experience simultaneously the sensation of shooting and being shot; the potential of lethal force followed by destined recoil and overwhelming regret. This hard hat, laced boots, parachute, sent out to shoot—different arm patch is the product of a similar production line. The double also has a mother, a father, a garden, a cat; also coerced into downing the propaganda kool-aid. Segregated by a chalk-drawn border, our character capriciously denounces the entire mission, dunking their remote viewing kit into the nearest river. From the same flow, they hydrate seeds that they plant in their guns in place of bullets, their military-grade camouflage helping them to hide in the garden for the rest of the war.
Hey, You/Hé,Te! (1976) Péter Szoboszlay, Budapest, Hungary.
The Hippy in a Nightmare Box
Titular to the peace and love movement, this character was raised harmoniously in a barn, they are a walking farmer’s almanac. Upon hearing of the counter-culture revolution of hippies abroad, the Hippy in a Nightmare Box finally felt not so alone in this world. In a flight response, they purchased a pair of Levis 648’s—supreme contraband—a look that came to define them. This look, however, appalled devote comrades in their village. Retreating to heretical purgatory, as there was nowhere else to flee, they found solace in the confines of their commie block box. Unlike their para-social beatnik pals, they didn’t need grass or dime-bag chemicals to elevate—they were heightened on suspicion alone. It’s an addictive, contagious, hallucinogenic substance, the power of paranoia. As their room spun in psycho-sublimation, their concrete cube became a space of safety equally for them and from them. Forgotten for decades, they gained notoriety and even fandom later in life. Their pseudo-bohemian granddaughter became the muse of American singer-songwriter Beck’s track Nightmare Hippy Girl on the country-psychedelic album Mellow Gold. Released in 1994, the limelight came just three years following the independence of their homeland from the comrade troops. With a new-found freedom to travel, they instead chose the fields, in bucolic bliss, versing veriditas reverie.
Wow, A Talking Fish!/Ух ты, говорящая рыба! (1983) Robert Sahakyants, Yerevan, Armenia.
The Elder with Karmic Genius
Through all of their solar loops, the Elder had grown to know one golden truth—always listen to, and never eat, a talking animal. The more years that passed, the more species they found with this trait. It didn’t matter which vernacular the animal spoke; it was never wise to consume an animal with vocabulary. This could potentially block the natural flow of synchronous energy. Nearing their zenith, a painter turned up at the door asking if they would sit for a portrait. The painter wound up staying a year in awe, completing a rectangle for each season. The four masterpieces can be viewed today at the Louvre in Paris in the Denon Wing. If you are lost, ask the front desk to direct you to the Giuseppe Arcimboldo hang.
Golden Bird/Aranymadár (1987) Dóra Keresztes and István Orosz, Budapest, Hungary.
The Mythopoetic Asleep in the Weeds
This figure analyzes their life through heroic fairy tale typologies of rose-tinted folkloric pasts. For them, going to work is akin to slaying a dragon, going on a date is to save a heroine. This embroidered façade attempts to distract company from their shadow, something they can control supremely on social media. They fearfully attempt to resuscitate youthful pasts so far from the present that the rear-view mirror doesn’t even appear. Perfection is only a memory of perfection once it’s gone through the sieve of time. They have perversely toiled to be received as a marginalized outsider, mercurial memories become weeds upon which they rest. Counting the plastic petals of minor defeats and maniacal side-quests, their proper place is forever reserved as a gentle jester in a self-fabricated hedonist court.
Here Begins the New Life/Incipit Vita Nova (1992) Hardi Volmer, Harku, Estonia.
The One Who Dove Into the Skip
We all know this naïve wanderer well, their vulnerability exists to different degrees in each of us. Trying on capitalism’s many masks, a grotesque consumerism governs, turning even the strongest willed into idle deadbeats. As that Icon Curtain rose, a cacophony of trash heaved in. Having no experience in sanitary disposal practices, they are forced to cope with the entropy through first-hand experience. There was no way to tell the difference between a cheap thrill and a reward earned through gratification in this based materialism. No way to know the long-term effects of dopamine ketchup pasta, cable television, voyeuristic fornication, carbonated spirits, branded sportswear, shopska salad, or alien abduction. With a tendency to debasement, our character was blessed to have a loved one drag them out the skip in time for yesterday’s dinner.
Returning: Politics of the Imagination
The day before the opening of Samizdat film festival, my friend Chris Forgues, also known as C.F. in the underground comic and graphic novel scene, sent through a PDF of Letters to God’s Eye by John Stojko self-published in 1978. Hot on the heels of conspiracy, it claims to be the first English Translation of the Voynich Manuscript, a vellum codex hand-annotated in an unknown language surrounded by coloured illustrations of flora and fauna, celestial cycles and bathing nymphs. In medieval times, scribal culture involved practices in memory which required the study of a small corpus of knowledge, meditated upon, and recorded in both images and text. The marginalia are visual cues, aids to a holistic knowledge of a practice. Carbon dated to the 15th century, it is held today at the Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. There have been numerous speculative attempts to translate the Voynichese. It has been deemed a witch’s herbal handbook, scribed glossolalia, alphagram, pharmacopoeia, semantic network, encrypted mythopoeia, or possibly a work of speculative fiction. Specialists have used everything from carbon dating, cardan grille, material culture analysis to algorithmic deep learning to crack its code—however it remains steeped in a mysterious, veiled timbre.
Codes are convincing depending on an individual’s awareness of cultural ciphers and levels of collective amnesia.
Alternatively, Stojko transcribed the entire text through a vowelless early-Ukrainian cipher instead of the usual Latin cryptanalysis. The result is a theological treatise of those who once lived in present-day Ukraine pre-indoctrination. Reading the text through this lens blasphemies the impetus for Russia’s continuing war on these lands today. Themes coincide with early Slavic animist Paganism, deep agrarian knowledge and the practice of water healing.
Is this an Aesopian language of concealment as epistemic resistance, or is it a language of estrangement from a since past reality?
In the former Eastern Bloc, everything was in a constant state of flux, forever vanishing and being re-constructed. This oppositional imagery runs consistently through the animations in Samizdat Film Festival’s Politics of the Imagination: Animations of the Eastern Bloc. The presentation was rich in dilapidating buildings, eschatological seances, flights above society, momentary falls into colour, external and internal scaffolding—fully exposed, yet articulated in obfuscated signals. These artists found foils in which to survive censorship, trusting their coded juxtapositions to communicate for the collective.
In Old Believer communities of the region, to stay in constant motion was a way to avoid evil. Knowing that what is inner is never stable, these animators dive into the current of a rapidly changing society, magnifying the monstrous barnacles clung to the prehistoric rocks of time. Utopic ideologies of Fyodorovian reincarnation have not convinced them; instead they remain in subservient bondage to earth, an immanent plane. With the shared etymology of ‘anima’, these animators re-animate animism with breath, soul and life. They remind viewers that to be communed with ecology is to accept and trust in chaos—continual re-ordering is eternal, it is what is needed to survive.
[1] Cold War II has also been referred to as the Second Cold War or the New Cold War as early as 2015 by historians, political scientists and journalists to describe renewed political, economic, technological and military revival in the 21st century. Informed by Russian tensions with NATO, economically, the space race has expanded to also become a race of technology including artificial intelligence and quantum computing. To learn more, the 9-part series Turning Point: The Bomb and the Cold War by Brian Knappenberger, 2024 describes the layers of history and their echo in today’s global economic and political spheres.
[2] For a full explanation of the Total Installation, see: Five Things to Know: Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, meet the artists who pioneered the total installation, Tate, UK: https://www.tate.org.uk/art/lists/five-things-know-ilya-and-emilia-kabakov [accessed Oct 22, 2026].
[3] Available at: https://hirshhorn.si.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/Ilya-Kabokov-Ten-Characters-Brochure-Directions.pdf [Accessed: October 17, 2026])
[4] This is a Slavic idiom for when immigration doesn't pan out as expected - to miss an opportunity, fall short of a goal, or fail at something completely.
Ayla Dmyterko is a Ukrainian-Canadian artist based in Glasgow whose interdisciplinary practice explores cultural memory, diasporic imagination, and overlapping histories of possession and dispossession. Grounded in lineages of painting, her field expands to involve moving image, installation, dance, material cultures and texts. Currently, she is an artist-in-residence at IATRUS, Bulgaria.
Website: ayladmyterko.com
IG: @ayla.dmyterko
The 2026 edition of Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival took place in Aberdeen, Cromarty, Dunfermline, Edinburgh and Glasgow between 6 October and 7 November. Find out more: samizdatfest.co.uk