moscow is perhaps the most disturbing and fascinating place i’ve ever been. how to describe it? a grey, brutal concrete environment, decaying and polluted–such is the legacy of communism–ruthlessly defaced by hypercapitalist neon and giant billboards. science fiction is the obvious reference point–blade runner without the design restraint. plasma screens pump out insane imagery, billboards cover entire buildings. to speak of ‘bad taste’ implies that some notion of good taste is available. the colours and shapes of the neon, the randomized ahistorical mishmash of the architecture are simply from another planet. the cyrillic alphabet, similar yet unreadable, adds to the science fiction effect. it feels as if it were a parallel future–or a foretaste of the real future for us all in an ecologically wrecked world.
the shock is moral as well as aesthetic. i’m not about to defend soviet communism, but somewhere in there was an ideal about equality and a society not based on consumption. and in moscow consumerism has raped the corpse of that ideal and sits gloating upon it…