I was born in 1999 in the village of Labazy. Since I turned 16, I have been a disco goer visiting events at the local House of Culture. The House of Culture was founded in 1965 and it is considered to be one of the biggest institutions of the kind in the Orenburg Oblast. The most popular attraction of the facility is the disco: you pay 30 rubles and there opens a portal to the post-Soviet Russia.
In 1980s, the youth would dance to the accordion; in the 1990s, the music (both Russian and Western pop hits) used to be played on the tape-recorder of the Romantik brand.
My parents, aunts and uncles owe their best years to this local disco. Every time I enter this countryside rave, it seems to me that shortly my adolescent mom will come out from around the corner accompanied by my dad, also young and crazy. It feels like a time machine. You spend several hours on the dance floor, and it seems like it’s one long disco going on for quarter a century.
My project embraces a period of 22 years. Preparing it, I used archive materials of my relatives and of the House of Culture, as well as my own photos.
