I once picked up a coin from 1945, with an eagle on one side and Stalin's face on the other. It lay in the scorched earth of Berlin's ruins for forty years, its rust etching the two sworn enemies into the same color. This reminds me of New York and Moscow in the Cold War era - people thousands of miles apart were clamped into similar shapes by the iron pincers of history, rotting in the shadow of nuclear bombs, and blooming deformed flowers in the rot.
"When We Talk of Fire at the End of the Century" is a requiem for losers. Twelve names were scattered on both sides of the Iron Curtain. Some people used lipstick to draw butterflies on their collarbones. Some people recited the "Communist Manifesto" deep in the mines. Some people rejoiced over half a pizza, and some people stuffed their self-portraits into the crematorium. They were crushed by the meat grinder of ideology, but they stubbornly held on to the fragments of their souls like the last match.
I try to capture those sparks that are still extinguished: the blood and perfume on Matilda's skirt, the red star rust spots on Ivan Petrovich's mining pick, the cobalt blue tears flowing in Jean-Luc's canvas... When the dust of the fall of the Berlin Wall settles, will there still be residual warmth hidden in these ashes?
As the bells ring the end of the century, keep your hands on the pages. If you touch a subtle tremor, it is the echo of a mortal's bones breaking under the giant wheel.
Intention: The so-called redemption is nothing more than a stubborn bone stuck between the gears of history.