Children of Unquiet: the video
In this film Mikhail Karikis orchestrates a children’s ‘take over’ of an uninhabited workers’ village in Italy centering on the children’s aural and physical…
Read MoreChildren of Unquiet is a multipartite project by Mikhail Karikis exploring issues of post-industrialisation, landscape and the next generation. It takes place in the geothermal area of the Devil’s Valley in Tuscany, Italy, which is known for inspiring Dante’s hellish descriptions of L’Inferno, and for being the location where sustainable energy production was invented in the early 1900s and where the first geothermal power plant in the world was built. Until recently, five thousand workers and their families lived there in a group of iconic modernist industrial villages constructed around the power station by the modernist architect Giovanni Michelucci. Following the introduction of automated technologies in the power plant, unemployment in the area increased and prospects for the young became limited resulting in the rapid depopulation or abandonment of entire villages. In developing this project Karikis worked with a group of forty-five children between the ages of 5 and 12 years old, who are from the region. He devised a series of workshops and performances which generated the various parts of this project, including a film featuring a children’s ‘take over’ of an abandoned worker’s village, a board-game reactivating decision-making processes that have led to the depopulation of the region, and a futurological Super-8 film animating visions of the future of a deserted village from the point of view of children living in the area.
Produced by Radio Papesse, Florence.
In this film Mikhail Karikis orchestrates a children’s ‘take over’ of an uninhabited workers’ village in Italy centering on the children’s aural and physical…
Read MoreThis work activates decision-making processes, dilemmas and conflicts echoing the contrasting socio-economic narratives of de-industrialisation and automation, coupled with depopulation and worker migration. The…
Read MoreVisions is an installation comprising a super-8 film displayed on a moviola, photographs and light. The super-8 film animates children’s visions of the future…
Read MoreMikhail Karikis devised a series of drawing workshops with children aged 7-8 y/o growing up around the depopulated villages near Larderello, which were abandoned…
Read MoreAn audio-visual performance that also exists as a sound installation exploring the striking legendary, literary and cinematic connections between the invention of sustainable energy…
Read MoreA multicoloured oil pastel drawing of the central phrase appearing in Mikhail Karikis’s video Children of Unquiet drawn by the artist by copying children’s…
Read More