I Was the Future: Autobiography of a Ghost Building

Site-specific laboratory and performance.
August 17-22, 2026
Visaginas, Lithaunia
A site-specific performance laboratory in Visaginas that gives voice to a demolished building while exploring memory, emptiness as a form of presence, and a future that was imagined but never came to be.

Research - process - result

I came to Visaginas without a predetermined outcome in mind, but with the intention of sharing my interest in site-specific performance practice with the laboratory participants.
To me, Visaginas is a unique setting for artistic experiments that can help us reflect on the histories of relatively young cities and their place in contemporary Europe.
For me, performance is first and foremost a tool for exploring the relationship between people and space: how a place affects our presence, movement, decisions, and the way we see one another.
Even before my first meeting with the group, I was shown a possible site for our work—an empty plot where an unfinished multi-storey building once stood. Its construction began during the Soviet era, but the building was never put into use and was eventually demolished. The absence of this structure became the laboratory’s point of departure.
From the first session, we worked simultaneously on interaction within the group and on exploring the site itself. Through short movement and performance tasks, we focused our attention on the space, the distances between us, the presence of other bodies, and the changes each action introduced into our shared environment.
We had no predetermined script. The structure of the final work gradually emerged from the participants’ observations, actions, and decisions. At the same time, I was searching for a form that would allow us to see something in a place where nothing remained.
Each participant wrote a story in the voice of the vanished building. In this way, a structure that could no longer be seen acquired several voices and continued to exist in another form. The individual texts gradually came together as its collective autobiography.
Using the participants’ texts, my own writing, and music, I created a soundtrack. During the final presentation, both the performers and the audience listened to it through headphones.
The laboratory resulted in a 25-minute site-specific audio performance, *I Was the Future: Autobiography of a Ghost Building*. It was presented on 22 August 2026 by six performers, including myself.
Perhaps this work is about memory.
Perhaps it is about a future that was imagined but never came to be.
Or perhaps it is about emptiness as another form of presence.

Team of the project:

Concept - Anton OvchinnikovAuthors - Anton Ovchinnikov and the participants of the laboratory Costume designer - Anton Ovchinnikov Photo - Jevgenija Cholodova
The Project supported by Visaginas Municipality