Lostscapes: Beach trip
Dasha Podoltseva
Collaboration with Alexey Shmurak
Video installation with sound, 2023
A BEACH
A beach is a landform alongside a body of water which consists of loose particles. The particles composing a beach are typically made from rock, such as sand, gravel, shingle, pebbles, etc., or biological sources, such as mollusc shells or coralline algae.
public space
social construct
non-legal entity
psychological phenomenon
a piece of nature
A beach as a function does not exist without a person. It does not exist without human care (it quickly overgrows) and without a human agreement to undress (animals do not have a beach concept, they only have a watering spot).
History
The beach as a dangerous place, demonisation of the seas
In the middle of the eighteenth century (Enlightenment + industrialisation), doctors decided that bathing could cure rabies and leprosy. They were taken, tied to a rope, with each other, forcibly into the waves (immersed). During this procedure, the priest would say the Ave Maria.
In the 19th century, aristocrats and rich bourgeois were on the beaches, but they were afraid of water. They used to drive along the beach in closed carriages. They were protected from the water like astronauts are from outer space.
In 1824 (Restoration times), the Duchess de Berry defiantly experimented with swimming for her own pleasure in Normandy (the Normandy landings during World War II are a funny geographical parallel), thus setting an example. Gradually, during the 19th century, the beach became a place of rest. The least protected classes were given the opportunity to have such a holiday (comparable to Soviet projects of organised recreation).
.
Russian invasion
As a result of the Russian invasion, we have lost kilometres of beaches - the coasts of the Black and Azov Seas, part of the Dnipro, the Southern Bug, the Siverskyi Donets, the Kinburn Spit, and even the beaches of Odesa. And this is not only a physical loss of public space, it is also a loss of the habit of relaxing and unwinding, because you need to feel safe to do so.
Mine contamination
The beach, as a place of collective recreation and entertainment, becomes, like clubs and restaurants, a place of serving summonses (and thus returns to the concept of the <17th century)
The beach disappearance
The process of beach disappearance has a rather strange and slightly amusing twin:
From the first days of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, sandbags appeared in major cities to protect monuments and buildings from the effects of bombing. These sandbags were a temporary fix; obviously, no one thought the war would last for years.
Under the influence of the sun and wind, the bags lose their shape and crumble; the sand forms an ironic analogue of the beach in places that are not beach-like in form and substance (squares, sidewalks). Thus, the beach and the sand are transformed and migrated.
Hourglass of war
As a finely split stone, sand is the embodiment of entropy (time), which has been used in the construction of clocks since the earliest civilisations. Sandbags for the protection of monuments and buildings have become a kind of hourglass of war.