RED UTOPIA (2022–ongoing)
Red Utopia is an ongoing performative project that unfolds through the repetitive act of knitting and unraveling a red textile form shaped as a flag.
The work began in 2022 in Munich as a response to the Russian Federation’s attempt to revive Soviet imperial structures — an effort to reconstruct a system in which human life is subordinated to ideology. Rather than reproducing the flag as a symbol of power, the artist engages with it as a material and process — a structure that can be built, undone, and reconfigured.
Through the slow and repetitive gesture of knitting, the work reflects on the persistence of colonial systems and the violence of imposed historical repetition. The act of unraveling becomes equally significant: a gesture of deconstruction, reflection, and the possibility of transformation.
First iteration (2022)
During the first iteration, the artist knitted a red flag over 77 hours across 22 days, beginning on August 24 — Ukraine’s Independence Day. The entire process was documented on video.
In the final performative act, the knitted object was unraveled back into a red yarn ball, while the video of its creation was shown simultaneously. This gesture established the core structure of the project: a cycle of construction and dissolution, presence and reflection.
Second iteration (2025–ongoing)
The second iteration began on May 9, 2025 — a date heavily instrumentalized by the Russian state as a tool of propaganda, marking the victory narrative of World War II. By choosing this date, the work critically engages with the manipulation of historical memory and its role in sustaining contemporary violence.
Using the same yarn ball created during the first iteration, the artist began knitting the form again, this time adding new threads and expanding its scale. The material carries the memory of the previous cycle, while its transformation marks a continuation rather than a repetition in identical terms.
At the current stage, the knitted object is nearly complete. It is intended to be unraveled again in a live performative act, producing a larger yarn ball and initiating the next phase of the cycle.
Location: Munich, Germany. Duration: 77 hours in 22 days + 90 minutes.
Repetition as structure
At its core, Red Utopia is a performative investigation into repetition — both political and existential.
The work reflects on the human tendency to reproduce destructive patterns, even when their consequences are known. Systems of power, like individual behavior, often return to familiar structures, repeating forms that are deeply embedded in memory and the body.
At the same time, the project asks whether reflection can interrupt this cycle — and what role conscious awareness plays in the transformation of traumatized societies.
The red yarn ball becomes a point of potential: a state in which any form is possible. Yet the artist repeatedly reconstructs the same object, revealing the difficulty of moving beyond inherited structures.
Process and medium
Performance is the primary medium of the work. The act itself — sustained, repetitive, and time-based — becomes a form of thinking.
Video and photography are not secondary documentation but integral elements of the project. They create a parallel temporal layer, allowing the process to be observed, repeated, and reflected upon.
The work exists across:
- material traces (yarn ball, size markings)
- live performance (knitting / unraveling)
- video documentation of the process
- photographic representations of transitional forms
Long-term cycle
Red Utopia is conceived as a long-term performative cycle.
Each iteration repeats the same gesture — knitting and unraveling — while increasing the scale of the yarn ball through the accumulation of new material. Over time, the project expands both physically and conceptually, tracing the persistence of historical memory and embodied repetition.
Rather than seeking resolution, the work remains in process — a continuous movement between construction and dissolution, memory and transformation.
Full video documentation available upon request.
MARYNA SEMENKOVA 