EST
by Gianluigi Ricuperati
Tunué, 2018
197 pages
15×21 cm
A fashion photographer is called to participate to a huge project that aims at reconstructing everyday life in the Soviet Union. Being at the same time part of that world and of the outside reality will help him heal his inner duplicities and finally find himself.
In London, a fashion photographer whose life is emotionally divided — on one hand he is a family man while on the other hand he has an endless series of sexual “friendships” — is invited to a job appointment at midnight. From that moment on he will find himself living in a separate cosmos, a social experiment whose every detail is a precise reference to life in the Soviet Union. This strange setting is the production site of a giant movie about Lev Landau, a Nobel Prize in Physics that had an heterodox view of marriage.
Ilya, the landlord, director and producer of the film, has physically reconstructed the Institute, including hiring the staff people to have them literally living inside the project. He is now offering to the photographer the opportunity of becoming the official eye of the enterprise.
Divided between Milan and London, between fascination and restlessness, between the attraction towards an unknown enigmatic girl and life with his family at home, he will accept. By living in close contact with the double lives of both Ilya and the protagonist of the movie, the photographer will have to face himself and to finally pay attention to an inner message that has been calling him for a long time: he must change his life and start being himself.
The setting of EST is based on the existing artistic project DAU by Ilya Khrzhanovsky, that became one of the greatest immersive art experiences of all times.
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Gianluigi Ricuperati is an Italian writer. He collaborates with several newspaper and magazines like La Repubblica, D di Repubblica, La Stampa, Abitare, Domus, GQ, Studio, Il Sole 24 Ore, ITALIC. He has been the curator of art events like the Giorno per Giorno project (Contemporary Torino + Piemonte/Artissima) and was the Artistic Director of the Domus Academy of the US Laureate International Universities. Since 2006 he has published eight books. His first novel was Il mio impero è nell’aria (Minimum Fax 2011). EST is his most recent publication.
