Spartacus. Times New Roman
Fabrika, Center of Creative Industries, 2014
From 2011 to 2014, Haim Sokol created a series of theatrical video performances and reenactments in collaboration with groups of labor migrants from Central Asia. Inspired by the people’s theatre, on the one hand and by Sergey Eisenshtein’s historical movies such as “Battleship Potemkin”, “October” and “Strike” on the other hand, the artist, together with migrants, acted out episodes from the history of various uprisings and revolutions. This work culminated in Sokol’s solo exhibition “Spartacus. Times New Roman” in 2014, which brought together video performances created over several years into a large -scale installation. The exhibition, which was held in a huge workshop of a former factory, created a semblance of a Roman forum with the Arch of Titus in the center, occupied by rebellious labor migrants. Inspired by the Arab Spring, Occupy movement and its Moscow version Occupy Abay, Haim Sokol combined in the story of a fictional uprising plots from the anti -Roman uprisings in Judea and the uprising of Spartacus, the Paris Commune, the uprising of the Spartacus League in Germany and the Russian revolutions of 1905 and October 1917.
