When in Russia, you are sure to spot these giant mosaics on the walls of multistorey residential houses. There are animals and birds, objects, emblems and slogans masoned with bricks. Texts are also quite common — it could be a commemorative date, the year when the building was completed, a call for a better life or a propaganda call.
This mockumentary is centred around a fictional town with a narrator traveling from one mosaic to another with a antique device that can scan those mosaics and convert it into sound. The real town behind this place is Sergiyev Posad, and even though the streets’ names are not real here the mosaics featured in this piece are the part of the real landscape.
The art of urban mosaics has been flourishing in the 20th century but some texts are going back to the past. In this case, the oldest one is from the year 1899.
The locals didn’t pay much attention to it these days. People got used to them, these mosaics are the heritage of the past that slowly becomes a part of the modern urban environment.
