Material: Metal, speakers, audio mixers.
Size: 300cm-300cm-300cm.
Location: Gallery Rankka, Helsinki, Finland.
"The Cage" is a symbol of a dead body, of emptiness, of a lifeless corpse, where there's no more thought, no more life. "The Cage" is resistant for all wars. "The Cage" is a chance to remember. "The Cage" is freedom. During Spartak Khachanov's stay in the AR-residency on HIAP Suomenlinna, he studied Finnish history, with a particular focus on the Finnish Civil War. The battles fought over 103 years ago in Finland between "reds" and "whites".
During the Russian era, the Suomenlinna (Viapori) fortress was not part of the Finnish Grand Duchy but was governed by Russia. Finland had declared independence on 6 December 1917, but Viapori was still under the command of Russians troops for some time. It was not transferred under the administration of the Finnish government until in the spring 1918 during the Finnish Civil War.
Towards the end of the war, the Whites set up a prison camp in Suomenlinna (Viapori) for Red prisoners, up to 8,000 of them. In the prison camp, Red prisoners were executed and some died of diseases due to the poor conditions in the fortress. The last prisoners were released in March 1919.