Stasis is a time anomaly, an artificial pause.

The original building was created in 1936, but finished only after WWII. It was designed to look like experimental plane “Maxim Gorkiy” from above. The plane had only one test flight and crashed during the landing. The building is huge and beautiful, it survived 90’s and was partly renovated in 00’s. It is full of Soviet Union symbols and artefacts along with mining references in design. But, unlike communism and mining industry in Stakhanov — an industrial town in eastern Ukraine, where all mines were shut down in 1998, it is still functioning.

This story is not only about anachronism, now the past and present are mixed in weird way, just like social consciousness – 70 years of USSR and two decades of independence in corresponding percent ratio. There are artificial cheap flowers, TV sets, plush curtains and “winter garden” near old soviet symbols of hammer and sickle, there are voting places from 2010 presidential elections, that were set up in the Red Lounge, and red flags from main painted panel were not removed – only faces of Lenin and Stalin were painted over somewhere in mid 90’s.

And this is a deeply personal story: I spent here nearly every day on various after school classes, I remember cracked walls and old armchairs, columns, constant coldness of the low floors and ambience that scared and fascinated me.

When I got back here in 2010 for recognition, it stroke me, how everything was same and wrong.