Nashi / Ours
Daya Cahen
video, 2008, 26 min.
Dutch artist and filmmaker Daya Cahen often works as an ‘embedded artist’. In her work she focuses on forms of political influence and the systematic manipulation of the human being. Her main interest lies in the power of mass media and its use in the construction and presentation of forms of manipulation, propaganda, or indoctrination.
In 2007 she managed to infiltrate a summer camp of the radical youth movement Nashi (Ours), affiliated to Vladimir Putin. In Cahen’s resulting film, titled Nashi, a group of young recruits speak in an eerily homogenous way of their desire to become great patriots and make Russia the world leader of the 21st century. Fifteen years later, seen in the light of Russia’s war in Ukraine, this film can be called visionary, laying bare the system of indoctrination of Russia’s youth.