'Live in the past!'

Street artist Timofey Radya's eerie new piece in Yekaterinburg

UPDATE: On June 14, just two days after this work was installed, it was taken down by the authorities. The removal process can be seen in a video posted on Telegram by the Yekaterinburg news outlet E1.

Street artist Timofey Radya has published a video and photos of his newest installation: the words “Live in the past!” in large block letters on top of the roofs of two apartment buildings on Kosmonavtov Prospekt in Yekaterinburg.

The apartment buildings sit between a missile-shaped monument to the Soviet designer Lev Lyulyev on one side and a building with a hammer and sickle on its roof on the other.

According to Radya, he first noticed the spot a long time ago. “The old signs and symbols and the emptiness between them,” in his opinion, “resemble Russia.” He chose the words “Live in the past” long ago, though they didn’t seem quite as relevant when he first selected them. He finally started working on the piece in December 2021. At that point, the words seemed like “the perfect diagnosis.” Now, he sees them as Russia’s “sentence.”