The market

I remember the place as the Bird Market. The name had survived from the Soviet period, when poultry and small animals were sold there.

During the early 1990s, the market expanded into the Kolkhozny Market. Traders arrived with large bags of imported clothes and household goods. Temporary stalls, striped canopies, private selling, and animal trading occupied the same crowded space.

For a child, the market was one of the clearest images of the new post-Soviet economy. Everything appeared available, improvised, unstable, and for sale.

The courtyard

Our courtyard was immediately beside the market. Children played there, older people sat on benches, and stray kittens and puppies appeared with striking regularity.

Some had wandered away. Others had been left close to the market in the hope that somebody would take them. They became part of the ordinary environment: fed, handled, named, adopted, ignored, or gone within a few days.

The market and the courtyard formed one small system. Trade, poverty, domestic animals, childhood, and abandonment existed within a few metres of one another.

The story

As a child, I loved animals and read Gerald Durrell. At the same time, I grew up in a place where animal suffering was visible and routine.

The video records the coexistence of those experiences. Affection for animals existed alongside a practical familiarity with disappearance, illness, and neglect.

Looking back, I am interested in the structure of the memory and in the way a personal story can hold a wider historical moment without having to explain it completely.