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1. 1 media/finderscreensnapz006.png 2023-02-18T14:07:29-08:00 Sofia Svichtcheva efb217e6a60ae7110cccbebd2b7293b829bc77d5 References Sofia Svichtcheva 35 structured_gallery 2023-04-03T08:48:15-07:00 Sofia Svichtcheva efb217e6a60ae7110cccbebd2b7293b829bc77d5

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1. 1 media/finderscreensnapz006.png 2023-04-02T14:52:01-07:00 Sofia Svichtcheva efb217e6a60ae7110cccbebd2b7293b829bc77d5 Wrapping Up and Final Reflections 6 gallery 2023-04-07T09:26:05-07:00 Sofia Svichtcheva efb217e6a60ae7110cccbebd2b7293b829bc77d5

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• 1 media/35733daaf5d6d38e10eb22b64e405cdb.jpeg media/d2c7bdc11909b1fe1fc575d5e9b6530d.jpeg 2023-04-01T08:59:39-07:00 Russian Bimbocore, Post-Soviet Aesthetics and Social Media 20 image_header 2023-04-01T12:38:14-07:00 https://www.pinterest.ca/nymphetalumni/ep-17-russian-bimbocore/

  Giving Russian Bimbocore some context: 

  "This week’s episode is dedicated to the Russian Bimbocore aesthetic. We talk spicy white mob wives, hypergamous living dolls, the eternal multiplicity of ushanka hats, and the wintery liminality of Eastern Europe in the Western imagination" - Nymphet Alumni on their Russian Bimbocore episode. 

  I am referencing a podcast episode for the sake of this project as it dives into how the Eastern European imagination falls into a liminal space in the eyes of the West. When popular images of remnant Soviet aesthetics such as apartment blocs and decaying playgrounds are circulated around the web, one forgets that this is not Russia in its entirety and it has developed modern-looking infrastructure over the years. Nonetheless, we are still exposed to these images, especially when they are set in extreme environments not found in the West: namely the icy tundra of Siberia and Russia's more northern regions. Even in major cities such as Moscow and Saint Petersburg, major snowstorms act as oppressive environmental conditions which icy wastelands can be captured and shared (beautiful architecture surrounded by an Arctic haze, for example).
  
  
  
  The hosts highlight how this aesthetic is also season-specific as environmental scapes take precedence, in the winter we are more aware of wintery landscapes other than our own - on Instagram, we engage with trends depending on the season and its associated weather. Coincidentally enough, this project was started in the Winter semester as I came across this trend in 2021 and have been following it ever since. Furthermore, the Russian Bimbocore trend, articulated by the hosts is a niche and specific trend online as it is high maintenance to create this image - it is "looks-maxxing" to its fullest extent.
  
  
  
  To add, there is a certain "exotic whiteness" that Russia produces, which also drove its popularity online; the hosts describe how the West cannot imagine "poor white people" and thus characterize Russia in geographic / environmental terms although most of the country does not have equal standards of living compared to those living in major cities, in Russia's European regions. To add, unlike nepotism, the Russian Bimbocore aesthetic highlights the 'grind' (constant pursuit) that has finally paid off for the woman, she now has luxury that can be showed off as a resistance to both the environmental and social conditions she has persevered through (her effort and cunning are showed). However, she cannot be fully independent as she also embodies the "mob wife", her huge fur coat is power dressing as a form of protection (she is now included into the private family space). 
  
  
  
  The hosts bring in the term "abjection" which is also mentioned in Bradiotti in Chapter 3. Kristeva, who defines it as, "It is thus not the lack of cleanliness or health that causes abjection but what disturbs identity, system, and order. What does not respect borders, positions, rules. The in-between, the ambiguous, the composite" (Kristeva, "Powers of Horror", p. 4; Guberman, "Julia Kristeva Interviews", (1996)). Therefore, the podcast episode deconstructs how women in Eastern Europe are pushed into this abject space, thus producing images and symbols that seem a little uncanny (for example, wearing fur as the only piece of clothing against a blistering wintery atmosphere).
  
  
  
  These images are overwhelming at first and highlights a "digital control society" (from Deleuze) where the digital world has no boundaries, but still has the power to surveil individuals online. This notion can go both ways, as we are being exposed to these images, much like how the women on Instagram are conscious of the reception of their images (an endless feedback loop in a liminal space that is Russia itself). 
  This leads us to why these women reproduce images of their companions on Instagram: they seem to be expected to follow these stereotypical notions of what an opulent Russian women should do. This ties into how becoming-animal also shifts in the digital space, as we can assume new identities for the sake of exposure.

  
  

  Post-Soviet aesthetics 

  "Having a t-shirt with your favourite animated film character simultaneously marks a belonging to a specific generation, in this case the last generation of the Soviet children (born approximately between 1980 and 1991), a positive attitude towards one’s past, and also self-reflexive ironic attitude" (Kalinina, 198) and, "Hence the designers are not interested in copying or reviving this past. They want to come in contact with the positive aspects of the immediate past and present and then put them in question" (Kalinina, 200).
  
  
  
  I was drawn to these two quotes for a particular reason, since in these images of Russian women and Big Cats, there is a level of status being asserted. These Instagram pages point to some illusion of connection between the viewer and the poster, as the women are usually older, meaning they grew up in the years following the перестройка (perestroika) - fallout of the Soviet Union. These women now have disposable income to spend on commodities - servals being one of them as economic systems change from socialism to capitalism. 
  These women on Instagram become their own designers, curating a page where they participate in this subculture of having a serval. They are rapidly mobile women who assert their social status through social media and pet ownership. Especially with a serval, if they want to sustain their Instagram image and profile, they need to at least take good care of their animals or individuals will start to wonder 'what happened to their big cat'. Although there are certain ethical concerns as I have established that the animal trade is questionable (and should be condemned), one can realize why these women to choose to follow this lifestyle. As much as beloved Soviet icons are animals, one can look to current trends to examine how servals and their owners are becoming social media icons themselves. One can only reproduce images of the past for so long, so this may be a way to question these emerging images taking place on Instagram. Becoming established on Instagram does not happen overnight, so this is just another example of the interconnected network between women and their servals and how it has been building over numerous years.
  
  It is not necessarily about taking down these pages either, putting an 'end' to them seems to definitive under the posthuman condition. Victor Pelevin's  2002 novel Homo Zapiens / Generation P reminds us of postmodern Soviet aesthetics as Western advertisements are reincarnated into an unfamiliar Russia. However, these Instagram pages are not a reproduction of something else, as I have asserted they are not postmodern in the way they are showing new representations between humans and animals. We can certainly question what the cat and women are doing, but we can understand that the cat is called up into this Russian Bimbocore aesthetic. In becoming-animal, the cat also mirrors the woman as both are beautiful beings that sit up next to one another. 

  Selfies and Instagram 

  "There are plenty of good exotic-animal accounts on Instagram, yet there’s something about these serval-owning Russian women that I find particularly evocative. I don’t know much about what life in Russia is like, but elegant women with lip fillers walking their bejeweled exotic cats through crumbling Soviet apartment blocks certainly fits with my imagined understanding of the place — a blend of decadence and grime, shot through with an undercurrent of dangerous stupidity".
  
  Taken directly from the article, it was quite a slippery-slope navigating this article, and it had me thinking what the point of it was? Was it to reinforce the East/West divide, reminding their audience of a world so far away? Although the writer is not seemingly off the mark, with their stereotypes well-placed throughout the article, there is a lot to go through. There is so much to be done in approaching media online, and how we choose to react to it. Perhaps another element of the posthuman as becoming-animal, is not to antagonize what images are being reproduced. As much as we want to critique women online participating in a simulated opulence with their servals, there is much more at stake. Perhaps we should step back and think of how these accounts came to be, and why they seem to gain popularity over the years. 
  
  
  
  Coming back to an earlier investigation into visual culture, I was drawn to this article by ID that highlights how we have moved on (and are tired of) the perfect selfie, with the aid of technologies such as FaceTune. Rather, by integrating masks and filters, the viewer can mesh themselves with various things: they can experience being a pumpkin, and embrace all the inter-kingdom qualities that go beyond just sight. The face as we know it is disappearing under this condition, as it must be destroyed to reappear under a better guise. The selfie has more autonomy, as it obviously is a reflection of the person's face (seemingly objective), but can show the world what it wants to show. Now, the selfie is being transformed from being a frozen image to a dynamic process of being. Rather than being a tool of control (the selfie), the posthuman selfie encompasses so much more. Yes, the Russian Instagram Girl is posting her serval, but she is now not the only one included in the whole image. The selfie and various filters on Instagram are endless, so in the future we may be able to replicate a filter that includes the serval in it, rather than it being physically there to satisfy viewers. Users could upload pictures or videos of servals found in the wild, rather than keeping them as pets. This recommendation is feasible if Instagram implements policies surrounding animal safety and understands that servals should not be kept as pets. This is one way to mitigate the risk of the over-exposure of servals seen on Instagram. Again, this mixes disciplines of animal activism and greater awareness to social media and the implications of digital economies. Furthermore, Instagram can be improved to promote content that centres on rehabilitation and proper care of these animals (in Siberia, for example, there is more land space to create habitats to cater towards them).

  
  

  Nonhuman friends by photographer Nika Sandler is a bittersweet nod to both childhood nostalgia and her personal relationships with cats. She wants to "challenge the human gaze" in his photography collection, as many of the shots showcase cats, close-up and often blurry interweaving themselves into the frame of the subject. The photographer wanted to show the world through the cat's eyes, producing uncanny images to us. As the viewer, we are not used to seeing the world through the cat's eyes, as this photo-series challenges how we represent the world of animals. As noted by the photographer too, we fall into the trap of capturing the animal as a sort of spectacle, placing them in a digital zoo mediated by our Instagram pages. Sandler's work veers away from the "curated online cute", and focuses on perspectives normally hidden from the digital space. Thus, as we think about posthumanism as becoming-animal, we should be cautious not to objectify their existence according to what we want them to be. At the end of the day, although domesticated now, they are still animals and experience the world completely different than us (there is so much more than just sight at play). Photographs have the ability to be tagged with what the photographer wants to portray: kind of simulating the environment in which the photograph was taken.