To recreate the atmosphere of waiting, that is essential for the piece, the artist has decided to set screening times, which limit the availability of her work. The work can be seen online every week from Tuesday 00:01 A.M. to Thursday 11:59 P.M. (MST).

Queue by Sasha Pirogova aims to visualize Vladimir Sorokin’s The Queue. In the novel, Sorokin proposes that the act of waiting in line – as a result of the distortions of the socialist planned economy – had a profound impact on life in Soviet Russia. A comical cacophony of unexpected pieces of conversation from within a typical soviet queue makes up this implied critique of Russian bureaucracy and planned distribution. In Pirogova’s work, which is her only work to date using text, the same, monotonous voice reminiscent of an amplified announcer delivers the lines of dialog of different characters. The queue thus acts as an entity that seems to synchronize individual remarks into a uniform stream of announcements. Within the body of the queue, however, several types of practices are observable: goods are exchanged, children raised, pop-culture consumed, and networks fabricated. Pirogova actualizes Sorokin’s work not only aesthetically, she also leaves out the author’s explicit references to his own time. With this, the artist proposes an ongoing relevance to reflecting on waiting: a situation that is able to link close, intimate introspection with the alienating situation of the masses standing in line.