Time and space in an abandoned city

The Zone is a mind construct. For most people, it exists only
as a myth.

The Zone is a flip-side of a functioning post-Soviet city.

It is scary that new Sarcophagus may become a new symbol of the Zone. It’s an ugly, gigantic garage; I feel sick when I think that soon there will be a generation that will see this as a symbol of the disaster.
This will happen when all villages completely deteriorate… There will be no nice place to stay, and everyone will go to half-destroyed Prypyat where they will drink hard liquor on the roof with that new Sarcophagus on the background, that arch-like piece of puke. It reminds me of the bio-design at the beginning of the century and the concept-art of architecture students [that were fantasizing] about eco-cities of the far future. To build such a thing in the Zone is more disturbing that to destroy a historic district in downtown and then put glass skyscrapers instead.

City disintegrates into the islands that have their own temporality.

Until recently, the city separated its “intramural” population from those outside the walls. Today, people are divided according to aspects of time. Where once an entire “downtown” area indicated a long historical period, now only a few monuments will do. Further, the new technological time has no relation to any calendar of events nor any collective memory. It is pure computer time, and as such helps to construct a permanent present, an unbounded, timeless intensity that is destroying the tempo of a progressively degraded society.

The Zone must be turned into a simulacrum and be re-lived.

They will print Kyiv on 3D printers exactly at the same spot where it was. Because everyone missed Kyiv and was going through photos and documentaries on what we have lost. About the city of stone and greenery with a big and spacious heart where everyone can find a place. Obtained with earnest entreaties, an old haunt.