Kommunary is a village in Russia’s Leningrad Region. Formerly the Finnish village of Myllypelto, it was renamed in 1948 in memory of the Communards, the members of the Paris Commune. For over 40 years, it was the site of a state-owned fur farm. This enormous enterprise exported mink pelts to the West, the village prospered. Now the premises lie in ruins, grass and trees grow through empty cages, moss consumes the rusty tools of slaughter. Some vistas of this former death camp are paradoxically idyllic: nature swallows rational human structures and transforms the totalitarian order into a natural garden; functional concentration camp architecture embeds into the landscape as a romantic ruin. Jailers and prisoners are gone. What sort of ‘commune’ took place here? When eco-philosopher Timothy Morton expands on ideas of French structuralism, he notes that intangible structures or hyperobjects become evident for the first time only in the moment of their disintegration. This cadaver of a animal farm uncovers an uneasy testimony about collectivist, socialist utopias or state violence in general. If our world ends, will it reveal itself as a prison? One can trace this thought back to ancient Gnosticism, which views our world and physical body as a punishment ward, one must escape by all means. My project deliberately adopts an esoteric approach to documenting this ominous territory. The camera takes on the perspective of a ghost, a former inhabitant, who tries to escape an eerie labyrinth. The cells multiply. A maze mushrooms in the fugitive’s breast. We are seduced by the glitter of perfume-like vials, which in fact contain deadly poison. Flesh becomes grass. This photographic project is part of a video installation that combines video footage of the farm with Stalinist propaganda films. A voice-over composed of the fictional memory fragments of former 'communards' forms a space of association concerning the intertwining of utopia and dystopia.