Wonderful, different, fast, sensitive, incredibly rich in nuances, but aarrgh, lost video works. Curator Masha Yufa introduced his friend and exhibited her work in a Petroskoi gallery two years ago in July. Inna Kazakova, 34, had prepared the videos in his free time with a computer of the Karelian Television, and some colleague--jealous or spiteful--wiped out the files. All that was left of several month's work was low quality VHS copies.

Last June, Kazakova was in the culture train that went from Belomork to Petroskoi via Oulu. She did not say anything then either, just smiled politely and gave me a CD-ROM with her latest multimedia art.

In her work Identity Kazakova examines the relationship between identity, culture and location. The viewers get to choose their favourite out of several different characters, after which a background is chosen for the character. The background can be changed, and with it changes also the audio landscape.

Kazakova has left off from the observation of how we on holidays always get our pictures taken in front of some local cultural landscape when travelling. In Kazakova's work, the same figure can surprisingly appears as a completely different person against another background. One cannot make out whether the picture has a Russian office worker dressed up with bad taste or a British journalist wearing trendy and laid back clothes, or whether an unemployed, melancholic Irishman or a womanizing Don Juan in an American casino? Even the character's face seems to change according to the background.