The Great Escape - Tim Parchikov

What do all public spaces all over the world have in common? They always have evacuation plans. Theoretically, evacuation plans are supposed to help us find an exit in dangerous situations. Strangely enough, they are not very compatible with what they are intended to influence — the consciousness of a specific person. It is impossible to make sense of them even in a normal state, let alone in a state of stress, especially the collective stress that people experience in an emergency. The very location of evacuation plans in public spaces makes them hard to find, and when you do find them they are difficult to understand.

Evacuation plans are visually attractive, like the aesthetics of the Russian avant-garde, which in many ways laid the foundations of the modern visual alphabet.

In the early 21st century, in the era of globalization, escapism — physical, social, mental — has become a reality for millions of people. The project shows the illusory nature of contemporary individual and collective strategies of escapism.