Balakhna, a city in the Nizhny Novgorod region, is the historical centre of lace-making. During the years of industrialization, it became the industrial centre of the region, where one of the largest peat-powered generating plants in the world was being built. The Balakhninsky labour camp, one of almost 80 Gulag sites in the Nizhny Novgorod Region, specialized in peat extraction.
The GOELRO plan, which sought to bring electricity to the whole country, was in step with the burning flame of a worldwide revolution. The plan succeeded, the swamps were drained for peat extraction, and in the 1960s, when the industry switched to new fuel types, peat mining became obsolete, and was abandoned. The peat dried and began to burn. The flames of the world revolution littered the land with slowly smouldering peat bogs.
A fire map, The Plan for Great Works, a map of peat deposits and of Gulags in the Nizhny Novgorod Region. Juxtaposed against each other, these form a single embroidered lace banner. The flickering LED lights reflect on the scheme to transform a nation into an extensive electrification network, but here, depict a map of peat fires in 2010.