View: My Father The Eagle

Casasanta was born in Moscow in 1950. Her father is thought to have been a trainee cosmonaut, and her mother a rocket propulsion engineer. She was found abandoned at the age of 5, the whereabouts of her parents remaining unknown to this day. The note of abandonment was mysteriously hand-written in awkward Spanish:

"Este es Olga - a Casa Santa la dejamos, paria de la Casa de los Diablos" [This is Olga - we leave her to the Saint's house, an outcast from the house of the Devils]

A misunderstanding of this note led to her being registered by SEW as Casasanta, which she has retained in her subsequent career.

Casasanta showed early aptitude for music, and later gained a reputation as a composer of electronic scores - principally for film and television. Since 1995 she has sought a self-imposed exile from the metropolis, living and working in the far north, deep inside the arctic circle, closer (as she puts it) to the 'energy flowing from the stars'.

The commissioned work My Father The Eagle was the result of a workshop organised by SEW in 2000 at our Media Academy in the mining city of Noril'sk. Casasanta contributed the music and directed students in the production of the accompanying images. She afterwards described the figure of the eagle as an 'icon of vigilance, endurance and aerial supremacy'.