Golden Age - dron video by Patrik Prosko, Astora, Socotra, Yemen 2023

Drone video from the village of Astora from the Golden Age installation. During filming, there was such a big wind that the drone could barely stay in the air. I have the smallest one on the market for traveling, it doesn’t have a big enough propeller to withstand it, so even the video is quite choppy at the beginning as it doesn’t work. The interesting thing is that when I climbed out, there was no such wind, only at the ground, you can see it blowing in the bushes around.
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Otherwise, from this top you can see the village, which was basically completely destroyed by the cyclone. It’s one ruin next to another, with wrecked cars lying between them. I’m standing by one when I shoot it. In the second part of the video, I climbed to the maximum height that the drone allows and looked around. It can be seen that not many people live in this part of the village anymore, the only functional car that can be seen here is ours, otherwise no one else parks here. Again, it seems quite apocalyptic. People have fled from here to that remote white village on the hill, where they hope that the flood will not destroy them again. But if I know how they build the houses, a flood is not the only thing that threatens them with collapse.
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While descending from the height back to the installation, a bunch of local curious youths make their way to her.
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I put the music to it by the local Mohammed Abduh. The traditional Arabic lute gives the whole scene a sadly melancholic quality. And quite authentic too.
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Even though all the people here are smiling all the time.