Now that Star Wars is just a few months/weeks away, every one that is a fan of the franchise is truly keeping count as to how many days are left before we get to spend time again with Han, Leia, Chewie and a host of new characters. But one city in the Ukraine is using the film to celebrate or rather, displace, a leader of a fallen regime. An artist has turned an old Lenin statue into a, you guessed it, Darth Vader statue, and it’s even become a WiFi hotspot.
No one in the city probably has fond thoughts about Vladimir Lenin and the communist ideology which he espoused and which now people are trying to get away from. In fact, during the height of the Kiev protests last year, several Lenin statues were toppled over by people. But this particular one in Odessa, instead of being destroyed, has been turned into Darth Vader, the poster boy for the dark side of the force.
This is the work of an artist named Alexander Milov, who is of course from Odessa. This is his contribution to the decommunization project, started earlier this year, that aims to remove all symbols and representations of communism in the Ukraine. But there is a functional side to this too. Vader’s helmet is actually a free WiFi hotspot. Extra parts, made of titanium alloy, have been added to the statue but the structure remains the same.
Milov, interviewed by the BBC had this to say, ““I was born in the USSR, and I am a child of a country that doesn’t exist any more. I wish to save the monuments of history. I’m trying to clean up the operating system and keep them on the hard drive of memory.”
VIA: SlashGear
