1 Synopsis-tophalf

A synopsis of the discussions at the seminars of Method Fund*

20 October 2018 • Kateryna Badianova

*Text was published first at the «Preface», Metod Fund, 2016

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A synopsis of the workshop “Prolonged Representation” held by Yevgenia Belorusets and Ivan Melnychuk at the “Silent Witnesses” seminar, September 25–28.

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Using a number of exhibitions at the Presidential Administration (AP) as an example, Ivan outlined a new encroaching image that confirmed the political-propagandist character of representation. A centralized perception of events is being constructed in Ukraine today: these events are presented as the revolution of free happy people. This representation has extensive character and utilizes two filters, the first one for the elite strolling around a corridor-gallery at the Administration, and the second one at Boryspil airport, for those who have passed passport control and are off to the wide world. The active subject of power is still lacking strength to impose its own language and outlook, so the artists themselves offer their services as activists, feeling involved in the ongoing changes. The language of representation is being formed: the one of monumental, non-traumatic nature, aimed to construct the typical image of the hero. The model hands over his/her image to the photographer to become an example; the best for the best. Hence the question: what kind of society is formed through the “prolonged representation” and what is given as an example?

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Ukraine: at the Forefront of Freedom is the communication campaign commemorating the 25th anniversary of Ukrainian independence: “We want to remind the whole international community that we will fight for our land and for our and everyone’s freedom. The world can count on us, and we will not fail them. However, it is very important that they will not fail us. Our freedom is essential not only for us but the whole world,” said project leader Natalia Popovych, advisor to the Head of the Administration of the President of Ukraine and co-founder of Ukraine Crisis Media Center. (Source)

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Artistic avant-garde has gained national importance: this fact is reflected by the struggle between Mazepa and Malevich for the right to convey the name for the international airport. “Ukrainian avant-garde” is now at the service of the new Ukrainian politics: “Ukrainian avant-garde became the uniform style of the campaign. According to Popovych, it shaped the Ukrainian national identity, yet historic legacy of this period has been annexed by Russia.” (ibid)

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Exhibitions at the Second Floor Art Center gallery, organized by Ukraine Crisis Media Center. The gallery is located in the Administration building, and anyone is free to visit it to confirm that “We are building a new country now and march into Europe with confidence. The Soviet cobwebs should be thoroughly swept out of all the dark corners!”… The Administration of the President of Ukraine hospitably opens its doors for the citizens to personally see how the state office works and make sure that changes have finally entered these walls. (Source)

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“The sixteen portraits of Ukrainian heroes, whose names have been immortalized as a tribute to their fighting for Ukrainian towns and villages in the East, became the main part of the new exhibition at Second Floor Art Center at the Administration of the President of Ukraine, which is open to the general public. The battle-hardened faces of Ukrainian soldiers – from privates to colonels – remind us that their sacrifices, as well as those of hundreds of thousands of heroes, were driven by aspirations to see their country renewed by long-awaited reforms – a determination shared by the rest of the country. Today the Presidential Administration offers a new culture of relations for a public servant – to honor those who really have been carrying Ukraine on their shoulders, so that every official honors the people he serves”. At the exhibition “16,” heroes look straight into the eyes of a viewer from the monumental portraits.

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The formal attributes of the “new” canon, which are present in the works to a varying degree, do not define the new form of the emerging art fully. To isolate these signs as a totalistic canon would not be entirely correct, since a good totalistic work of art no longer exists. The definition of a canon as closed in itself is based on its desired construction rather than actual existence. What Vanya has just described cannot exist objectively. We have a different society, a different situation. Perhaps there is an attempt to build such a style, but is it possible nowadays?

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A synopsis of the conversation between the seminar participants regarding the exhibition “Victory of the Defeated” by Yevgenia Belorusets and exhibition “My Army: to See with a Heart”. “Silent Witnesses” seminar, September 26th.

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“Victory of the Defeated”, an exhibition by Yevgenia Belorusets, co-authored with curator Tatiana Kochubinska and architect Ivan Melnychuk. Taras Shevchenko  National Museum, 2016. “Victory of the Defeated” is a series of photographs and texts created by Yevgenia Belorusets in Debaltsevo, Lysychansk, Uglegorsk, Dimitrov, Krasnoarmeysk, Privolye, Novodruzhevsk, and Popasnaya during the war in Donbas. The artist works on the project since 2014 in close cooperation with trade unions, volunteers, and human rights initiatives.

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The main statement for the exhibition “My Army: to See with a Heart” in the Kyiv History Museum (23.08-04.09.2016) based on the photos and texts by combatants in Eastern Ukraine: “the event within the photo-project ‘Army. The Second Birth,’ initiated by the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine. The purpose of the exhibition is to investigate the phenomenon of military revival, pay tribute to the heroism of Ukrainian fighters, and look at the positive changes through the eyes of witnesses” (Source). “The exhibition consists of documentary evidence provided by combatants.”

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– What is of note in this statement: the exhibition is a true record of a particular history of the formation of the army, of heroism and positive change. A better society is emerging with the establishment of a new and strong army. The trap of opacity is in what this establishment is about.

– The organizers insist that photographers were free from production objectives of the mass media and that the exhibition was built of photos pre-selected by the curators and organizers. Its reality is evidenced by the fact that photos are candid, untreated and taken by ordinary soldiers and volunteers, just as other displayed objects are the real things. Also, the evidence of the invasion is presented in “photo-documents by the experts of the Ministry of Defense, responsible for collecting the data on Russian military crimes,” which reinforces the impression that all of this is very true, humane and close. “We have announced an open call: anyone can send what they see and feel. The main condition was that photos should reveal our project’s theme, the revival of the army. We will simply show the pictures we’ve received” (from the interview of curator Anna Voitenko, member of the Field of Vision group, and the head of the project Natalia Stupnitska, source). That is, the exhibition claims to be totally documentary and honest, a mere statement of facts. But the exhibition is subtly constructed: a total, complete and closed piece. The story is logical and easily comprehensible, so it is very convincing. It is important to try to understand what is being constructed, what these documentary stories are evidence of. What is presented as convincing, apart from the material (photos, wartime stories) that is already a commonplace due to the Internet? The danger of this exhibition is that by captivating the viewer through its humanistic and poetic qualities, it leaves no room for the possible distancing from its messages and emotions. It shows documents but instills trust only through forced affects.

– Another important thing is the presence of short stories that accompany photos: mostly neutral, occasionally poetic texts describing everyday life of the military and a short note about a cut finger. Through this combination of documentation and poetry the noise of war falls into the background of the lyrical hero, his emotional experiences and losses. Another type of glorification is evident in “My army”: the hero is not detached like the ones seen in the exhibition “16” at the Administration. The thing here is rather that each of us is a hero, all of us are heroes.

“In general, 70-80% are group shots, ‘the ones to remember.’ Photo-remembrances which become a monument to these heroes are the main message of our exhibition. They are trying to remember their friends to capture some joyful moments” (ibid).

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– Images that refer to the traumatic experience are not reliable witnesses, for such traumatic and emotion-laden images easily distort and falsify memories. According to A. Assmann, trauma and affect are mental stabilizers of a memory that have varying degrees of isolation from reflective understanding and are powerful instruments of memory manipulations. Affect can be regarded as a sign of authenticity and a driving force of falsification. A traumatic experience is not a subject to interpretation or language processing.

In the ancient mnemotechnical treatise «Rhetorica ad Herennium» in order to enhance the imprinting strength of the images, one is advised to choose “images that are not many or vague” and “[to] dress some of them with crowns or purple cloaks … disfigure them, as by introducing one stained with blood or soiled with mud or smeared with red paint” (A. Assmann. Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses. C.H.Beck, 2006).

– We asked ourselves “who are these people?” at the “My Army”. There, everything was understandable: a new army of Ukraine is formed, of smiling people, of heroes. But in your exhibition (“Victory of the Defeated”), Zhenya, the answers are not as clear – so, who are these people?

– This ambiguity is a result of the destruction of your own lined up series. When you start building a narrative of a photographic series, you build it dialectically; that is, one of your statement contradicts the other in the same space. 

You know, I had propagandistic intentions when I worked on this exhibition. My work is based on topics that touch me. And it’s a certain position, which can eventually be described. I hope that my exhibition is not limited thereto, and thanks to the texts, the composition of the exhibit I was able to create is something more complex than that which was in my head. Some very simple thoughts are in my head – I’m outraged by the situation, I’m worried about the people, I dislike what’s going on. As a human being, I’m in the same situation as many others who create purely propagandistic exhibitions.

In this exhibition, I tried to talk about how photography works. For me, the double piece in the atrium hall is one of the key artworks. You look at one half of the motion and see a reality open to optimistic interpretation: due to the road and the opening, it’s a reality that is pleasing to the eye. Well, it may seem that these people are working hard on a nice sunny day, and away goes the railroad, and all of it gives hope. If you look at the second half of the movement, where the two are pushing the trolley in isolation, you’ll see a different reality: a black dead end. That is, the two have simply walked this way, I was shooting them from a different angle, and we see a picture from which there is no escape. The same scene in which we see a human face can be presented in two different ways if the photographer’s position is changed. Through this photo, I tried to awaken the viewer from the charms of the previous photos and to make clear that he is being addressed in the language of photography that always claims to be the truth, but it isn’t, since three steps to the side make a big difference in the picture and resulting impression. I think that having multiple possibilities of presenting the very same moment is the most interesting aspect of photography.

– Photography is very useful for building a propagandistic message. Some individual photos, the evidence arranged in this totality of “My Army,” lose their communicativeness. When we were preparing for the workshop, we discussed how channels of representation may destroy original intentions of the photographer.

– “My Army” is working with the romantic image of the person who willfully faces this disaster, the war, the enemy. Another important thing is that you see not just some random character but the one close to the author. What is important is the relation to the personal experience of those familiar with the context, of volunteers and their friends – you identify yourself with the little man who volunteers for the Right Sector or aids the army. So, suspicion to and distancing from the very title of the exhibition, from the whole story, are shattered by this personal experience. Also, there are many less-than-dramatic scenes with a lot of pets, landscapes, “starry skies” shot from demolished hangars. The reverse side of the war is lacking, as are relationships within the army and with local residents. But there is a point that snaps you out of the process of relating yourself with the people and the situation on photo. This is the only picture showing the enemy: Russian POWs sitting in a semicircle in front of the camera with their hands and eyes tied, and in two meters in front of them one can see a can of food. The question is – what is it when people can smell but cannot eat?

– This show is blatantly propagandistic, yet you, Zhenya, insist that your own exhibition is a propaganda too?

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– A tough question. Contemporary art often deals with questions that society asks itself. And this is not opportunism. If the show is about something else entirely, about another army, other questions will be brought forth, and this will actually destroy opportunism. We are talking at the same time in this very field, and our voice will cut this choir into many pieces. Contemporary art is attracted to questions that end up in propaganda’s plans, within the struggles of ideology – they are visible on the map. In my case, the topic of coal mines is unfortunately not the opportunistic one in Ukraine. I wish it was the case. Then people would not be humiliated so easily. But my exhibition doesn’t disclose the fact that people have not been paid since April. How is it possible to disclose this? This is an important issue that requires explanation – and the exhibition is unable to provide one. The exhibition cannot explain why is it important to care about the salaries. Society is unaware of this, and the exhibition cannot provide any answer. Only some other thematic exhibition could – but it should be different then.

– Are you serious that these things need explanation? That someone does not understand?

–  If it was clear to everyone, these things wouldn’t be happening.

Good art, the one we like, operates with simple and accessible images, like the typical imagery of Brecht’s theater, the art of the Left or Eisenstein. Unambiguousness and good adjustment of the imagery is the primary form for both the text and the picture that attempt to work with the typical. Art works with this form and creates different background shapes, layers, metaphors. Polarity occurs in art which was born in a moment of crisis. I can think of Bones Mixed Together by Nikita Kadan, where he redraws archival photographs of pogroms; the thing is about victims of pogroms and the Holocaust – this polarity is evident in his work. We understand that this form of violence, which reduces a human being to a black-and-white odd-shaped murdered object is not acceptable, and thus the opposition is triggered. So I think it is very important not to approach the issue formally but to try to understand what exactly is good, and what is bad. What ideologies, what ideas the author ...

– Zhenya, do you propose to first and foremost judge what ideology is offered by the author?

– I propose to deconstruct the specific content of the exhibitions. Of course, if the form is like that of “My Army,” where personal traits are erased for the sake of representation of the power of the army, in this case it’s obvious.

– An exhibition is a good, strong one if spectator makes his own conclusions based on reflection and grasps something.

– But isn’t “My Army” trying to create a feeling that the viewer himself concluded that creating a stronger army is necessary?

– There are no gaps or contradictions here, and hence the danger. Here the action is driven not by understanding but through senses – the entire body is connected.

– In the text (placed among the photos in the exhibition by E. Belorusets) there is a moment when a woman comes to the administration of the mine, and before she even has a chance to introduce herself, she is being told that the administration knows her well and supports all the workers’ demands. This is largely about stereotypes: that miners are perceived only as miners, that they demand funding from Kiev, they drink hard, are poorly educated, etc. – the tropes Andrukhovych loves to use in his speeches. And about blaming and taking a blame.  And this image of fog, and inscription about the king who “ordered to whip the sea and the fog” is followed by the photograph of a miner with a cigarette and the hidden smiles of these portraits. Your photographer’s gaze, your optics is adjusted so that it doesn’t grasp an image in its clarity. This is a statement that rejects unambiguity.

– I wish it were the case. When I conceived this exhibition, a public space in Kiev has not yet become a place for the government-organized exhibitions. Street propaganda, the exhibitions of soldiers hugging children were not yet commonplace. At the beginning of my work on the miners’ portraits, I had an idea to show them on the street. This is impossible now, since you would become a part of this nightmare. Indeed, my portraits repeat this general Ukrainian tendency.

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Regarding the ambiguity –  when you shoot a person at work, he does not look at the camera, even if you’ve notified him previously. When you shoot landscapes or open spaces, a human becomes very small and his or her face invisible. A person becomes your imagination. You look at the person and think: he is bent down because his work is hard; he is bent down because he’s strong enough to push this wagon; he is bent down because he is being exploited and the back indicates his misery or lack of power. All that you see is a comma sign in a form of a human body. I do not consider necessary to illustrate statements like “see, miners are also people”, as I think the issue is incorrect. I do not want to argue and answer this question through my work. For me it is important to show them being in the workplace, not just being miners. If I show the miner as he puts his baby to sleep, and thus appeal to everyone who puts a baby to sleep, then it will be an attempt to say: “see, the small children suffer – let’s pay the miners.” Museum space is limited: you cannot raise many subjects without turning it into a dump, so it is necessary to give up something in order to have a coherent story or a space where you can navigate. And by giving up one stereotype, we come to another, such as that the miner is also a family guy or a chess player... Either way we attach a person to something. Why give up then? We end up in the same entanglement that bounds a human to certain activities. Most of the photographs were done in Lysychansk, and I was taking pictures of miners not at their homes (it was too big a risk for them) but at the workplaces where the union had allowed me to, – in these officially sanctioned protective places. If done in private space, it may seem as if it was their own odd initiative. It is also a zone of danger for them since even though they trust me, they don’t know how I’m going to use this or that picture, they realize there is a huge temptation. For me, this exhibition is about a friendship with several specific people. To show friendship and cooperation, it is necessary to show the human gaze. How else can it be done? You see, this is a subjective story, limited by my experience; this is my story, a story of my interaction with these people.

– The importance of the manifestation of photographer’s presence (and, accordingly, of position, in the broadest sense) at the time of shooting and fixing the choice. It is important for the photographer to make his "authorship" clear at least in a series of photographs or the exhibition itself, if not in a separate shot. Vilém Flusser believed that only a series of photos can confirm the photographer’s intention. And also he said that the task of the critic is to defend the intention of the photographer, of the artist who tries to provide a universal solution to the question of freedom, to critically examine his practice of freedom-seeking. And the criticism that refuses to perform this function simply betrays the artist in this his quest. (Vilém Flusser, Towards a Philosophy of Photography, Reaktion Books, 2006)

– For me, this series of faces is associated with the choice of the photographer. Each time we are photographing, we make a lot of shots to get one that will become a visiting card for our ideology. We do a lot of shots so that one would correspond with what we really want to capture. The human face is changing every fraction of a second, and so do interactions between people. For example, at this moment the laborers smoked after work. I really wanted to show how important friendship is since decisions at mines are taken collectively, and the mutual support is strong. The mines collectively refused to go to war. I decided to show the whole series, the storyboard, to show the work that photographer does for a single picture. A photo of a sunrise in the small lightbox (done in a single shot) is the beginning, not a vacation – it should not be in the same plane with the series of faces. For me, it was important to start with this one. Another one, in the second lightbox, is a photo of the mines’ architecture, beautiful in its decay. I got interested in this frame precisely because its seemed tremendously beautiful. The very idea that I’m taking a picture of something beautiful in this situation is cynical. For me, it was important to highlight this photo and to place near it a text about the war that changes the meaning. That is, in my exhibition everything is way too thought out, and there is a reason for each of the decision in composition.

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A Synopsis of the discussion at the seminar “Disenchantment of Thing”

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What is the point for an artist to take out Maidan-related material, the ready-made objects that have history, are ripe with events, and move them to another space? The way we look at these objects, the way we manipulate them – we name, (re)define, expose, review, register them or leave them as they are. How much voluntarism is in this gesture? Is this the way to pull out the thing to the realm where it is possible understand it?

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“I am the Drop in the Ocean” is a joint project of the Mystetskyi Arsenal and Künstlerhaus Wien (April-May 2014, curated by art historian Konstantin Akinsha and chief editor of Art Ukraine, Alisa Lozhkina). “Ukrainian revolution will be shown in Vienna. From the beginning, the artists were at the center of all events. They developed protest posters, organized performances, created and present their work directly at Maidan and beyond” – according to the organizers of the exhibition. (Source)

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“‘At the entrance we have put a catapult and a slingshot used at Hrushevsky St.,’ said Alisa Lozhkina, one of the curators of the exhibition. ‘I came back from the opening, which took place on April 10. The House of Artist in Vienna is a beautiful old marble-decorated building. Europeans loved the catapult. They were interested to see the real things from Maidan. Because what happens in their country are ‘petty protests.’ Here they face the reality. And all of this can exist at the center of Europe. We put the work of a young artist Nikita Shalennyi next to it – a small model of a catapult. He developed it in collaboration with the designer of a defense company few months before the riots. So everyone could see how the medieval thing appeared on the Maidan in the XXI century after the artist envisioned it.’” (Source)

– The first and a rather ambiguous desire was to drag everything from Maidan. What kind of gesture is it, to pull a thing out, to separate it from the event? When we talk about things, do we say that they cover up the relationship or do they contain the relationships through which one can read the event? You cannot drag the whole Maidan into the gallery. Maidan itself is the most powerful work.

– But whose work is it? It is not an artwork, it is an event, it happened. And artwork refers to a creative act.

– This is not just some sort of area where we do the excavations like archeologists. It’s not the archeology, this is a burning event. There was a sense that things are changing fast and all can be forgotten. In collecting things, in taking pictures it was not clear what exactly we would like to remember. If Maidan is the point of no return, how is it possible to speak when everything falls apart and there is a sense that whatever you say is not enough? Any explanations are insufficient. Perhaps this called for the urge to document everything, collect all the evidence.

Important question is how you talk about reality as an artist (if you are used to derive your work from this reality) when you see that reality becomes stronger, bigger than anything you can say about it. Artwork can also be a document and may even be the best evidence since it contains personal experience. Yet not every artwork is a document, and not every is a good one.

A. Assmann on the (un)reliability of remembrance through language: “What we once expressed through language is recalled much better than that was never expressed. So we recall is not the events themselves but rather our statements about them” (A. Assmann. Erinnerungsräume: Formen und Wandlungen des kulturellen Gedächtnisses. C.H.Beck, 2006).

– But I want to understand what kind of gesture it is, to derive an object from the material? To understand, not just brand it manipulation, speculation, or an imitation. And to give no ethical evaluations on whether this gesture is good or bad.

– These things were placed in the art field. They are not just artifacts. A work of art is always singular, self-identical. It is thus opposed to bad infinity, which is inherent in all things. The problem with these things from Maidan, apart from that urgent need to show, is that there is no reflection on why to do it, and there’s inattention to what art should be. These things, the energy that used to circulate within them, or still does – they do not matter, they all turn into a single object from Maidan. They are all the same, always turning in the same - into a bad infinity.

– Take Miron Zownir’s Ukrainian Night, for example. He took shots of Maidan in March 2014 – not during the main event, the confrontation of “Berkut” and protesters, with all the violence, waves of people registered on the millions of cameras to become the dominant image (although this is also a coincidence), but during its marginal phase in spring, before Maidan was dispersed, when nothing was left of the mass of solidarity, and what was left were alcoholics, homeless and marginal individuals. Here, things that are visible, stunning, multiple, and crucial are totally rejected. This concurs with Zownir’s general strategy to highlight the marginalized. From the artist’s standpoint, the most important things were to document the marginal areas of Maidan, to divert the look from the epicenter of the event, to surrender and to scrutinize, to observe the everyday objects and scenes. The look that accounts for its own subsequent history, for the future representations, asks for intuitive or conscious refusal to peer at the epicenter of events.

– Or maybe these things have really lost the necessity they had at the time of the Maidan. What the artist or a museum worker does with these things is one question. Things themselves are the other. There were so many of these Maidan things that they became simply redundant, lying unused on the ground.

– It can be simply inventiveness of the collective subject: we did the catapult, let’s put it in a museum. Ukrainian archaics and resourcefulness make a protest a worthy object of museification. All these bats, shields in the “Drop in the Ocean” is a Maidan mass production.

– A slingshot, a stick with nails are already museum pieces. If it is made specifically for the Maidan, it should have been left there. But it seems that this should be a task for the museum workers, not the artists.

– Probably not to show, but to...

– Collect.

– They should have put it all in the ground.

– Buried it.

– Like the gold of Polubotok. Hide it under a tree.

– I became acquainted with N.N., an historian at the Mariupol Museum of Local Lore researching controversial issues: e.g. a number of Jews executed in Mariupol during the Nazi occupation. She asked how to show Maidan. There is oral, documentary evidence that from a historian’s perspective is worth being made public; but from the museum worker’s perspective this is not enough. She says she would have eagerly shown these oral histories: but if there are no things to prove them, it is impossible. These stories have no place in the museum, even as part of a guided tour, since there is nothing to point at. This is the stumbling block of human perception that unless you see a glass, even one from Ikea, not from the trenches, you won’t see it as a true story. These Maidan things hang from the ceiling (at the “Drop in the Ocean”) to legitimize what is being said.

–This is not about proving that something happened but about who is now in power and building a new ideological focus. These things reify the new post-Maidan ideology. It’s like a hetman’s bulava. Not the proof or the evidence but the attribute of power.

– Bulava does not prove anything – it just exists, but without it it’s impossible to tell a story.

– It does not matter what these things tell separately – any thing may have been hanging there, all these things could have been bought in Vienna. What matters is what you tell as a guide, a storyteller, you have to point the finger at something, preferably something authentic and under the glass. Whatever the thing says is of no importance.

– Perhaps what it says is that the story has ended and is already placed under a glass, in a white cube.

– No, it’s not over yet, the history is being built upon the things that were snatched out of the event. The event is not taken in its fullness. Thing is snatched and silenced, and now it is possible to build the history of the event on top of it, insisting that it is the truthful evidence, despite the fact that it isn’t.

– The main evidence based on a Maidan case exists in immaterial form (digital images). What is to prove then – that one big crime happened?

– A year after Maidan I was looking for pictures of bullet wounds and did not find any. A lot of pictures of death, dying people, a forensic data had been circulating on the Web, but then they were gone.

– This gesture of pulling out the object and the object itself – they do not mean anything.

– A visual code is compiled from the Maidan material. Everything was insufficiently reflected upon during the first few months. Yevhen Nyshchuk said, for example, that we need a new image of Ukraine. It is easy to reassure yourself with a thought that a new ideology is being built, and someone presented with that image will then reproduce it.

– Artists turn out to be useful idiots.  There was an exhibition at the Ukrainian Embassy in Poland: a new art, new Ukraine, folk embroidery of pixelated uniforms ...

– It’s not about being an idiot but about the logic of events, which ceased to be a revolution and are instrumentalized in parallel with the process of government formation. It is an objective pattern: the period of revolution and the period of reaction. All of these things, if you look at them closely, begin to talk about ideology ... or reaction.

– The Museum of Maidan in the October Palace, Vyacheslav Vyatrovych and the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance, there things are presented up front, as the attributes of power. 

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