In January, I was offered the opportunity to introduce the exhibition of my colleagues Natalie Krekhno and Anna Mudra at the opening of the exhibition 'life: war edition' at SomoS Arts, Neukölln.
From the moment that I was invited - and of course accepted - I understood that I would fail in this task, because there was no option available to me that worked to satisfy my own criteria for an introduction in this context.
Here is how I failed:
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“Trust in Hell”
Delivered 14.02.2023
for the opening of life: war edition – SomoS Arts, Berlin
Richard Pettifer, critic and theorist of Cultural Workers Studio (support worker)
Thank you very much, I am deeply honoured and humbled to welcome everyone to this exhibition life: war edition from my two colleagues who I will introduce properly in a moment, Natalie Krekhno and Anna Mudra, and their collaborators. Tonight I will offer some short contextual remarks about the works, some background of their origins and objectives, and finally a couple of acknowledgements to the condition in which we find ourselves, upon the mounting of this exhibition.
In 1991, 30 years ago, theorist Jean Baudrillard writes his series of provocations, together retrospectively titled “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place”. The first essay written before the war was called The Gulf War Will Not Take Place, the second written during the war and called The Gulf War is Not Really Taking Place, and the third after the war called The Gulf War Did Not Take Place. The essays causing significant scandal from both victims of that conflict who accused him of devaluing their experience through his position of war as a spectacle, and Western elites who took offence at his attacks on traditions of supposedly enlightened “European” thought in conceiving and understanding the institutional violence of war. For Baudrillard, those traditions manifested best in media systems designed to distance the spectator from the philosophical horrors of war, to cushion also its violent gesture through the process of its mediation, and to create comfort and profit in a spectator experience that causally watches on as things play out on screens and in text. That Baudrillard bothers to – albeit sarcastically – challenge this condition speaks of his own philosophical discomfort with the passive sideshow of violence: how long can we watch on without intervention? How dare we turn our backs, in a sociological sense, on the deeply troubling split in reality which occurs through the impossibility of conceiving atrocity? For his body of theory, this condition necessitates the creation of a “virtual” space – filled with political figures as unreal puppets, hopeless contradictions between the reality we know to exist and reality as it is narrated to us, and how streams of media narrative polish and smooth over the grim reality of fighting for the determination of your own existence.
The artworks presented this evening speak of a very specific war very close to the artists and in fact to many of us – if we bother to look at it – that has occurred following the latest invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Both artists address the western gaze on suffering in Ukraine and challenge it: in Krekhno’s case, through a focus on communicating the war crimes of the russian military since 2022, and in Mudra’s through an invitation to the spectator to insert themselves into a genocidal and ecocidal situation beyond their control, and to be forced to make decisions where decisions are impossible. Although documentary in style – in the sense that they negotiate actual happenings and the gap between these and propaganda – they are, I think, deeply personal works, ones which try to marry personal experience with that of the spectator onto them, and navigate degrees of complicity in an unfolding horror, one that remains mixed together with the artists’ own current editions of life.
Though both works focus on the horrors enacted upon communities in Ukraine and how to conceive these inconceivable events, both works are, somewhat incredibly and against all odds, not without love. It speaks volumes that the artists have both chosen highly collaborative paths to realise these works: Krekhno’s video installation (un)muted is a collaboration with several of her close colleagues, and incorporates 2022’s quick-response exhibition “Artists Support Ukraine”, a series of prints from various artists which has never before been presented in Berlin. In Mudra’s case, the project (un)safe is formed with close consulting from long-term collaborative partner Anton Begmenko as well as conceptual and hands-on support from Katia Derdiuk and illustrations from Hanna Zvyagintseva, the latter pair happily is with us tonight, the former sadly in the end unable, but with us in the ways available to him.
I think the fact that both artists chose these collaborative paths seems not significant to them because it’s almost second nature: as far as I can tell from hanging out with them for almost a year now, creating culture in Kharkiv is very much about being together in a situation and trying to produce a barely functional state of being: enjoying the jokes, the weirdness, and the sheer hell of being trapped together for a period, and trying to make this into something that works for everyone. Here, tonight, we bring that slightly sardonic attitude to SomoS Arts, and its weird techniques of building trust and togetherness in the world are imported directly into its walls. With this exhibition, the artists welcome you to this beautiful hell: it has been my pleasure to share this hell with you in the past period, and to go there again tonight, and over the next days.
I am pleased now to invite first Anna Mudra, artist of (un)safe and then Natalie Krekhno, artist of (un)muted to say some words themselves about the exhibition. Please offer them your generous welcome.
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Before I leave you to enjoy the works and try to talk to each other: as well as SomoS gallery and Paulus Fugers who we deeply thank for his co-operation and solidarity, and the tireless work of our colleague Miriam Döring among countless other contributors, the exhibition today is brought to you in part by “Cultural Workers Studio”, which is a loose group of people fleeing the war in Ukraine – and me – working out of our shared studio in Flutgraben since May, 2022. Several members are here tonight, you will see them around looking confident and wearing their usual fuck-you attitudes. We encourage you openly to get to know us via our various events, especially over our event series the next month. Why not come and join us for a beer tomorrow and learn Ukrainian with us at Space Meduza, and be taught by Anya, Axxi and Annouta the wonders of Ukrianian language? Or join us for next week’s opening of Ksenia Yanko’s photography exhibition The Bug Out Bag at alpha nova gallery. All works of the series are free access, funded by support from Goethe Institute in partnership with the NGO Artists at Risk and particularly Or Shemen, and proudly celebrate cultures from Ukraine currently under genocidal and atrocious attack – to which our community is one among many local examples where effective resistance can be mounted. We do this through the creation of a “cultural frontline”, demonstrating that it will take more than a pathetic, facile military to erase cultures that refuse to lie down. We use culture as a shield: something to enjoy, to orient oneself around, and to gather trust in the world through each other.
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