Unrehearsed Futures (S3) #10 Day 127: Ukrainian Theatre Artists Respond to the War
Standing in solidarity with Ukrainian artists who have been affected by the ongoing war, we decided to dedicate the tenth session of Unrehearsed Futures (Season 3) to engage with them and understand how they are expressing their national and personal struggle through their art. While the news cycle is tiring of Ukraine, we are convinced that Ukrainians, near or far, are fighting on behalf of the “free” world, however we may define that.
Joining us for this conversation on the 127th day of the war were Ukrainian artists Sandro Garibashvili, Maria Koreneva, Ivan Doan and Konstantin Zorkin.
When the war began in February, Sandro and Maria fled their home in Kharkiv, Ukraine and went on an odyssey across the country before finally being welcomed to Vilnius in Lithuania, where they currently reside in a university dorm with their two children.
Ivan, who works out of Berlin, Germany, has experienced the war differently as he was not present in Ukraine when the war broke out. He has been observing the situation not firsthand, but through his family which is based in the country, and all of whom were separated. While he may not be directly experiencing the repercussions of the war, Ivan says he is able to understand his family’s mental state through phone chats, where they discuss and share news about bombings around their area.
Ivan also helped his primary school teacher, who had to flee Ukraine, find shelter in Berlin. “At the beginning of March, she and her family decided to come to Poland first, but there was no place there anymore. And then somebody said, you could go to Berlin, and they came to Berlin. And since I was there, I tried to help them. I could see the mental state of worry,” he recalls.
When Ivan found an apartment for them in Berlin, “They were afraid of every little noise. Even when neighbours upstairs walked, they thought planes were flying. That lasted for about a week or something. And after that they began to relax a little bit, like it’s okay, now you’re in Berlin, nobody’s flying, you know?”
No time for metaphors
What does trauma look like when expressed through movement and poetry, lines of memory and relationship created through the association of objects? Konstantin Zorkin, a Ukrainian sculptor, puppeteer and performer, has been living near a small town Ohtyrka in Ukraine, which came under heavy fire in the beginning, since the war began. “But at the moment, all is quiet,” he shares.
He had spent the first 10 days of the war in the basement spaces of the Yermilov Center which is part of the Karazin University, one of the biggest universities of Kharkiv. It was a contemporary art center which turned into a communal shelter for all contemporary artists residing in Kharkiv.
The most important thing for Konstantin was to be able to continue his artistic work, which he says he is able to in the town. He works mainly with wood and metal, both of which he has access to now along with his tools. He has the time and the quiet space to nurture his craft, which would not have been possible in Kharkiv, considering how “noisy” it is, he replies cheekily.
Describing Konstantin’s approach to his art, Sandro says he draws his inspiration from different anthropological themes, archaic ritualistic and shamanic works or themes. Konstantin is now working on creating his own mythology based on his experiences.
Speaking of his artistic offerings since the war began, Konstantin recalls the words of Ukrainian writer and friend Oleksandr Mykhed: “There is no time for metaphors at the moment.”
“There is no time for reflection or extraneous philosophies, or intellectualizing for people who are in Ukraine,” says Konstantin, and adds that art is a function of society, meant not only for pleasure.
Sharing his artistic responses to the war, Konstantin shows us photographs of his works. One of them is about rebuilding his city. It is a wooden installation of buildings carved out of wood to represent those that were destroyed during the ongoing shelling and bombing. “At first, I didn’t have all my tools and I was very limited. [The installation] shows the city when it was being burned down, especially the northern neighborhoods which were closer to the Russian border,” he describes.
The most important question for Konstantin to answer is where one’s home is now. What is the place where one lives, where one is situated? The connection between the two is like organs in one’s body. It is about discovering how these two organs are connected, he says.
Another piece of his creation is a metallic structure of Jewish people walking towards their death. It is about Drobytsky Yar, a ravine in Kharkiv, where Nazi troops during World War II took the Jews of Kharkiv to be executed. Konstantin began working on this a week before the Russian invasion and he remembers thinking that such things could never be repeated. “I tried to imagine what these people thought at that time, and it was my poetic reflection,” he reveals, “Now when I continue working on the same project, I have completely different emotions or reflections on death.”
Speaking of death, Konstantin believes “if you haven’t seen it in person, if you haven’t lived through that and experienced that, you don’t know anything”. “You shouldn’t even try feeling, to imagine the feelings of these people because it’s not possible,” he adds.
Konstantin shares another deeply moving piece of his work, which is essentially teardrops he created out of metal with human figures carved on them for “every person who was tortured and killed”. One tear for every person.
He also created a Mask of Shame, called ‘The Enemy Inside’, which he says he would like to make the enemy wear. A replica of a medieval torture mechanism, the mask is a metaphor of the hatred that the artist’s heart is filled with and how this hatred doesn’t let one work. It blocks creativity, Konstantin says.
“It’s not a metaphor. It’s an instruction,” declares Konstantin. “This mask is placed on the enemy’s head, and I imagine him inside of this mask.” The mask looks like an open helmet with birds perched on top, bending and poking the enemy’s eyes out. Inside the helmet, there hang the tears of suffering, torture and killing, fallen from the enemy’s eyes. These tears appear to water the plant growing from the mouth. The plant spreads its roots through the mouth into their head. At the back crawls a large centipede, akin to a nightmare.
Describing it as one of the most powerful works he has created, Konstantin continues explaining the Mask of Shame, “The skulls of the dead animals scream into his (enemy’s) ears about the pain of the people of Ukraine and this goes on for eternity because the mask never comes off.”
Most of Konstantin’s work is a visceral reflection of the situation he is in and is a reaction to it. He questions if his function as an artist right now is to calm down people or do the opposite.
“Your body reacts to the impulses; we must do something for what’s happening around without thinking, without any comparison to Illiad or some other poetry. It is a pure reaction. The mind is silent at this time,” he shares.
War and humour
The war in Ukraine is not just one of weapons and arms, but of information and propaganda as well. For Ivan Doan, a Ukrainian-Vietnamese actor, it became quite clear early on that there are two aspects that are actively being used by Russia: the physical war and the information war. The war on information was just as important.
“As somebody who could use his skills, in terms of translating things, and do voiceovers in this case, my thought was I could be involved in this anti-propaganda movement. So, I started translating and doing voiceovers for many videos,” shares Ivan.
Ivan shows us some of the video clippings where he translates interviews with Russian citizens into English. He describes them as “different and absurd”. “Artistically, I played around with voices a little bit and also translated the things that would be normally lost in translation,” he says. “Culturally, they’re different. So, you have to accentuate something in the accent, for example, to make it sound a little more absurd.”
The videos, in a way, are disturbing to watch for different reasons. There is a quality farce in the material itself. It is funny when one watches it, but how should one react to such a kind of humour? “It is funny, but it is tragically funny,” describes Ivan. “It is funny because it’s so absurd. It has been discussed a lot now but, in the beginning, everyone thought the war would be over in a week, even the West. Four months later, it has still not happened, but you realize there is an entire nation which lives in a parallel reality mentally and believes otherwise.” The videos are eerily reminiscent of Trump’s America. One of the reasons it feels so disturbing is that that mentality persists. It doesn’t go away and has a tremendous ability to endure. There are many historical and emotional components to understand how a nation as large as Russia is manipulated and the powers in place seek to exploit citizens.
“There is a component of stupidity. It has to be,” believes Ivan. “You really have to be stupid, in a way. You should lose the ability to critically analyze things. And of course, I mean, it’s not something unique to the Russian people today. It is possible everywhere. You meet such people everywhere. But the thing is, when it becomes a major ideology, when it becomes the major movement of the nation, and then everybody else is not really looking,” he continues, “If a particular nation has such a strong influence from their government in this one direction, and they lose the ability to see the world as one interconnected organism, then you have it. It is absurd and tragically funny.”
What is also to be noted, Ivan says, that a big chunk of the Russian population is brainwashed, not because the quality is so good, but that it has been going on for 20 years. “If you say something to someone for 20 years, I think the person breaks and starts believing. And that’s easier,” Ivan believes. “For people who are not particularly educated or smart, it is easier to live like that because you want to live in peace. You don’t want to fight all the time.”
Rediscovering the body
As Konstantin mentions earlier, it is not the time to work in metaphors for Ukrainian artists. When Maria Koreneva, a theatre-maker and performer from Kharkiv, and Sandro Garibashvili, a Ukrainian actor, theatre teacher and filmmaker, were offered an artistic residency in Vilnius upon landing in Lithuania, they immediately started to work on a performance that reflected their current mental state. They decided to work with a Butoh dancer and create something based on the body because “when you’re at war, your mind breaks”. Maria says, “It doesn’t work any longer. Your body works in an amazing way. Your body does something that you don’t know it’s capable of doing.”
As part of the performance, Sandro devised a monologue that portrayed the dual state of mind he found himself in: the idea of becoming a hero and running to defend your land and the idea that somebody is destroying his precious life and taking away his dream, when he wants to stay with his dream and what was his normal life.
As the conversation comes to a close, Sandro shares that he feels that war puts one in touch with reality. As an artist, it really brings one into this moment of being. At the same time, it is very harsh, because reality says one’s dreams and aspirations don’t mean anything. One feels everything directly and right away. “It is a state of shock,” says Sandro, “Part of this performance was dealing with that state of shock. It was an interesting experience to present it because then I had a chance to share this tragedy with a bigger audience. When that happens, there’s an element of magic involved. Suddenly, this big burden that you have been hauling on yourself is given over to the community and it’s supported by more souls.”
Compiled and written by Phalguni Vittal Rao
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