Understanding the Urgency is a site- and situation-specific lecture-performance created as a form of curatorial work presentation for "Unlearning Eastern Europe: Emerging Curators' Platform" at Kaunas Artists' House. It emerges from a personal reckoning with the processes of witnessing underlying my curatorial practice, then conducted primarily with the Ukrainian archive of wartime dance films. This performance examines the (im)possibility of developing a witness position through the process of regarding pictorial documentation of violence shared through contemporary digital platforms.
"Commodities that originated as a source of quick dopamine are becoming less and less capable of compartmentalising the violence of their producers and consumers. The result? I open Instagram in the morning, and the first thing I see is a child with a limb blown off, followed by a picture of a beautiful cat, followed by legal advice for protestors in Germany, followed by images from a bombing in my hometown, followed by my friend's beautiful breakfast in the very same city, followed by an image of her beautiful dog, followed—
What is it doing to our capacity to witness and to make sense of reality? What is it doing to our capacity to feel?"
What is it doing to our capacity to witness and to make sense of reality? What is it doing to our capacity to feel?"
The structure of the performance was created with an intention to expand on and further problematize the questions examined in the lecture. The text of the lecture was audio-recorded and played to the audience in a warm, gently-lit living room space inside the artists' house while I, the artist, was outside, covering up a hole in the ground, naked amid the cold and snow of November.
In Understanding the Urgency, I insist on the presence of a distinction between the processes of watching and witnessing, conceptualizing the latter as an active position requiring me to:
1. Allow myself to become affected by what I am looking at,
2. Acknowledge that what I am looking at is the reality,
3. Accept that the reality of the other is my own reality,
4. Be aware of the privilege that comes from being among the very few who are witnessing,
5. And therefore accept the responsibility of the witnesshood. That is, to be ready to testify and take part in the collective repair, once called to.
On the contrary to witnessing, watching is a much more common act, one that requires significantly less labour. Watching is disengaged: I am looking at it, but it is not real. It is real, but it is purely an isolated incident. It is a pattern, but it is impossible to understand the entire picture. The entire picture is clear, but I have nothing to do with it. I have something to do with it, but only for as long as I am watching.”
2. Acknowledge that what I am looking at is the reality,
3. Accept that the reality of the other is my own reality,
4. Be aware of the privilege that comes from being among the very few who are witnessing,
5. And therefore accept the responsibility of the witnesshood. That is, to be ready to testify and take part in the collective repair, once called to.
On the contrary to witnessing, watching is a much more common act, one that requires significantly less labour. Watching is disengaged: I am looking at it, but it is not real. It is real, but it is purely an isolated incident. It is a pattern, but it is impossible to understand the entire picture. The entire picture is clear, but I have nothing to do with it. I have something to do with it, but only for as long as I am watching.”
In addition to referencing the curatorial work, this investigation develops through two more experiences: observing the intensification of israel's genocidal violence in Palestine, and the destruction of the Ukrainian Kakhovka Dam by russia.
“When the russian people blew up the Kakhovka Dam, I was in Finland. I woke up to the images of the flood, already taken by multiple photographers for me to see. Older women, standing amidst their belongings in houses that resembled my grandmother’s, half-full of water. Older men holding saved photographs of their loved ones. Couples kissing and holding each other gently. Water, everywhere. Dogs, struggling against it. It was clear what was going to happen next—if not easily understood right away, then definitely clear from the witnessing and tesifying labour done by the multiple people on the ground calling, and pleading, and shouting into the public space of social media: it will be close to impossible to save everyone unless we get help. Soon, people will start dying: those unable to swim will drown, then will come deaths from dehydration, deaths from disease, the bodies will begin to decompose while in water. The water will keep rising.”
All quotes taken from Understanding the Urgency (Stanislava Ovchinnikova, 2023).
Light: Arūnas Periokas
Curator of “Unlearning Eastern Europe: Emerging Curators’ Platform”: Edvinas Grinkevičius
Photographic documentation: Vytis Mantrimavičius
With gratitude to the fellow program participants: Rūta Junevičiūtė, Asia Tsisar, Maria Vtorushina, and Variable name (Valerie Karpan, Maryna Khrypun).