2023 / Understanding the Urgency / lecture-performance
Understanding the Urgency, 2023. Photo: Vytis Mantrimavičius / Kaunas Artists’ House
Understanding the Urgency is a site- and situation-specific lecture-performance created as a way to present my curatorial work in the context of "Unlearning Eastern Europe: Emerging Curators' Platform" at Kaunas Artists' House. It emerges from a personal reckoning with the processes of witnessing violence as one intrinsically linked to my curatorial practice which then was conducted primarily with the Ukrainian archive of wartime dance films. Understanding the Urgency focused on the (im)possibility of developing a witness position by regarding pictorial documentation of violence published on contemporary digital platforms.
"Commodities that originated as a source of quick dopamine are becoming less and less capable of compartmentalising the violence of their own 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?"
The structure of the performance was created in a way intended 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/library space inside Kaunas Artists’ House at the same time as I, the artist, was outside, covering up a hole in the ground, naked amid the cold and snow of November, the scene visible to the audience through the windows.
Understanding the Urgency, 2023. Photo: Vytis Mantrimavičius / Kaunas Artists’ HouseUnderstanding the Urgency, 2023. Photo: Vytis Mantrimavičius / Kaunas Artists’ HouseUnderstanding the Urgency, 2023. Photo: Vytis Mantrimavičius / Kaunas Artists’ House
In Understanding the Urgency, of interest to me was the conceptualization of watching and witnessing as distinct practices:
“[Witnessing requires that I] allow myself to become affected by what I am looking at; acknowledge that what I am looking at is the reality; accept that the reality of the other is my own reality; be aware of the privilege that comes from being among the very few who are witnessing, 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.”
The lecture further explores these questions by considering documentation of the destruction of the Ukrainian Kakhovka Dam by russia
and the intensification of israeli genocidal violence against Palestinian people.
“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-filled with
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 are from the lecture text of Understanding the Urgency (Stanislava Ovchinnikova, 2023).
Performance idea & implementation, text, voice, costume: Stanislava Ovchinnikova
Light: Arūnas Periokas
Curator of “Unlearning Eastern Europe: Emerging Curators’ Platform”: Edvinas Grinkevičius
Photographic documentation: Vytis Mantrimavičius
With gratitude also to my fellow program participants: Rūta Junevičiūtė, Asia Tsisar, Maria Vtorushina, and Variable name (Valerie Karpan, Maryna Khrypun).