Images of War / War of Images: Politics of Visuality during Russian Invasion in Ukraine

Ongoing war in Ukraine is the result of the dramatic tectonic shift between social and political paradigms in Ukraine and Russia, which can be identified on multiple levels, including imagery. Referring to the title of an article by Ulrich Keller “Images of War / War of Images”, our panel seeks to explore the visuality of the Russian-Ukrainian War. The panel aims to explore how the images of the war are constructed and distributed, how they function within the social and political contexts, how they shape and transform those contexts, what antagonisms, continuities and discontinuities they create. Imagery here is analyzed from several perspectives: affective structures and social relations created by the circulation of the war visuality; the role of social media and its concealment mechanisms in shaping the image of war and civil position; the role of the accentuated “post-Soviet” visual codes in the contemporary Ukrainian art and its dramatic continuity in the photographic images of the war-torn Ukrainian cities; politics of memory in the discussions around and fights with the Soviet monumental heritage of the WWII. Tracking different cases of the relationships with images during the war the papers are focused on the performative aspect of the warfare visuality.

PROGRAM

11:30—13:00
Lesia Kulchynska: Can an Image be a Weapon?
Yevheniia Moliar: Looking at the Images of Iron Soldiers

13:00—14:00 Break

14:00—15:30
Oleksandra Osadcha: Landscape as a Symptom: From the Post-Soviet Visuality to the War-Torn Cityscapes of Ukraine
Oleksandr Sushynsky (via Zoom): Phantasmeme: Suspicious Unit of Truth

Lesia Kulchynsaka, PhD, is a Kyiv-based curator and visual studies researcher affiliated with the Research Platform of the Pinchuk Art Center. She developed and teaches the course “Violence of the Image” at the Kyiv Academy of Media Arts. She worked as a curator at the Visual Culture Research Center / VCRC (2011-2019) and Set Independent Art Space (2019-2020). Lesia Kulchynska is the author Meaning Production in Cinema: Genre Mechanisms (Kyiv, 2017), editor of The Right to the Truth: Conversations on Art and Feminism (Kyiv, 2019) and Joseph Beuys. Everyone is an artist (Kyiv, 2020). Currently Lesia is a postdoctoral fellow at Bibliotheca Hertziana.

Alexander Sushinsky, MA, is a PhD Candidate at the Modern Art Research Institute of the National Academy of Arts of Ukraine. He worked as a curator and independent researcher at DaSein Gallery in Donetsk, Ukraine (2012-2014), at Steinbarg Gallery, Chernivtsi (2016-2018), and the Center for Contemporary Art “BUNKER” (2019-2021). He is predoctoral fellow at the Biblioteca Hertziana.

Oleksandra Osadcha, PhD, is a Kharkiv-based researcher and curator. She obtained her Ph.D. at the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts with a dissertation on the topic in 2020. In 2017 Osadcha became a lecturer at the department of Theory and Art History at the Kharkiv State Academy of Design and Arts in 2017. From 2014 to 2018, she collaborated with Kyiv’s PinchukArtCentre and was given the position of a curator as well as researcher at the Museum ofthe Kharkiv’s School of Photography (MOKSOP). Currently Osadcha is a postdoctoral fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana.

Yevheniia Moliar, MA, is an art historian. Studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv. Works on the cultural heritage of the Soviet period, in particular monumental art. Studies the representation of Soviet art in museums. Researches contemporary Ukrainian art which appeals to the Soviet heritage. Participant in an art initiative DE NE DE. She is predoctoral fellow in Biblioteca Hertziana.

Zoomlink for online participation (previous registration): https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZcqcOmgrj4oGNTioDxY4moyt4nCY6qWTp9S
Scientific Organization: Lesia Kulchynsaka