Installation photo by Jan Slavík ©DOX
Since the beginning of the war, the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been documented directly by those experiencing it. Borrowing a practice normalized in non-war times, smartphone videos filmed by soldiers and civilians alike have been shared on social networks and messaging apps providing a first person account of what the war looks like for those living and fighting it. At the same time, traditional print and broadcast media have lost terrain to these unfiltered channels, with majority of Ukrainians citing Telegram, an anonymous messaging app, as their primary source of information.
The fact that the war is narrated in first person by civilians and soldiers offers an unprecedented point of view on what’s happening on the ground. But as civilians document the destruction of their cities and soldiers share the brutality of the fighting on the frontlines without filters, objective reporting struggle to find its space among the many viral videos anonymously shared online.
As I scrolled through thousands of videos shared on anonymous Telegram channels sharing “news” about the war, both from Ukraine and Russia, I struggled to form an image of the war that I deemed reliable. The resulting montage was polluted by propaganda, fake-news and biased accounts. At the same time, the total lack of ethics in the production and dissemination of these videos put me often face to face with the mutilated bodies of soldiers and the horrors of the frontlines.
I was, indeed, experimenting the war in the most immediate and intimate way possible, especially in its most traumatic aspects, yet I felt like trying to read a book with too many sentences missing - it was clear to understand what the story was about, but impossible to figure out the storyline. I started doubting everything, especially when exposed to both sides of the story. What was left were the faces of the dead, the screams of the living, the burning cities, a decontextualized suffering, a hyperuranic idea of war.
Thanks to the ever-present eye of a smartphone camera, today’s world no longer need an external witness to represent the pain of others. Yet, as pain, rage and suffering represent themselves on the stage of social media, it is important to reflect on the kind of narrative we now need to decipher in order to make sense of this multi-vocal world. A broken, generic narrative full of shady areas, alternative realities and mirrored images.
Installation views from the show “The Pain of Others” at DOX - Centre for Contemporary Art in Prague (Dec. 2022)