Forced Screenings

Date :

Dates

6 July ‒ 27 November and 10 December 2022 - 5 February 2023: Exhibition

The exhibition spaces and Café Botanika are wheelchair accessible. The exhibition and accompanying programs are admission free.
Participating in on-site events will be considered consent for inclusion in the video recordings in connection with the exhibition.

About the exhibition

Over the months preceding February 24, the citizens of Ukraine were overwhelmed by a premonition of an aggressive future. This premonition has faded and intensified during the eight years of the 2014-2022 war. On February 24, our premonition turned into the apocalyptic present.

Despite the resilience of the civilian forces and the resistance of Ukraine’s armed forces to the Russian occupiers, during more than three months of large-scale war, Ukrainians have been trying to get used to the impossible in order to avoid complete emotional burnout.

The program of screenings of authorial and documentary films Forced Screenings: Video Footages from Ukraine 2014 – 2022 is designed to expand the understanding of the Freising community and the people of Upper Bavaria about Ukraine and its citizens not only since the start of the large-scale war but also during the last eight years of relentless struggle for democracy and independence from those who lost that democracy long ago.

In the program, the found footage films and video performances are mixed up, showing the different facets of depicting reality in moving images. The screenings combine Kyiv and Donbas region into one sequence, making a panorama from the center to the edge of the country.

The video program is part of Focus > Ukraine 2022 within the framework of the European Art Fellowship of the District of Upper Bavaria. The exhibition is curated by Roman Khimei and Kateryna Ulianova.

Program

Ma
17”, directed by Maria Stoianova, produced by Nadia Parfan

Mom is feeding great tits from the window of her high-rise building in Mariupol and growing queen apples in her summerhouse near the battle line. To show her simple life, she shoots videos on her small camera for her daughter, who lives in the capital and is hard to reach. To try to keep the conversation going, she feeds her overgrown child with morel mushrooms and fairy tales.

Happy New Year
9”, directed by Philip Sotnychenko, created for the video-series project Armed and Dangerous (curators Kateryna Filyuk and Mykola Ridnyi)

Once, a partner and co-author of Filip Sotnychenko, Valeria Sochyvets, brought him a VHS tape of her father‘s friend. She asked to digitize the video from the tape taken 19 years ago. The documentation of a New Year and Millennium party with young people of the Russian minority in Riga was on that videotape. Everything looks too typical: sparklers, bright dresses, sparkling wine and fireworks. At least one thing might be questionable for the viewer: why are these people listening anthem of the USSR in the loop?

Live Stream
17”, directed by Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk, produced by Pinchuk Art Center, Radar Films

Live Stream, which is thought to have been documentary footage, refers to the topic of constructing reality and actualizes the question of the meaning of an image in the contemporary visual age. According to the story, men dressed in military uniform, which resembles the Red Army clothes, perform a dance after a long preparation. The group’s choreography is disrupted by random people who cross the corridor past the dancers. For instance, people react to the dance of the Red Army soldiers in the same way as if it was a dance of prehistoric tribal conquerors. The corridor chosen for filming starts to resemble a zone where transgression happens, where history encounters the present, reality encounters fiction, and image encounters matter. In this transitory situation, the artists ask, how do we assess the quality, meaning, and functions of a moving picture today? What is left of reality in it? (Kateryna Iakovlenko)

Dedicated to the Youth of the World II
9”, directed by Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk, commissioned by CXEMA

The film‘s focus is the techno-rave Cxema and the youth, on which the camera is carefully focused the next morning after the event. The space of Dovzhenko’s film studio is transformed into a dance floor, a synchronized crowd, spotlights, arrhythmic synthetic sound by Stanislav Tolkachev — the camera moves away and approaches, creating a sense of romantic “exaltation” and, at the same time, a modern “alienation.” This is the place and meeting that the youth of Kyiv are waiting for and preparing for — this particular escape from everyday life, rejection of it — evokes strange feelings of modern ritual. But what does it mean? The film ends with “portraits,” almost static shots, faces “after” utopia. The film‘s characters are not ready to accept the new day and its old reality.

Clanking, Disput, Hammering and Gurgling
10”, directed and performed by Daniil Revkovskiy and Andriy Rachinskiy, produced by Pinchuk Art Center

Video performance Clanking, dispute, hammering and gurgling was a part of a solo exhibition by Daniil Revkovskiy and Andriy Rachinskiy, „Tailings Dam.“ The exhibition took the shape of a Museum of Human Civilization which is established in the future after humans go extinct. The Museum is dedicated to the future archaeology of a tailings dam in Kryvyi Rih. A tailings dam is a system of special facilities for storing radioactive, toxic and other non-recyclable waste from mineral processing. The work touches upon the issue of man‘s responsibility for natural resources and chimeric forms that the imprint of human activity on Earth may acquire.