Observe This Moment – How It Convulses

Observe This Moment
 – How It Convulses
 
Artists and projects: Oleh Kalashnik, Pavel Klusák on Petr Válek, Maarja Kask & Neeme Külm & Ralf Lõoke & Ingrid Ruudi, Alfred Lenica, Katya Libkind, Ivan Melnychuk, Lada Nakonechna, Denys Pankratov, Anna Scherbyna & Liliana Zeic, Mikołaj Smoczyński, Ivan Svitlychnyi & Lera Polianskova, TanzLaboratorium, Wall Evidence, Ivan-Valentyn Zadorozhnyi, Ewa Zarzycka & Yaroslav Futymskyi
Curator: Anna Łazar
Space design: Ivan Melnychuk
Production: Ewa Chacianowska, Yulia Kostereva
Promotion: Gabriela Owdziej, Piotr Trypus
Visual identification: Tomek Pawluczuk
 
The exhibition at the Arsenal Gallery in Białystok with the participation of artists from Poland, Ukraine, Estonia and the Czech Republic touches upon the issues of war, power engineering, deimperialization, but also the search for alternative patterns of customs and the unprocessed legacy of the USSR in culture, history and everyday life. The artworks presented in the exhibition were created in a context shaped by discourses of politics and economy, as well as identity debates and issues not recognised as legacies, although conveying certain choices and strategies. In the field of art, the proposed issues gain a different form of expression, different arguments and perhaps a different reflection.
 
The exploitation of the oil resources of the USSR, mainly in the Khanty-Mansi Autonomous Okrug, Western Siberia and the Yamal-Nenets Autonomous Okrug, started relatively late. As late as the 1960s, the USSR still derived its energy from coal, peat, shale and wood. Emerging petrorubles allowed for patching up of an ailing economy, a minimal increase in the standard of living of citizens, military rivalry with the US, the war in Afghanistan and participation in many other military conflicts. Today, oil revenues finance Russian genocidal aggression in Ukraine and other military interventions. Subjected to pressure, temperature and bacteria, the plant and animal remains from which oil was created can be a metaphor linking rock oil to the primordial world, but also to pressure and coercion.
 
The title “Observe This Moment – How It Convulses” is taken from Ilya Kaminsky’s volume of poems Deaf Republic. The poet tells the story of the occupation of a small town in Eastern Europe, most likely in Ukraine, which could have happened in both the 1940s and the 2020s.