KINOKI PRODUCTION
In association with #BABILON’13
Archive materials of INTEGRATION project are used in the Film
MUSEUM ‘REVOLUTION’
Of course, a natural reaction of any museum worker would be to preserve everything.
It's funny, actually, I think this was the fastest preservation of a revolution.
A revolution was taken to a museum even before it ended.
Elderly women, the curators, wandered around
the Maidan gathering sticks and helmets,
and even managed to collect these catapults and slingshots
which were used to fire Molotov cocktails at "Berkut".
Foreign Minister of Austria: To all responsible,
and especially artists, I want sincerely say
thank you, that is a big honour and joy for us.
When we saw what happened on the Maidan
on television and in pictures, I guess
practically all of us in Europe held their breath.
I have this formula - or rathe mantra - for myself:
We cannot understand what's happening in politics, but we can see a person.
We can see all of this through the eyes of an individual, who is basically invisible.
Many characters in this exhibition are in fact invisible - people
who came to the Maidan from unknown villages, little towns.
From a point of view of some progressive Westerner they probably don't even exist.
We all live in a country that was until very recently invisible.
Thanks to a very small museum in Kiev, the Honchar Museum of folk culture,
all these weird objects were preserved instantly.
And we wanted to put all these real-life artifacts in context:
these banners protesters marched with, flags, barbed wire.
Alisa for some reason even brought a real car tire from the Maidan.
You get a feeling of this reality.
This is not a work...
What you do is you take this shield, one of these clubs - and away you go.
REVOLUTION
CHANGES
THE FUNCTION
OF THINGS
Glory to Ukraine!
People started coming to us, and they were like, "Draw us a helmet."
So we drew helmets.
Right now they're drawing one for me.
If you want to, I can show you.
I have a friend from the Arts Academy, so we signed
him up to the Mystetskaya Sotnya.
It's probably the biggest Sotnya of all, something like 400 people.
This is what they're doing for me. Wicked.
There was this one guy in our Artistic Hundred,
Rubik, he just started to draw something on a helmet.
As far as I heard, someone just asked him to draw an amulet. Just a symbol.
No-no, he did it himself .
Then Zander started to draw on helmets. And then Rubik started to get orders.
That's when it all became professional.
Flyers , posters, painted helmets,
shields, clubs - we collected them little by little.
As far as we are concerned, they are works of art.
People weren't just sitting there.
They tried to decorate their instruments of defense, all these shields and helmets.
Not only that it was beautiful ...
There were amulets, for example - Our Lady.
She is painted here for a reason, folks told me.
There were lots of traditional Ukrainian
embroidered clothes, Christian symbols of patrons.
Many say it really helped.
BUKIVNA, TUKHOLKA, STRUSIV
NOVOARKHANGELSK, CHERVONOGRAD
Song: “I don't want to be a hero of Ukraine.
My country doesn't value its heroes!”
History was made before our very own eyes, so we
started thinking about ways to create a live museum.
But it turned out the Maidan was rapidly changing,
its borders were changing, its mood was changing, the victories and fears.
Everything was going so fast. And we decided to
drop this concept and just collect artifacts.
Well, they are defending, putting plastic
down there, covering it with snow,
not letting Berkut out of the metro.
If it wants to come out of the metro.
I'm wearing a helmet, don't worry.
For us this is a somewhat creative object.
Molotov cocktails - they used everything to make them.
Our folk culture museum, for instance,
is very interested in this type of
Molotov cocktail, with these little sticks.
It even has a kind of a folk shape which is interesting by itself.
Or take this device, another Molotov cocktail.
That's also a people's invention - you took
these welding parts in order to spin it
over your head and throw it farther.
This one here is also a stencil.
This was when all the battles on Hrushevskoho took place.
During truce we made this stencil: Give Warmth.
A friend of mine and I had this sort of performance.
We took these chemical heating pads - you remember
those from Maidan, when it was really cold?
So we took a bag full of these pads, painted "Give
Warmth" on them and gave to our guys out there.
We gave warmth.
Oh,the people's creativity... Take the shields, for example.
They are made out of everything. Roadsigns, and this is from a car undershield.
But it also came to use - made a shield of it instantly.
Road sign shields - that's a classic.
This was all very comfortable.
We have this shield with bullet holes, it was on Hrushevskoho.
These are gunshots.
There was this 'Shield-painting' action.
Professional painters came, talked with
the Sotnya leaders, and based on that
conversation they decorated shields.
Dante: I painted this one.
When Berkut stole all our shields, everything was covered with garbage here.
That was after the antiterrorist action, when we came back here in the 21st.
I cleaned up around here all night, and then I painted
this shield, because all the other ones were stolen.
We managed to save two shields.
There were many more.
And this is the result of Mysteckaya Sotnya work.
Purely decorative shields.
There were a lot of them, but this is all that's left.
Well, actually, the real heroes are probably left somewhere behind the lines.
I think that our future Maidan museum's
mission is to gather this collective memory,
in order for it to be interpreted and acknowledged in full by next generations.
Because all of this is ambiguous, complex. People are different.
There will be a son, and there will be a mother, and there
will be people on the earth..
Say it. - Glory to Ukraine! - Glory to Ukraine! - Glory to the heroes!
POWER
CORRUPTS
This revolution was aesthetically needed.
And the story of this aesthetical demand is told
in the wonderful clash of the Maidan culture with the culture of Mezhyhirya
and the epic Gogolesque house of attorney Pshonka.
Lozhkina: We were sitting on Maidan with Sasha Roitburd
and got a call from journalists who said there are problems in Mezhyhirya.
The rebelled masses entered the estate.
And the Self-Defence found all these
treasures down there, they are very uptight
about what's going to happen to all of it, and want to hand it over to museum workers.
So we came along and pushed our way through.
We got there by the evening, when they weren’t
letting anybody in anymore, but they brought us in,
said we were museum workers, put us in a car.
Roitburd and another colleague and of ours, Supov, were in the trunk.
And so they drove us around Mezhyhirya, all these dark alleys, for a very long time.
There was panic, everybody was shouting "What? Where? Who? Where? Who are you?"
The funniest thing was we were often mistaken for divers.
These divers were supposed to come and fish out some documents our former president
for some strange reason didn't manage to sink or burn in his residence.
So they drove us around Mezhyhirya and here and there people asked,
"Are you guys divers? Are you going to dive into the Dnieper or not? When? When?"
In the end we parked near some dark garage
with an enormous amount of rare cars
and two trucks filled with valuables.
And the people were very naive, they said,
"Take it to the museum as soon as possible,
because we don't want to be responsible for this”.
Lozhkina: I always liked Isaac Babel's "Horsearmy",
and at a certain point I realized that I was living it.
Thank god it was a "light version".
Hi Petya, this is Alisa. How are you doing?
Are you there, in place?
I'll come by, have to pick up some stuff. I made arrangements with Denis.
I'm taking you.
Ok. I'll be right there.
Petya is a unique person.
You might've seen him on our exhibition, in Alexander Chekmeniov's project.
He's depicted on the Maidan, with a Narnia shield, very soldierlike.
Petya was one of the first people to enter Mezhyhirya with the Self-Defence.
He's been here from the first day, guarding all the keys.
A very picturesque guy. If you see him, you'll like him.
I can speak about him eternally, because for me he
is like a symbol of all this revolutionary movement.
Some wise man named the style we see around us the Donetsk Bullcoco.
The crowd has changed around here, see.
Fresh forces to guard the venue.
- He wants to give you an interview. - Oh, we made so many interviews.
- No, I don't give interviews. - We're waiting for Petya.
Petr Pryvyd..
- Pryvyd? There is no Ghost here. - Oh, we know there is.
We're opening the exhibition tomorrow. Are you coming?
I'll come when I'm free.
Maybe you'll come to the opening?
I'll come later. Ask where's this, where's that.
- Oh, come to the opening. - Yeah, right.
Averchenko agreed to this?
- Let's not start this, ok? - Why not?
- We don't argue bout the artistic value... - I don't want to...
Me neither.
I don't want people coming and taking stuff. Any of it. That's it.
- Petya, please, let's not make it so complicated.
- Oh yes we are going to make it complicated.
Let's make your life complicated. Get used to it.
- Petro's now saying he doesn't want to hand it over.
- Maybe he doesn't trust...
- Well, what's that now...
- Hi, this is Alisa...
- Alisa, Petro is held up... We also need official papers...
- Oh god, well, maybe we can work something out?
- That's it, Alisa.
- Let me carry this for you. It's raining, it might get wet.
I'll just set it here for you.
- Petya, where are the soldiers now?
Male voice: - And the blankets? Lozhkina: - The blankets are OK.
Pryvyd: - Look, didn't even take anything, and it's already signed.
- Can we lay it down like it was before?
Lozhkina: - Let small Ukranians to watch... The
Girl: - ... To watch the minuscule Ukranian.
- Secret telephones? - No, special communication.
- It was so precious to him he didn't even unpack it.
Here, I signed it like this, and
a couple of copies without numbers.
Just in case they'd need it.
- Good, thank you, thank you Petya! - Do they need a signature here?
- No. - Good then. Here's your pen.
- Vitenka! Are you all good down in Rostov?
- Here you go, with a blue bandelet and all.
- So, let's pack Vitya.
- You behave now. Here you go.
- No, no, I'm taking my car.
- To the museum? - Yes.
Now don't you dare eat pelmeni off his face!
Only vareniki.
So there wouldn't be any problems on the checkpoint,
I walked with them to the car, there's everything...
Don’t unpack, just count the items!
- The OK, got it, good. Whatcha got in there?
That's for the exhibition in the National Arts
Museum, Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych's portraits.
That was Mezhyhirya, with its own flow of time and thought.
Very distinct. Time stops at Mezhyhirya.
I often think why our former president was so detached from reality.
I think it's because he spent so much time in his residence.
And this place is a kind of a thing-in-itself.
BAD TASTE IS SOCIALLY DANGEROUS
What happened in Mezhyhirya wasn't an act of
looting, it was an act of looting prevention.
People of the Self-Defence, who weren't very educated or prosperous,
found themselves in this palace, bursting with beauty and wealth.
They didn't take anything, instead they
called for museum representatives
and turned everything in to the state.
That is a very touching display of civic awareness.
Rivals of Berkut! You were fooled!
The main lesson of this exhibition is an
ethical one: bad taste is socially dangerous.
- Don't hit him, please! Don't hit him, please!
- Glory to Ukraine! - Glory to the heroes!
Glory to the Nation!
Death to the enemies!
- To the Heavenly Hundred! Thrice! - Glory! Glory! Glory!
With the medieval model of Ukrainian power,
art was born from the nation that
recognized itself as the driving force of history.
I sentence Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych to death.
LET US CONSTRUCT A POSITIVE IMAGE OF THE REVOLUTION
And what confronts Mezhyhirya, in my understanding, is this.
An absolutely ingenious thing.
In the first days of the revolution a group of young
designers created a web-site called StrikePlakat.
One of their first posters was called "Download And Print".
And so they did.
Everyone downloaded these posters and everyone
printed them, according to their own capabilities.
They could've been two meters high or printed on
an A4 piece of paper, but all of Kiev and half
of Ukraine was covered with these posters.
Nobody wants to take part in dark, frightening, vile revolutions.
I don't want to stand with a poster "Death to Yanukovych".
Even if I think of him as a very bad person, that's just not who I am.
We created a positive image.
There's a citylight near the City Hall, and when we put our Yanukovych on it,
like a thousand people came.
At the moment nobody believed you could actually do something like this.
Are you crazy?
And why not? What's there to it?
They always took pictures of him from below, very pompous.
And here you've got this small element which makes a clown out of him -
and that's what he really is, and always was, a phony.
At some point we even started to get worried this image is becoming too popular.
Wherever you can reach, no fuss.
- Glory to Ukraine! - Glory to the heroes!
That's when the real repression started.
Designers and activists got caught, but
there just was a wave of these Yanukovyches,
and you're thinking, "Damn..."
You had this feeling that people have to gather right now.
The more people come now, the more there'll be
tomorrow, and the more there'll be the day after.
Each and every moment you thought how to make more people come.
We made like ten posters each day.
We did them anonymously, and nobody knew who the
authors were, they weren't signed by a name or a brand.
On the contrary, there was a feeling anyone could do this, everybody does it.
The Yanukovych poster didn't lead to any actions.
You just see it, cool, made you smile and feel better.
The Drop poster was born out of our own feeling
of the Maidan. A feeling of powerlessness.
You're just standing there, and there's
this enormous corrupted machine,
this president, this crazy parliament.
And there's nothing you can do about it.
You feel it's not right, but can't do anything.
But you're still standing there. You want to say,
"I'm here. I can't go beat up Berkut,
but I'll keep coming, I'll keep standing.
Even if I'm so small, so weak, no fighter, but..."
And these "drop" and "ocean" are both very important.
Because if a lot of people like me - the weak, the
small - will come, then everything is going to happen.
Song: My blood type is on my sleeve, my serial number is on my sleeve.
Wish me luck in this fight.
Most of the time I couldn't figure out what I was
doing here. It's not in my character, not my type.
I'm no revolutionary, more of an office rat.
But here you are walking around in a helmet and snowboarding gear.
There was something to it...
We were running too fast, then we were trying to catch our breath, and still are.
We've done nothing of the sort of about a month now.
No thoughts, no desires, nothing.
Even with the situation on the East, and the Crimea, you just can't.
Hello, hello, one, two, three, four, five.
Yeah, there is wi-fi. The password is tricky.
Everyone's going to have blue eyes.
They are all supporting characters,
and they're all going to be the same.
What do you want me to talk about?
There are people who believe in conspiracy theories,
which tell us it was all orchestrated by this or that side,
the Kremlin or the State Department.
But you can't plan this turn of stupid events.
It's not a scenario. It might be a set of broken
scenarios that just piled up one on top another,
and then everybody just realized everything's gone wrong.
We just understood that people are coming out on the streets,
and each one of them wants to have his own little poster.
We must give the people their little posters!
Not everyone can draw, not everyone
has the time or can think of something.
We called each other and got together.
So what are we gonna do? Let's think of our own themes...
No, we can't do that. Let's make a great hit!
No, we can't do that either, we have to do a lot
of stuff, and people have to choose themselves.
And that's how it actually happened.
Different people made a bunch of posters over the night,
and for the first three weeks we were into this propaganda.
But then things started to happen, and,
honestly, you couldn't even think about posters.
Everyone did everything.
Everyone wanted to make physical objects.
Someone was carrying Gaddafi's head on a stick.
There were big hits.
That day on Mikhailovskaya when nobody
had posters there was this girl with
a small poster "Choke over your pine tree"
because the formal reason for the student beatings on 30 November 2013
was that the Kiev city administration needed
to dress up a Christmas tree for the kids.
There was a constant feeling of uncertainty, somewhat of a thrill.
You wanted to know what to expect, but it
was impossible. And now it's all over again.
It didn't end, and there's no way of telling how it's going to develop.
For now you can't even say what we, the people, should do.
It's not like you want to keep going with the revolutionary action.
Not at all, nobody wants this.
It's boring, it distracts you from real,
interesting things to do. It was all
involuntary, nobody wanted to do it.
Millions of people didn't want to go out on the streets. It was cold and nasty.
But you got to do what you got to do. But now
you don't know what exactly is there to do.
During these three months everyone found something useful to do.
But right know I don't know how and to whom I can be of use.
They're pleasant, they're smiling.
That's it - three trumpeters and three women.
And this one's out. Let's figure it out down there.
"The blue Carpathians were pounding, the victors' cannons were firing".
And maybe they aren't there at all, these Carpathians.
I'll just make their faces.
ANARCHISTS BRING ART TO THE MASSES
This is another example of Ukrainian revolutionary
art, a work of an anarchist artist Ivan Semesiuk,
a member of a group of artists who were hanging
around a gallery with an anarchist name Bacteria.
When the revolution started they knew their time
has come, so they began enlightening the masses.
We're actually returning to the beginning of the 20th century.
They found some trays, sticks and pines somewhere,
and they built a very strange open-air gallery right next to the Maidan
which was called Mystetskyi Barbican.
Graffiti: Headquarters of the Revolution Revolutionary Tribunal
Let's see what he can offer us.
- Today the Barbican is taken to pieces
- Again? - I don't know... The bagels are yours.
So what? You want me to talk? Right now?
How it all started? We just couldn't miss out on this super-action, all these events.
All of the bacterial artists, from this Bacteria gallery, form a sort of enclave,
people from all over Ukraine: Donetsk, Lviv, Halychyna, Crimea.
The public is very diverse here, most are, like, creative: architects, advertisers.
Hipsters mainly, but heavyweight.
So everyone was hanging around when suddenly we realized
it started to get really cold and we need ourselves some kind of place to crash.
No action around here, all the honest people
are there, on the Maidan, on the Khreshchatyk.
So our architects thought a bit, scratched
their heads, and came up with this construction
not the tents everyone was putting there,
but a designer structure, a little fortress.
And in there some cultural process started.
We began to organize literary soirees,
exhibitions of prints and live paintings,
poetry readings, lectures.
For example, we had a Crimean mufti there. A very cool mix.
All the things that were displayed there were either
old art that was made long before these events,
but was in some way prophetic, anticipatory, or
it was art that was a live, immediate reaction.
For instance, my work "Freedom or everyone go fuck yourselves".
Nestor Ivanovych Makhno.
Just to be clear on what kind of people were
hanging there, with a sort of Hulaipole vibe.
But when serious shit started to happen,
when people started getting killed by the pigs,
let's call them that...
Of course, at this point all the culture process
ended, and what began was defined as a real shitstorm.
Pouring Molotov cocktails and such.
Because architects - they think in millimeters,
and the cocktails turned out real nice.
In the end they came up with a cocktail that was
impossible to put out with a fire extinguisher.
Very dangerous. But that was in the very end, so it was never used.
- Holy fuck!
A lot of these left?
Won't it light up? - It’s not a toy!
- Yes, four stars...
- Your favorite.
And then, when the slaughter began, many artists just couldn't work.
I couldn't work myself. I couldn’t paint, I couldn’t write. Nothing.
For a couple of months, that's for sure. I could only absorb.
Ukrainians in general are very hobbit-like creatures.
As far as I understand it, a Ukrainian won't die for the ideals of orthodoxy,
for spiritual reasons - he's more likely to die for his six ares of land.
That's when he'll lay down his life.
The thing is, being an artist I feel obligated
to join the creation of a new city mythology.
Because alongside all these powerful nationwide processes
a Ukrainian city culture is rising up, with the Ukrainian language and all.
That's happening here and now.
It's created in these little spots, and together
it's forming the new Kiev city myth,
the new Odessa myth, the new Lviv myth.
New heroes, new mythology.
And every little writer or artist adds his little drop, drip-drop.
I myself make embroidered "banderiki", for example.
They are going to be on people's t-shirts.
All of these works are from 2014.
It's a part of the Funky Textile project I've been doing for a while, a few years.
I have different embroidered themes.
Not so long ago I thought of a name for it, Funky Textile,
and it ended up - well, not that it really is over - with the banderiki.
Of course, it's very satisfying to feel like a citizen at last, not some hack.
When you can go out on the street, bark a bit, and it's going to change something.
That's cool.
It might be a bit too romantic of a view,
but you can't be this kind of indoor fool all the
time who just locked himself up, afraid of everything.
It's a wonderful period that you can live through,
and then probably a period of pragmatism will come,
which is also good. I think pragmatism is very romantic.
- Dron, can I have some more of this stinky stuff?
- Let me...
- None left? Got it.
- No, wait, here it is.
Poetry on the Barbican:
Hide me, cap of invisibility, I'm not fighting for me, but for my country.
Balaclava, oh my balaclavochka, Balaclavochka, balaclava.
Cover us with your canopy, Protect Ukraine from bullets.
Tire, oh respected tire, My little tire, my tire.
This was made as an installation from the very beginning.
We tried to break this row of tents aesthetically.
You didn't see it, but a lot of our surfaces had works of art.
It all started as an art-happening. We exercised in making witty slogans.
From time to time some artists from the crowd came by,
they brought a lot of interesting devices
that were more a part of the Maidan then art.
A couple of very solid cop- fuckers, pardon my French.
When something was happening, people just grabbed stuff from here, and so it went.
When the Hrushevskoho started on January 19th
I thought of burning the whole thing down.
Because all these windbags on the stage kept on saying, "Stand still! Don't leave!"
Nothing happens, there's less and less people.
Another week, and there will only be
a couple of hundred people left,
who'll just be swiped out of here.
That's when these thoughts came.
We had cocktails, we had gasoline.
We could burn it real nice.
But after Hrushevskoho started it became more fun, people came back.
All these pictures were taken on the Barbican,
starting from the assemblage
and ending on the last days.
I don't know, maybe we'll put it on the Maidan again.
Guys miss us there.
All ended well, although it's probably not over yet.
Brother at the gate, you know. It's just the beginning.
"Lyapis" is playing in my headphones, We aren't the dreamers we were yesterday.
You and me, we are now infractors. For them we are outlaws.
That's the game we are playing now, A fierce battle, a bloody war.
Take care of me, balaclavochka, Balaclavochka, balaclava.
THE NEW MIDDLE AGES HAVE ARRIVED
- Oh, you're gonna close it.
- Ok, I'll figure it out and call you tomorrow.
It seemed like everything that's been happening here in Ukraine
is an enormous evolution from the Paleolith to the
Middle Ages which we passed in a couple of months.
You could even see it in the way weapons evolved on the Maidan,
starting from a simple brick or paving stone
and ending with some ultra-modern stuff.
All of it came through a stage of the new
Middle Ages when free citizens with
a right to a sword and manoeuvre,
like it was in Medieval Europe, decided to join
forces in order to fight for their independence.
Even the evolution of this surreal, steampunk armor that
was made from scratch, bought in department stores,
with all these elbow pieces that were tied to your hands,
breastplates with clenches on them, modified helmets,
Bagpipers playing, catapults shooting Molotov cocktails.
It was like the Middle Ages meet Mad Max, if you remember this 1978 film.
All these morning stars with spikes and nails,
and Berkut is throwing spikes at you so you couldn't walk and would break formation.
An absolutely Medieval atmosphere.
And on the other hand you have all these ultra-modern gadgets - iPads, iPhones
that are broadcasting everything that's going on live on the web.
You could probably call this mix the New Middle Ages.
All this endless and absolutely savage street
fighting with wild people who are payed to kill you.
A committed person against a mercenary, a kind of a beastly Landsknecht,
someone who literally just jumped out of Mordor.
Freedom against Mordor, ot's of Tolkien allusions.
I just observed how suddenly a kind of dam broke,
and people who were never heard or heard of got
their own voice, a place where they could speak up.
Very interesting folk creativity bursted out,
folk poets, skalds who record reality
in a clumsy but interesting way.
Above all else this really was a cultural revolution,
because it was conceived as a cultural revolution.
Naturally, these people were closely tied with culture one way or another.
That's why the museum preservation is so rapid.
People understand the value of these events and understand they must be recorded.
We started a big project Civic Mysticism,
which collected a lot of works by people who worked as artists during the Maidan.
It's called Civic Mysticism, because we understood
that a lot of things were done beyond people's will.
You're walking along a bizarre corridor, and you don't know if it will ever end.
The course of events is somewhat mystical.
We didn't have heroes.
In Ukrainian art, there was the antihero in place of a hero.
As a group we investigated and recorded the antihero.
And now we have real heroes who are worthy of being a part of modern art.
THE SHOW IS EVERYWHERE
Lord, is this me?
- Let them look at themselves and see how handsome they are
- Kiss the mirrors, kiss!
Our pots have gone through fire and water.
The advantage of a pot in comparison with
a helmet is that you can just take it off
and kick someone's ass right away.
Song: "I brought you a little rabbit in a bag"
To my surprise, during this revolution
I found that modern art is needed,
and not only by artists and curators.
Ordinary people used the language of modern art to express themselves.
The most interesting stuff on the Maidan wasn't created by artists,
but rather was group action. It was a protest performance.
And the word 'protest' didn't prevail over the word 'performance'
This protest art existed in various forms.
It could exist on the Maidan,
it could exist on the web, but it could
also exist in a gallery environment.
These are two works of a young artist
Nikita Shalenny who created a series
called "Where is thy brother?"
It was displayed in January in a Dnipropetrovsk gallery.
"Where is thy brother?" is a Biblical phrase.
That's what God asked Cain after he killed his brother Abel.
Cain responded: "Am I my brother's keeper?"
And that's the question I ask myself. I ask us, Ukrainians, this question, too.
I really wanted to do this project with Berkut.
I insisted and found a way, met them.
Just imagine: a group of eight people enters the room,
in full gear, bulletproof vest on, very serious, wearing masks,
carrying weapons - different weapons, even assault rifles.
That's scary. That's really scary.
Now when I think of it all, makes me laugh,
but back then I used to drink water
constantly, because my mouth was all dried out.
hey were very meticulous about everything, took our
sketches without asking, read my notes to the sketches.
But I had to manage the process, make adjustments, so that they would obey me.
I had to find a way and win them over, guide them out of their usual background.
I couldn't just tell them in a plain and simple
manner: you know, I'm shooting a series about you guys,
and you aren't the heroes here, you're the antiheroes.
That's why I told them it would be a remix of classic art,
I told what is Rembrandt's The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp about,
I told them in Holland corpse preparation was a sort of theatrical performance.
They were very interested.
Nobody ever did anything of the kind
with the secret service, and here you are,
looking very-very close at them.
You looked at these people through a magnifying glass.
I don't idealize them, but they ended up being the best models you could wish for.
First of all, they know how to hold a gun. They know how to use it. They're firm.
They're all about the same size. It was interesting to show a soldier.
We have a photograph where these soldiers are lying in the field.
Just a moment!
You're going to walk two times, we have two takes.
First I'll shoot from the back, and then from the front.
Fix our faces! You're being escorted, remember?
It was cold, +5°C , October, gloomy weather.
And they were honestly laying on the ground for an hour.
It was cold, they were wearing summer clothes.
They're soldiers, they're hard as nails.
In the end they were leaving in a very goodmood and even enthusiasm,
because they'd never done anything of the sort
in their life and would never do it again.
Berkut, you know, it's our Dnipropetrovsk kind of thing.
That's what our city is about.
A lot of big businessmen. Among others they are the feudal lords that rule the country.
They are the power brokers.
And these power brokers have their own armed forces, their own armies.
They use Berkut for their own purposes like
factory takeovers, violent solutions to problems.
In the end one of this project's messages is these guys are tools.
One would say: "No, they are good."
Another would say: "They follow unlawful orders."
And another would say: "No, they took an oath."
But the whole point is who controls them.
And once you took this stick, it's very hard to put it back down.
- Take your mask off! Why not? Are you drunk?
Guys, just take our masks off and retire with a clean conscience.
- Glory to Ukraine! - Glory to the heroes! -
- Glory to the Nation! - Death to the enemies!
- C'mon, take your helmet off!
- I'm not wearing a mask, see!
- But you're in a helmet, bitch!
- Take your helmet off!
- Take it off!
- Mask! Mask!
- Let them through!
- We gave them out word.
- Easy!
- Dickhead!
- You're the dickheads!
When I worked with them it blew my mind.
And when I saw what they were doing it blew my mind.
It seems like they're the same people, but here I
see them as people, and there I see them as beasts.
And I can't understand that.
"Peaceful" Berkut weapons.
When Berkut was still on Hrushevskoho and there
were a few lines of barricades in front of them,
when you're climbing up this barricade the feeling is awesome.
And when people climb up there - just
ordinary people and people in camouflage
that were constantly on the Maidan
from our side, you go in there, and climb
this mountain, and you're standing on
these bags of snow, and you feel a man.
It's a very powerful feeling.
If you didn't climb up, you weren't there,
you weren't part of in all.
Honestly, I didn't understand what was happening.
I came here a lot, hanged around with my friends who were the most active.
There were a lot of things I couldn't understand.
And I tried to express it in the color shade I picked.
This work is supposed to remind paintball.
And paintball is a game in which people learn not to value life and dally death.
What I mean here is someone was playing very big
games, but it were the ordinary people who got killed.
And that's a huge disaster, too.
Donetsk, Kramatorsk, Mariupol
The Lord says, "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."
The light from heaven comes as a song.
This whole organism - even Kabakov couldn't have dreamt about it.
Shit, this is the most powerful installation I've ever seen.
If the whole Ukraine could've come to the Maidan...
Just bring people here and show them the place.
You don't have to explain the subtext, just show... and people will change.
If something goes wrong, we'll come back to the Maidan. Why not?
Too fast. We were running too fast, and now we can't catch our breath.
I think these guys were incredibly lucky.
We don't know what will happen to this revolution, what's going to be next.
But for some five minutes they got
an opportunity to live in an absolutely inverted
world and feel that they are needed.
That's and incredible feeling for a contemporary artist.
In August 2014 the Maidan was dismantled.
On August 24, Ukraine's Independence day, a war parade
marched down Khreshchatyk and across the Maidan Nezalezhnosti.
What's going on?
REVOLUTION
MUSEUM
REVOLUTION
TO THE MUSEUM!
REVOLUTION
IN A MUSEUM?