Post-Communist World: New Artists Add Their Voices in Support of Ukraine

Many members of Atlantika Collective have close ties to Ukraine and other post-Communist and Socialist states around the world. This week, as part of our response to the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, we issued a Special Statement on Ukraine, condemning the cruel and illegal invasion and urging strong actions to defend the country and to safeguard human lives that are in grave danger.

In addition, we unveiled a new section of our website, The Post-Communist and Socialist World, that highlights the many projects that members have created that originate in Ukraine or other nations of the world that have transitioned away from communism and socialism.

Now, other artists are joining us in support of Ukraine by adding links to their projects to this new section of the website. Today, we’re featuring the voices of two very talented artists, Victoria Crayhon and Matt Mooore, who have created beautiful and insightful projects in this part of the world.

Karl Marx Street I, Irkutsk RF 2018, Archival Pigment Print, 30 X 44 inches, Victoria Crayhon.

Victoria Crayhon has been making photographs in the Russian Federation since 2011. Her work examines the intensity and omnipresence of Russian nationalism as reflected in its architecture, public space, historical sites, holiday rituals, and culture in general, which, like any form of nationalism, is essentially the glorification of one’s own culture and country. Nationalism has historically, at least in the west, led to two world wars and most American wars since 1945. Her two projects, New Empire and Far East, ask the questions: How long can a society hold onto and/or reject ideas from its own history? Which facts and stories are being told? How is history wielded and for whom?

Post-Socialist Landscapes by Matt Moore is an exploration of memory sites in countries that were at one time occupied by the Soviet Union. The photographs in this project fall into two main groups. One set of images depicts the exact location where statues of Lenin and Stalin once stood. A second group of photographs focuses on the fate of the discarded communist monuments that once stood throughout Europe’s Eastern Bloc states. Together, these two groups of photographs speak to the way local governments and municipalities control historical narratives through the manipulation of public and private space. While some societies go to great lengths to eradicate the unwanted reminders of their past, others are willing to let them slowly disintegrate.

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Lenin, Vilnius, Lithuania, Matt Moore, 2014.

Moore’s project East/West presents images of the abandoned checkpoints that separate former eastern bloc countries from the West, particularly the Czech Republic from Austria and Germany. As remnants of the Iron Curtain, each checkpoint carries with it its own amount of history and aura. Today, each structure stands vacant and serves only as a hollow reminder that one is moving from one country to another. Moore is interested in them as symbols of the perpetual change that takes place in Europe and beyond. Ultimately, the images in this project function like time capsules. They give us a glimpse of the past, while also hinting at the potential for greater change ahead.

In addition to featuring talented artists from around the world, our new section on the Post-Communist World contains information about how you can do your utmost to assist the people of Ukraine in their historic struggle for democracy and self-determination, including information on Russian war crimes, charities that are assisting Ukrainians in their country and those who have been forced to flee, and suggestions about how to contact government officials in the West who must hear from us about the importance of this crisis for the world.

We all have a stake in the war in Ukraine, since the very future of democracy is at stake. We continue to urge everyone to do all they can to influence the outcome.

Fighting for Freedom and Democracy in Ukraine

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This image, taken by an artist in Kyiv on February 26, 2022, shows the aftermath of a Russian attack on a civilian apartment building. Amnesty International has already documented the indiscriminate shelling of civilian targets by Russia, actions that likely constitute war crimes under international law.

Many members of Atlantika Collective have a close personal connection to the parts of the world that have transitioned away from Communism and Socialism, including the nation of Ukraine, which is under assault by Russian troops at this moment.

Today Atlantika issued a “Special Statement on the War in Ukraine.” This statement vehemently condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine and calls on governments and people all over the world to do everything possible to assist the people of Ukraine. Importantly, it includes essential information on Russian war crimes against civilians and information on how people worldwide can send humanitarian assistance to people in Ukraine and to refugees in bordering nations. Finally, Atlantika urges people to contact their own governments to demand the strongest possible sanctions against Russia and their isolation in the world community.

In addition, to highlight the importance of protecting freedom and democracy in Ukraine, we are introducing a new section of our website today called “The Post-Communist and Socialist World.” This new section brings together a diverse collection of artworks by Atlantika Collective members (and soon, other artists who have focused on similar topics). These works offer insights into art and culture, diversity and borderlands, and the environmental problems plaguing these nations, including a number of projects that originate in Ukraine.

The war in Ukraine is one of the most pressing humanitarian crises of our time. It is also one of the most important challenges to the rule of law and the future of democracy and self-determination. For these reasons, we all have a stake in this war, and we all must do what we can to bring an end to this brutal, unwarranted and illegal use of military force.

Book Launch Discussion: Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art

by Mark Isaac

On Monday, February 14, the Ukrainian Studies Organization at IU sponsored a book launch discussion featuring a group of international scholars, curators, critics, and artists, including Atlantika Collective member Jessica Zychowicz.

The ambitious book, whose full title is Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art: Political and Social Perspectives, 1991–2021, surveys Ukrainian and Baltic art during the 30 years after the fall of Communism in the region, taking care to understand how the transformations of the last three decades built upon the past and how they might inform the future. The full taped version of the talk is included here.

The taped version of Book Launch: Contemporary Ukrainian and Baltic Art, a discussion sponsored by IU Ukrainian Studies Organization Talks.

A chapter titled “A New Dawn at the Centennial of Suffragism: Artistic Representation in Transeuropean and Transatlantic Kyiv” was penned by Zychowicz. This exceptionally insightful essay skillfully weaves together the evolution of International Women’s Day, the events of the 2014 Maidan Revolution of Dignity, a landmark 2018 feminist exhibition in Kyiv titled “A Space of One’s Own,” and the trial (and acquittal) of a women’s rights banner unfurled at a 2018 march to tell a story of feminist activism and accomplishment that has implications for artists, scholars, and progressive activists well beyond Ukraine’s borders. 

A full review of the book and of Zychowicz’s chapter are beyond the scope of this post, but it is worth a brief mention of two salient themes in Zychowicz’s essay that stood out for this reader. 

The piece begins by acknowledging the socialist origins of the fight for the right to vote (which was won several years earlier in Eastern Europe than it was in the United States), as well as the fight for women’s rights in general. In the post-Communist environment, which embraced a new nationalism and sought to discard anything associated with the previous regimes, feminism was identified as an unwanted relic of the past. Thus, the efforts of feminist artists in Ukraine have in part been oriented toward reintroducing feminism to the public as neither “regressive nor anti-national.” For example, as part of a participatory art project, feminist artist Alina Kopytsa posed nude for a photograph in front of a wall painted the institutional color blue that is associated with all government buildings in Ukraine. This “visual insubordination” undermines the authority associated with state institutions (and their control over women’s bodies) while also calling attention to the unspoken political meanings associated with many public spaces. 

Zychowicz asserts as basic the idea that one of the most important purposes of art is to cast light on what is marginalized or overlooked, and that this act can make what was unseen central to our lives. To elaborate, she calls attention to the 2018 Kyiv art exhibition titled A Space of One’s Own, which included a century’s worth of feminist artworks, including the provocative works of contemporary practitioners. She then interrogates a key question:

Bringing women’s history into greater visibility is the essential work of any author or artist who dares to express herself on the page or canvas. But what if the space of one’s own for self-discovery were transparent?….How does artistic production—the re-contextualization of boundaries between private/public, everyday materials, and multiple framings and perspectives open up new vocabularies, texts, and pathways for constructing ourselves, how we see each other, and the world around us? 

The title of the exhibition, A Space of One’s Own, is an allusion to Virginia Woolf’s famous essay A Room of One’s Own, in which she asserts that “a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.” According to Zychowicz, this work is seen by many scholars as “a breakthrough in the search for a language by which to express non-normative gender experience.” In fact, Woolf posited that feminists would need to create an “Outsider Society” to transform society from their position on its margins. 

Although Woolf never specifically created such a society, her writing and publishing efforts moved forcefully in this direction and opened the door for more contemporary artists to initiate a dialogue around such subjects as maternity, fertility and reproduction that is ongoing today. For example, Ukrainian artist Yevgenia Belorusets created photographs of marginalized gay, bisexual and transgender Ukrainians in their domestic settings, blurring the lines between public and private and challenging prevailing views about heteronormativity. 

In her extremely satisfying conclusion, Zychowicz urges us to build on these efforts by reimagining the public/private divide in new ways. She notes that Czech author Milan Kundera has identified “transparency” as one of 65 key words in “The Art of the Novel,” and this concept is closely associated with the nineteenth century philosophical interest in the concept of the glass house. But this utopian vision always involved a core element of paradox, since the glass house can equally be identified as an early vision of surveillance and confinement. For feminist artists, always outsiders, this construct will certainly be helpful as they seek to define a path forward. Freedom, Zychowicz notes, “is both a process of achieving the space of one’s own—but also, the ability to leave it at will.” 

(Please note that Zychowicz’s viewpoints and scholarship are entirely her own and do not necessary reflect the views of Fulbright Ukraine and the Institute of International Education, Kyiv Office, which she directs.)

Speakers in the discussion included: 

• Jessica Zychowicz is the Director of Fulbright Ukraine & IIE: Institute of International Education, Kyiv Office. She recently published her monograph, Superfluous Women: Art, Feminism, and Revolution in Twenty-First Century Ukraine (University of Toronto Press 2020). In 2017-2018 Dr. Zychowicz was a U.S. Fulbright Scholar to Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, where she taught courses in visual sociology, gender, and conducted interviews and archival research toward her second book. She has authored numerous articles on gender, human rights, revolution and protest in postcommunism. Dr. Zychowicz is a Board Member of the Association for Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS), an Advisory Board member of H-Net H-Ukraine, and is a founding co-editor of the Forum for Race and Postcolonialism at Krytyka.com.  

• Svitlana Biedarieva is an art historian and curator with a focus on Eastern European and Latin American art. She holds her PhD in History of Art from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London.  

• Kateryna Botanova is a Ukrainian cultural critic, curator, and writer based in Basel. She is a co-curator of CULTURESCAPES, Swiss multidisciplinary biennial, and is an editor of the critical anthologies that accompany each festival, among them On the Edge: Culturescapes 2019 Poland, Archeology of the Future: Culturescapes 2017 Greece, Culturescapes 2021. She has worked extensively with EU Eastern Partnership Culture Program and EUNIC Global as a consultant and expert. A member of PEN Ukraine, she publishes widely on art and culture. 

• Lia Dostlieva is an artist, cultural anthropologist and essayist. Has a degree in cultural anthropology. Primary areas of her research are trauma, postmemory and agency of vulnerable groups. Works in a wide range of media including photography, installations, textile sculptures, etc. Exhibited her works in Germany, Italy, Ukraine, Poland, Austria, Czech Republic, etc. 

• Andrii Dostliev is an artist, curator, and photography researcher from Ukraine, currently based in Poland. Has degrees in IT and graphic design. His primary areas of interest are memory, trauma, identity — both personal and collective, and limits of photography as a medium. His art practice works across photography, video, drawing, performance, and installation. Recent solo exhibitions include: ‘Black on Prussian Blue‘, Shcherbenko Art Centre, Kyiv, Ukraine (2021), ‘Black raven sang the water‘, KMBS, Kyiv, Ukraine (2021), and ‘I still feel sorry when I throw away food — Grandma used to tell me stories about the Holodomor‘, Odesa National Art Museum, Odesa, Ukraine (2021–2022). Has published several photobooks.

And the Winner Is: Uh Huh

The music video created by Atlantika members Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac for Joy on Fire’s hard-hitting song about gun violence in the United States, Uh Huh, continues to tear up the festival circuit and has now garnered its first all-out win: The Obskuur Ghent Film Festival in Belgium. Moreover, it just won the runner-up award at the Brighton Rocks Film Festival in the UK as well. Overall, it’s received awards at more than a dozen international film festivals…so far! Here are the band’s thoughts (as expressed by lyricist and vocalist Dan Gutstein):

Joy on Fire music video for “Uh Huh” wins Best Music Video category at Obskuur Ghent Film Festival (Belgium) and garners Runner-up accolades at Brighton Rocks Film Festival (UK)

Dan Gutstein

In a dream I don’t want you to know about, “Uh Huh” plays overhead as a rugged pugilist makes his or her walk to the ring or octagon. The drums are tapping, the bass plays “dinn-dinn-dunn,” and the vocals recite what’s both obvious and ominous—“Uh Huh”—over and over again, until, of course, the song becomes electrified, a thumping action that buffets the chest—“dinn-dinn-dunn”—of the opponent. At this point, with the arena lights going all whirlybird and the crowd going all whirlybird, the song drops out and the two fighters drift toward one another.

I don’t want you to know about this dream because it precedes some violence, however sanctioned or celebrated, and yet, what sort of purity can we realistically expect of ourselves? In any event, I can’t undream it. And it’s not so far-fetched. A combatant could take courage from “Uh Huh.” (I’ve never been shown the end, don’t know if the fighter prevails.) Yet there’s quite a difference between this scenario and someone deciding to do the ultimate wrong, such as picking up a firearm, pointing it at another person (or persons) and fatally harming them.

In early 2022, the world will take stock of what will hopefully be a Covid pandemic in steep retreat. But what of the gun violence pandemic? It only seems to worsen, and it seems especially virulent in the United States. In response to some of the worst examples—such as schools attacked and innocent school children murdered—the country seems incensed, well, for a little while. Then the story fades, and gun ownership even seems to multiply. The massive lunacy of arming teachers gets trotted-out as if that’s the only conceivable solution. More weaponry.

The lyrics for “Uh Huh” refer to gun violence, yes. But they’re also aimed at the unknowable: songs that our murdered brethren are singing—as we bury them. In a fit of rage, the singer challenges the killers to return the bodies to the earth. “Uh Huh” could appear inflammatory at that moment, as if we were challenging the murderers to kill again. But in the end, when the song’s peak—including the screeching saxophone—reaches toward euphoria, it’s quite important to remember that anger has different colors. Call ours the color of outrage.

Filmmaker duo Mark Isaac and Gabriela Bulisova produced a wildly creative film that matches the outrage and the ambiguities in the music and words. As of this writing, “Uh Huh” has been the Official Selection of 12 international film festivals, from the U.S. to Europe to Asia. The emotions that accompany our win at Ghent Obskuur Film Festival and being a runner-up at Brighton Rocks Film Festival, are a mixture of humility, gratitude, and devotion to message. It’s a roughened song for a roughened age in human history. Can it be the color of your outrage? “Uh Huh.”

Human Nature: Seers from the Upper World Природа человека: Провидцы из Верхнего Мира

New work by Valery Kondakov / Новая работа Валерия Кондакова

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85 cm х 44 cm х 6 cm. Photograph by Valery Kondakov / Фото Валерия Кондакова.

Valery Kondakov, a professional artist who lives and works in Nizhneangarsk, a remote town at the northernmost point of Lake Baikal in eastern Siberia, is a regular contributor to Atlantika Collective. His prolific and diverse artwork includes painting, graphics, sculpture, decorative art, literature, and poetry. It is created under the pseudonym “Evi Enk,” a reference to his indigenous Evenki roots.

Валерий Кондаков, профессиональный художник, живущий и работающий в Нижнеангарске, отдаленном городке на самой северной точке озера Байкал в Восточной Сибири, является постоянным сотрудником Коллектива Атлантика. Его плодовитые и разнообразные произведения искусства включают живопись, графику, скульптуру, декоративное искусство, литературу и поэзию. Он создан под псевдонимом «Эви Энк», отсылка к его коренным эвенкийским корням.

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90 cm х 32 cm х 6 cm. Photograph by Valery Kondakov / Фото Валерия Кондакова.

In this post, Kondakov introduces us to his new body of work titled “Human Nature: Seers from the Upper World.” In describing the new pieces, he writes simply, “We create because our brains create it. But then who is he - the creator of our brain? And why then do we create? Seers from the Upper World can answer many questions with signs that they send us while we are still human.”

В этом посте Кондаков знакомит нас со своей новой работой под названием «Природа человека: Провидцы из Верхнего Мира». Описывая новые произведения, он просто пишет: «Мы создаём потому, что это создаёт наш мозг. Но тогда кто есть он, - создатель нашего мозга? И для чего тогда мы создаём? На многие вопросы могут ответить Провидцы из Верхнего Мира знаками, которые они нам присылают, пока мы ещё люди.».

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8 7 cm х 42 cm х 5 cm. Photograph by Valery Kondakov / Фото Валерия Кондакова.

Russian anthropologist Anna Sirina has studied and written about Kondakov’s work. Among other things, she emphasizes his place in the movement known as “neoarchaicism,” an artistic direction “formed in Siberian art of the late 20th to early 21st century, based on the artists' appeal to the archaeological heritage, myth and ethnic roots of the peoples of Siberia.”

Русский антрополог Анна Сирина изучала и писала о работе Кондакова. Среди прочего, она подчеркивает его место в движении, известном как «неоархаизм», художественном направлении, «сформированном в сибирском искусстве конца XX - начала XXI века на основе обращения художников к археологическому наследию, мифам и этническим корням народов Сибири».

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89 cm х47 cm х 7 cm. Photograph by Valery Kondakov / Фото Валерия Кондакова.

But she goes on to clarify that Kondakov uses his attachment to images of ethnic cultures in a decisively modern way. “For Valery Kondakov,” she writes, “it has become a kind of carte blanche, which allows us to talk about modern problems of society, express our point of view on the modern world and the processes of rapid cultural change and globalization taking place in it, using traditional images, symbols, colors inherent in Evenk culture, but in a rethought, revised form.”

Но далее она поясняет, что Кондаков решительно современно использует свою привязанность к изображениям этнических культур. «Она стала для Валерия Кондакова своего рода carte blanshe, которая позволяет говорить о современных проблемах общества, высказывать свою точку зрения на современный мир но в переосмысленном, переработанном виде».

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89 cm х 38 cm х 6 cm. Photograph by Valery Kondakov / Фото Валерия Кондакова.

The harsh Siberian winter is already intruding in Nizhneangarsk, where Kondakov lives a reclusive lifestyle, and in the last few days, he was forced to pause and move from his summer studio into his winter studio. But his nonstop quest will soon continue.

Суровая сибирская зима уже вторгается в Нижнеангарск, где Кондаков ведет затворнический образ жизни, и в последние дни он был вынужден сделать паузу и переехать из летней студии в зимнюю. Но его безостановочные поиски скоро продолжатся.

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90 cm х 41 cm х 9 cm. Photograph by Valery Kondakov / Фото Валерия Кондакова.

“By all means available to him,” Sirina writes, “the artist is looking for answers to the questions: who am I in the modern world and what is I and where is this world going?” And in answering these questions, he believes we cannot ignore our roots and our ethnicity. And we cannot ignore the natural world, which is a living, breathing entity to which we are all deeply and inextricably connected.

«Любыми доступными ему способами, - пишет Сирина, - художник ищет ответы на вопросы: кто я в современном мире, что я такое и куда этот мир движется?» И, отвечая на эти вопросы, он считает, что мы не можем игнорировать наши корни и нашу этническую принадлежность. И мы также не можем игнорировать природу, которая является живым, дышащим существом, с которым мы все глубоко и неразрывно связаны.

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85 cm х42 cm х 7 cm. Photograph by Valery Kondakov / Фото Валерия Кондакова.

Social Justice, BLM and Atlantika: SONGS IN THE KEY OF FREE

Social Justice, BLM, and Atlantika is a series of posts by Atlantika members that focus on the critical issues of race and social justice. The year 2020 has tragically brought together a pandemic with outsized impacts on communities of color and ongoing protests against the murder of George Floyd and the many others who have lost their lives as a result of racist violence. As our mission statement makes clear, Atlantika members have always valued “social responsibility, community, and nurturing a contemporary humanism through art.” However, in the wake of recent events, which are critical to the future of the nation and the world, Atlantika has renewed its commitment to make racial and social justice a lasting focal point -- and to do our part to bring about a powerful movement for change.

Atlantika Collective members Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac have done extensive work on issues related to mass incarceration, the racist policy that inordinately targets people of color, subjecting them to lengthy prison sentences, often for nonviolent crimes. In this project, titled Songs in the Key of Free, the duo focused on an innovative music program at a state prison not far from Philadelphia. The program is an upbeat and positive way for those in prison to express themselves, but a bitter subtext unsettles the narrative: many of the participants are sentenced to life in prison without parole or extremely long sentences, and these sentences are meted out disproportionately to people of color. 

Please be certain to read the other posts in this series thus far:

• Billy Friebele and Yam Chew Oh: Social Justice, BLM, and Atlantika

• Bill Crandall: Minding the Traces

• Gabriela Bulisova, Mark Isaac and Taylar Nuevelle: Who Speaks for Me?

Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

Songs in the Key of Free is an innovative music program initiated several years ago at State Correctional Institute-Graterford, a maximum security prison northwest of Philadelphia.* The program restored music instruction for inmates after twenty years without any access to a music program of any kind. It brought together outside musicians and talented men in the prison to create original songs and performances, an album, and podcasts with the personal stories of participants. You can learn more about the program, led by the indomitable August Tarrier, here: https://www.songsinthekeyoffree.com/.

Our short film and still photographs, created in 2017, focus on the creative process that gave birth to outstanding original music in multiple styles -- and rejuvenated lives in the process. But the project was also meant to call attention to the extremely disturbing and unjust situation of many participants, who have already served lengthy sentences, taken responsibility for their actions, and now deserve a new life on the outside. Activists in Pennsylvania and around the country call life imprisonment without the possibility of parole “death by incarceration” and are working to abolish it, along with other disproportionately long sentences. 

The film documents how participants created and performed original music dealing with the urgent need for criminal justice reform. One of these songs, titled “I Can’t Breathe,” offers a trenchant reminder of the fact that George Floyd, stopped by Minneapolis police responding to reports of a counterfeit twenty dollar bill, was not the first person to be asphyxiated by police officers. Many of us recall that widespread use of the phrase “I Can’t Breathe,” which has now become a rallying cry for the Black Lives Matter movement, originated with the case of Eric Garner, the Black man in New York City who was choked to death when stopped for suspicion of selling untaxed cigarettes. But the tragic and very real fact is that, behind these two cases, are dozens more known cases and likely many others that have yet to be publicized. A recent investigation by the New York Times found at least 70 cases in the last decade in which men died in custody after mouthing those same words. You can find the documentation here.

Out of all of the projects that we’ve created on incarceration, this one was simultaneously the most uplifting and the most unsettling. It was incredibly inspirational because of the beaming, warm and giving attitude of the participants, and their phenomenal display of talent and creativity in a situation of extreme duress. At the same time, it was deeply tragic to understand that many of the men at Graterford were aging, reformed, very harmless, and could only be of benefit to the community on the outside, yet a large number of them are stuck in prison for the rest of their lives.

It is important to say that neither the men, nor us, are apologists for serious crime. The residents who we encountered took full responsibility for their crimes and believed in the principle of paying for what they did. Some, in keeping with the principles of restorative justice (an alternative theory of justice in which offenders, victims, and the community work together to do everything possible to repair the harm caused by the offense), took the initiative to try to alleviate the pain they had caused. They wanted desperately to give back to their communities on the outside. After witnessing this dynamic firsthand, we became even more convinced that our legal system is off course and must be radically reformed to bring about greater fairness and justice for all, including both victims and offenders. 

Much of prison life in America is designed to deprive residents of their humanity, so it was not very surprising that prison authorities demanded, as a condition of our work inside, that we obscure the men’s faces at all times. We had to adopt novel visual strategies to comply with this meanspirited and unnecessary requirement, but we did our best to allow their humanity and their individuality be on proud display in every other way possible. 

We hope that this small glimpse into the kind heartedness and generosity of men serving extremely punitive sentences will provide insights into the severe harm caused by mass incarceration -- and the moral rot that lies at the heart of America’s system of justice. We must all do our part to ensure we correct course, by choosing wisely in the upcoming election -- and beyond. 

* In 2018, State Correctional Institute-Graterford was replaced by a new prison, State Correctional Institute-Phoenix, built at a nearby site.

Visual Catalysts Exhibition Showcases Artwork on Environmental Transformation

Mark Isaac

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Visual Catalysts is an exhibition focused on the worldwide climate crisis and other forms of environmental degradation. It seeks to promote new ways of visual representation that will move artists beyond the task of '“raising awareness” and more firmly into the realm of spurring action.

As the curators noted, “We are living in a slow-motion climate crisis. Old ways of seeing got us here. Our way as consumers needs to be seen from fresh perspectives in order to move towards sustainability. Visual representations are a powerful global language and through a process of international co-creation, artists can be future change makers, creating new visual catalysts that can speak across cultures.”

I’m pleased that several of my images from the series “Like Water Through Plastic” have been included in the exhibition, which opens today at the gallery Laikku in Tampere, Finland, and runs through October 18. The work will also be included in an upcoming book that is being produced as an outcome of the Backlight 2020 Triennale. All of this work is part of larger projects that I’ve created in recent years with close collaborator (and life partner) Gabriela Bulisova.

Plastic pollution of our waterways is a critical issue facing the entire world. Approximately 300 million tons of plastic is produced yearly, and less than 10 percent is recycled. As many as 8 million tons per year ends in our oceans and waterways, where it entangles marine mammals, birds and fish and lodges in their stomachs, causing death. As plastic starts breaking into smaller particles, it is consumed by humans and may cause cancer and fertility problems. A recent study by the World Wildlife Fund found that most people consume the equivalent of one credit card of plastic per week. Plastic refuse is found in almost all waterways and has formed massive floating islands in our oceans.

After encountering numerous plastic and glass objects on land and in water, I chose to begin incorporating these found objects directly into our work as a sort of "supplemental lens." The distorted view of the landscape created by these objects is emblematic of the negative impact they have on the environment. At the same time, the subtle beauty of the images reminds us of the resilience of nature and the capacity of humans to solve this problem if there is enough will.

Examples of the types of “supplemental lenses” employed in the Like Water Through Plastic series. These objects were found in the immediate vicinity of Lake Baikal in Eastern Siberia, the world’s oldest, deepest, most voluminous, and most biologically diverse lake.

In years gone by, I used to think it was sufficient, as an artist pursuing socially conscious projects, to suggest that “raising awareness” was my primary goal. In the last several years, as the worldwide climate crisis worsens and makes its early effects known, we know that raising awareness is not sufficient. Not only artists, but all those who are aware of the significance of the challenge, must at least do their small part to contribute to advancing change.

Today, the task is even larger. In the face of obstinate opposition to change that enhances the chances of a cataclysm, we must do our part to link our efforts together with environmental activists, scientists, students, and other allies around the world. The goal must be to create a motivated, powerful and committed movement that can prevail over time. Only through worldwide cooperation and concerted action can we hope to prevail.

The Visual Catalysts exhibition is a good step in this direction. It suggests that all of us must be catalysts for meaningful action. Now it is up to us to persevere in the long-term and turn that initiative into accomplishment.

Paragon of Piety

Yam Chew Oh

In my sculptures, I employ the physicality and metaphorical potential of found or used materials to tell personal and familial stories.

My late father was a karung guni man, the Singapore equivalent of the rag-and-bone or junk man. [1] Growing up helping him with his trade had a deep impact on my love for ordinary and humble materials.

My mother had a hard life. She left Malaysia at 14 to work in Singapore so that she could help to support my grandparents, who were so poor they had to sell and give some of their 13 children up for adoption, and let a few of them die because they could not afford medication.

The Vow, acrylic paint on Post-it, anniversary bouquet ribbon, used grocery packaging, found wooden stick and metal mesh, and pin. Approx. 40 x 13 x 2 1/2 inches, 2018.

Mom is illiterate because my Grandpa felt that education was wasted on girls. But, my Grandma wanted Mom to “at least know how to write [her] own name,” so she sent her to a village tutor. Sadly, Mom gave up after a few lessons because she could not bear to see Grandma fending off lewd advances from lecherous village men the many nights she walked miles (with an oil lamp strapped to her forehead for light) to pick Mom up after class.

At 28, Mom married Dad, then a bread seller. We lived in an attap house [2] with my cousins and their four families. Mom bore Dad seven children and, even though she was trained as a seamstress, took on for years the bulk of the child-rearing duties while helping him with his odd jobs, as well as the back-breaking responsibilities for the family's pigs and poultry. When Dad had his first stroke, Mom was his sole caregiver for years. Nineteen years after he died from his third attack, Mom remains Dad's loyal widow—to remarry is unthinkable for someone who was raised to abide by age-old traditions; to question them would be sacrilegious. Mom is the exemplary "twenty-four paragons of filial piety wife” (二十四孝妻子), steadfast and unwavering in her duties as wife and mother. She wants her children to speak her late husband’s dialect (Hokkien) instead of hers (Teochew) because we must honor Dad - the patriarchal line - even though he is no longer with us.

The laundry handicap, used laundromat hangers and foam protective packaging, found bike bottle cage, dimensions variable, 2018.

I wish Mom could relax and enjoy her golden years, but to chill out and put her feet up are alien concepts to someone who has lived an arduous life bound by selfless duty to her family, and trapped under the weight of tradition, superstition, loyalty, and honor. She is helplessly preoccupied with the banal chores of daily living, such as laundry. I am still trying to comprehend why she could not just “let go” and not be consumed by housework and perpetual worries for her seven children, their six partners, and her four grandchildren. Even though Mom is incredibly resilient for her age and slight build, I worry for her when I think about how much more she could tolerate in her grueling life. Thankfully, she is beginning to understand the importance of self-care; the pandemic has impressed upon her a sense of urgency.

I have nothing but profound admiration and love for this amazing woman—without the privilege of an education, how she has managed to navigate this world for the last 76 years, with seven children in tow, is a miracle to me.

The widow’s lot, used cardboard photo frame corners, found mirror backing and scrap wood, 32 1/8 x 21 2/8 x 3 1/8 inches, 2018.

[1] The karung guni man is the Singapore equivalent of the 19th century rag-and-bone man in the UK, who scavenged unwanted rags, bones, metal, and other waste from the towns and cities where they lived and sold them to merchants. In America, they are called junk men, and in many developing countries, waste pickers. Karung guni are the Malay words for gunny/burlap sack, which was used in the past by Singapore karung guni men to hold the used newspaper they collected for resale. 

[2] The attap house is a traditional dwelling named after the attap palm (commonly known as the nipa or mangrove palm), which provides the wattle for the walls, and the leaves with which their roofs are thatched (the craft of building a roof with dry vegetation).

Milada Horáková: A Czechoslovak Hero With Exceptional Courage

Mark Isaac & Gabriela Bulisova

One of the large banners currently hanging in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic. Picturing Czechoslovak hero Milada Horáková, the banner reads, “Murdered by Communists.” The banners were installed to mark the 70th anniversary of her execution.

History is being written now, and it has rendered a verdict. This age calls on all of us to defend basic human rights and human dignity.

The signals are all around us, so numerous and prominent that they cannot be ignored. The continued brutal murders of people of color by law enforcement in the United States. The manner in which the coronavirus crisis impacts the poor and people of color much more than the privileged. The decline of democracy and the rise of increasingly autocratic rule in places like Hong Kong, Hungary, Brazil, the Philippines, the United States and elsewhere. The second economic recovery plan in just 12 years that very obviously prioritizes corporations and the rich over average people. 

But it’s not easy to know the best way to respond...or the lengths we are willing to go to make a stand for our principles. In the last few months, protesters in the United States risked arrest, brutality, and coronavirus by marching to fight racism. In the last few days, protesters in Hong Kong risked imprisonment and cruelty in the wake of the new Chinese security law that forcefully breaks China’s commitment to keep Hong Kong independent through 2047.

With these events in our minds, we arrived in the city of Prague, immediately noticing that the city was full of banners in red and black, all with the photograph of a woman, Milada Horáková, who has a very special place in Czechoslovak history.

Trained as a lawyer, she focused extensively on campaigning for social justice and for women’s rights. She first came to national prominence as a member of the resistance against Nazism during World War II. As a result of her resistance activities, she was tried by a German court, convicted, and held in concentration camps in Czechoslovakia and Germany until the war’s end, when she was liberated by American forces. She then returned to Czechoslovakia to continue her fight for freedom and democratic principles. 

In the years following the war, Czechoslovakia was in political turmoil, with Communists pressing for power. They tried first by democratic means but weren’t able to win a majority. So, in February 1948, with Soviet backing, the Communists took control of the government in a coup d’etat. By then a member of the Czechoslovak parliament, Horakova resigned in protest. And rather than leave the country, she continued to speak out in favor of political freedom for all. After extensive, unsuccessful efforts to persuade her to cooperate, the Communists eventually arrested her in 1949 and put her on trial for conspiracy to overthrow the regime.

Despite being physically and psychologically tortured in prison, Horáková refused for an extended period of time to confess to crimes she didn’t commit. Eventually, under extreme pressure, she did sign a confession and in a Stalinist show trial held in 1950, was sentenced to death along with several other “co-conspirators.” Although many notable figures from around the world, such as Albert Einstein, Eleanor Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, appealed for mercy on her behalf, Communist leader Klement Gottwald upheld her death sentence and Horáková was hung on June 27, 1950. Among her last words were these incredible sentences: “The birds are already waking up -- it is starting to dawn. I am going with my head held high.” As is the case with many executions, historically and in the present moment, the hanging was exceptionally brutal and continued for at least 13 minutes before Horáková died.

Although she confessed after being tortured, Horáková spoke eloquently at her trial, defending fundamental democratic principles. And so it was, a few days ago, that loudspeakers around Prague honored her memory by replaying critical moments in the trial. Without warning, on the morning of the 27th, the voice of the prosecutor could be heard across the entire city, accusing her of treason. And then Horáková’s voice rang out in all of Prague’s neighborhoods, strong and proud, declaring among other things, that “no one in this country has to be made to die or be imprisoned for their beliefs.”

Milada Horákova’s photographs from the time of her arrest in 1949, when she was charged with conspiracy to overthrow the Communist regime.

Mark didn’t understand Horáková’s precise words or those of the other trial participants, but it really wasn’t necessary to grasp her exact meaning. When she spoke, her fundamental decency, her courage, and her impassioned plea for freedom were universally recognizable, deeply moving, and awe-inspiring.

Milada Horáková was one of the rarest breed of people -- those who are willing to die to uphold their fundamental beliefs. As the world retreats from democracy, from treating people fairly, and from keeping people healthy, it is increasingly apparent that we must be a part of the resistance. Although most of us can never have as much courage as Milada Horáková had, we can strive to do a little more than we thought possible. And that will be a fitting way to honor her memory and the memory of other heros who have also lost their lives for reasons of conscience.

Exquisite Corps: Atlantika Edition

About Exquisite Corps: This is the Atlantika Collective edition of the original “Exquisite Corpse.”  Invented by surrealists, it is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule or by being allowed to see only the end of what the previous person contributed. More here: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exquisite_corpse.

Six people involved with Atlantika Collective have participated in Exquisite Corps in the following order: Billy Friebele, Gabriela Bulisova, Michelle Frankfurter, Jessica Zychowicz, Mark Isaac, Yam Chew Oh, and Todd Forsgren. The following text has also been created organically by the participants to accompany the piece.

A game began 100 years ago 

Players creating generative collaborative compositions

who are they?

what about their stories?

every bit,

E very bit,

e  v  e  r   y      b   i   t,

ponde r

pondr

rednop

.

.

.

.

Open close

The door swings on its hinges

                   closer in and then out.

They are all alone together again.

Just sitting there, smoking in the rain. 

Red sky at morning.“Sing a song of sixpence.”

The sparrow pecks at the windowpane.

Not this again.

Magnifying glasses for spectacles,The doctor pulls the numbers up like weeds in a field of wheat.

“A pocket full of rye.”

angle yourself really close

pinch the glove 

because that is  

down the hand 

how you can look 

important thing

perform hand hygiene

some distance away 

use soft boxes 

with interlaced fingers

absolutely the way

perform hand hygiene

from the skin 

without touching the skin 

slide the fingers

between the glove

of the forearm

perform hand hygiene

moment in time

find the perfect

turn inside out

skin of the wrist

perform hand hygiene

start things off 

allowing it to

bag or bin

and natural light

perform hand hygiene

away from the hand thus

folding it over the first 

lit from underneath

medicines and food 

palm to palm

perform hand hygiene

a big window

and vice versa

remove the second

mindful of that

in the gloved hand 

perform hand hygiene

hands with water

hold the removed 

folding it over 

light is to go

tips for doing

perform hand hygiene

here’s something 

wearing technique

opposing palms 

do the magic

rotational rubbing

perform hand hygiene

you’re not alone

separate bathrooms

fingers interlaced

fingers interlocked

always really happy

perform hand hygiene

turn off faucet

helpful for me 

find good lighting

find my magic spot

you’ll be like, wow

your hands are now safe

Staring at the screen, 

Pacing around the apartment,

Looking at the horizon,

One moment I’m overwhelmed,

The next I’m bored to death.

Flip flop flip flop flip flop repeat.

But strangely, the silver lining,

Is that some relationship flourish,

From a medium distance.

:)

Slow

Down

…

I n — h a l e

E x — h a l e

…

Beautiful corps

…

I am sitting in a room, different from the one you are in now….

Japan's 市民農園 (Shimin Noen)

This post is part of a series by Todd Forsgren on his project Post-industrial Edens — photographs of urban and community gardens worldwide, which has been ongoing since 2004.

Ten thousand years ago the stability created by the gardening and agriculture of the Neolithic Revolution allowed for the first cities to be built. Since then, subsistence agriculture has been practiced by most every culture and in extremely diverse climates, from the tropics to the arctic. The methodology used and the produce cultivated vary widely depending on the culture and climate; this ties these spaces to the landscape they are found in and the people that cultivate them. This connection between land used for growing and people and places is what defines a garden.

My interest in Japanese gardens goes back to high school when I began growing bonsai trees; this interest in bonsai led to an interest in Japanese gardens, particular those in Kyoto. During a short visit to Japan in 2008, I started to photograph urban gardens. This has been greatly expanded over the past seven years since my wife’s family lives in Japan.

Japan has a long and rich tradition of urban gardening. For example, the esoteric gardens created in Kyoto’s Buddhist temples, dating back to the eighth century, make exceptional use of the small spaces on temple grounds, seemingly expanding them to vast landscape vistas. More functional and colloquial urban gardens all but disappeared throughout much of Japan’s rapid postwar urbanization. Recent years have seen a resurgence of urban gardening (shimin noen, 市民農園, or kumin noen,区民農園, in Japanese) across the country. The people of this densely-populated island nation are especially aware of limited available land and have faced unique landscape disasters, such as the tsunami and nuclear disaster of 3/11.

During the 1980s, changes in legislation created a legal framework that promoted the use of urban and suburban margins and abandoned lots for vegetable gardening. The response was remarkable, and these gardens have become extremely popular, especially considering that Japan has one of the highest rates of urbanization on the planet with over 90% of its citizens living in cities.

The benefits of this gardening movement have gone beyond the individual satisfaction and improved nutrition that urbanites gain from the gardens. Inhabitants of the depopulated rural areas of Japan have seen revitalization of many villages and found help in maintaining Japanese farmland. Rural farmers can increase income and improve their land by renting small parcels, often complete with villas, to urban eco-tourists seeking to reconnect with their agrarian heritage. In this way, the gardening movement of Japan has simultaneously improved health in the country’s cities and helped to maintain Japan’s traditional countryside lifestyle.

The pressures created by Japan’s rapid urbanization and limited space are by no means entirely unique, but they are particularly intense due to the country’s high population density and island geography. The solutions adopted in Japan will serve as a model for many countries as the entire world begins to feel the pressures of globalization, urbanization, and development more acutely.

Music and Erotica of Iron Stairs

Evgeny Masloboev

“Music and Erotica of Iron Stairs,” is part of the project “Architecture of Sound, As a Kiss of Meaning.” It was recorded March 19, 2020 using iron stairs at the Orbit Palace of Culture and at other facilities under construction in Irkutsk, Russia.

To create this piece, Masloboev used innovative sound production and the Japanese technique of erotic binding known as “shibari.” The stairs were entangled and connected with strings and ropes. The sound was extracted with a violin bow and with chopsticks and clappers for percussion.

According to Masloboev, “This action focuses the attention of consumers of culture on the details of everyday life in terms of aesthetic experience.”

Tombolo: The Thin Strip that Binds Us Together

Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

Until a few days ago, we were exiled in Montenegro. It’s a place where astonishing, mountainous cliffs tumble into the sea, interrupted by a string of pink, pebbly beaches that face Italy across the Adriatic Sea. The sunsets kept on giving.

We ended up there because Mark’s bid for a longer-term stay in Slovakia is wrapped up in bureaucratic delays that forced us to leave the Schengen area for 90 days. Montenegro beckoned, with its lower prices and relatively warm winter, a sharp contrast to last year in Siberia. And all of a sudden we were again distant from our friends in Central and Eastern Europe, in the U.S., in Siberia, and elsewhere. Getting work done but feeling alone.

And it got us thinking about staying connected. The last few years have taken us in so many unexpected directions. We sold our house in the U.S. and lived one year each in Ukraine and Siberia. We spent significant time in Slovakia and Central Europe, and now we’re unexpectedly experiencing Croatia, Montenegro, and Bosnia and Herzegovina. Our work also took turns in new directions, including more writing, more abstraction, more video, and original music from scientific data. It was simultaneously stimulating and intriguing, but also disruptive and lonely.

And now comes a new twist: we are compelled to distance ourselves from others because of the serious health threat that is sweeping across the world.

Of course it’s not as hard as in the past to stay connected, given the ability to work online and video chats. But connecting that way is not only second best, it somehow becomes more difficult as distance increases. And I need not go in depth here on the flaws in our maddeningly frustrating, exploitative and immoral social media platforms. 

In our opening blog post for our new website, we used the metaphor of wolves howling in the night as a way of thinking about the urgency of the moment and the need for people to join and react vocally. Of course howling is not enough. The howling of wolves is an incitement to group action. And that’s what we need – stronger communities that join together in a movement for change and revitalization.

There are many examples of people who are entrepreneurially leading the way, with meaningful projects and outstanding outcomes – people who deserve our support and encouragement. But even if we’re committing ourselves to socially beneficial outcomes at this time of oversized threats to democracy, the environment, and human dignity, it often feels like we’re each marooned on our own islands without a true connection to others at a time when we desperately need one. 

That’s when we saw it. Along the Montenegrin coast, rocky formations alternate with serene beaches and innumerable small islands. But there’s one exception – Sveti Stefan, a tiny “tied island” connected to the mainland. We recently learned (or re-learned, I’m not sure) the meaning of the word “tombolo,” which is a sand bar connecting an island to the mainland or to another island. Sveti Stefan is connected to the world by a tombolo.

We hope our new website will go well beyond a simple presentation of what we’ve created so others can “enjoy” it. Through the Tombolo Blog, with its ability to create dialogue and reach out to others directly, we’re hoping to initiate an authentic conversation – and build ties between people that will help us bridge through an increasingly bleak period of U.S. and world history. 

On some level, we recently realized, our newest projects are all about loss or the threat of loss, whether it’s the environment, our loved ones, or of memory itself (see Featured Projects). And those are the threats that all of us are facing at this moment in time: loss of life, of love, of truth, of the belief in a better future. 

So fundamentally, this is a time when we need meaningful connections with others, even if it is just a thin strip of sand. It is a time when the voices of artists and their allies, speaking the truth, need to be joined together into something larger. It’s a time when the individual ego needs to be kept in check so that the good of the community will take priority.

Even in this exceptionally strange moment of “social distancing,” let’s build a bridge to each other. Let’s build something larger than ourselves. Let’s build a tombolo.

Embers and Effluents: New Video About Lake Baikal’s Emerging Threats

Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac

During our sojourn in Siberia, one of the most important tools we used to depict Lake Baikal was multi-channel video. The Second Fire, which was screened in Irkutsk’s Bronshteyn Gallery in late Summer, is a three channel video that focuses on the impact of climate change and pollution on the Lake. A Russian student described it as “truly frightening.” If it scares her and her classmates into action, we will take it as a compliment.

The Second Fire is inspired by a native Buryat legend about Lake Baikal. According to this origin myth, there was an enormous earthquake, fire came out of the earth, and native people cried “Bai, Gal!” or “Fire, stop!” in the Buryat language. The fire stopped, and water filled the crevice, creating the Sacred Sea. Now, the Baikal region is one of the areas experiencing the most rapid increases in temperature in the world. The video suggests that the warming of Baikal is a “Second Fire” that threatens the Lake and the people who rely on it.

Now, we’ve produced a sequel...another three-channel video, called Embers and Effluents. This video goes beyond the most obvious challenges that Baikal faces to depict emerging threats that have the capacity to create a “feedback effect,” rapidly accelerating warming and environmental damage. Scientists know that these threats are approaching a tipping point more quickly than current climate modeling anticipates.

Vast territories of previously frozen permafrost are melting, discharging enormous quantities of carbon dioxide and methane. Rampant summer wildfires are causing dramatic loss of forested area. Widespread legal and illegal logging is also contributing to rapid deforestation. And as temperatures increase, the flow of the Lake’s tributaries is dwindling, reducing water quality and releasing additional methane.

We were inspired greatly by the “environmental ethics” of Baikal’s first environmental stewards, native Buryats and Evenks. They lived in harmony with nature, taking only what they needed to survive. These indigenous people lived their lives in deep concert with the natural world long before the environmental movement developed in the West. Now, despite the serious threats that Baikal faces, the Siberian tradition of sustainability offers a reminder that we can restore balance in our relationship to the natural world.  

We witnessed and filmed multiple ceremonies of native Buryat shamans appealing to the gods for harmony and healing in the natural world. The shamans correctly insist that the Sacred Sea is powerful and resilient. But is this enough to turn things around? True hope will only emerge if the world is able to embrace transformational change, avoiding the feedback effect and the worst impacts of climate change and pollution.

Like The Second Fire, our new video features original electronic music composed from scientific data about the impact of climate change on Lake Baikal. In particular, we used studies of the impact of temperature changes on some of Baikal’s smallest and most important organisms: tiny amphipods that inhabit the shallow banks, the deepest crevasses, and everywhere in between. The amphipods are heavily affected by temperature changes, and the film’s music gives them a voice that they wouldn’t otherwise have. As temperature data rises, the notes also rise and become more shrill, as if the amphipods are crying out for help. 

During our year in Siberia, we had almost daily encounters with the power and majesty of Baikal’s crystalline water, the looming white-capped mountain peaks that tower over its banks, and the endless forests that surround it. But we also witnessed endless trucks and trains hauling away the taiga’s precious trees. We breathed in the smoke from raging forest fires and witnessed the charred remnants of past fires. We photographed piles of rotting algae on the beaches, and we documented the shriveled banks of tributary rivers, running dry from the heat.

That is our choice now: reverse course and care for Baikal sustainably -- or resign ourselves to a future of embers and effluents. 

----------

A few important acknowledgements: The music in Embers and Effluents was composed from data about climate change collected by scientists at Irkutsk State University. The music was enhanced in collaboration with Evgeny Masloboev, a highly innovative Irkutsk-based composer and musician. The video also includes footage of underwater life courtesy of the Baikal Museum’s live web-cams and native bird calls captured by Professor B.N. Veprintsev.