Collaboration with Serhiy Zhadan

Color print on banner, 1000x1200 cm.

2014

A large-scale banner reveals a detail taken from a press photograph depicting rubble of a destroyed building in Luhansk, which lies in Eastern Ukraine. The work is part of Ridnyi’s latest photographic series, in which press photographs of the armed conflict in Ukraine are interlinked with the phenomenon of gradually going blind and a resulting narrowed field of vision: the imagery is almost completely obscured by black ink. “It can begin like a small gradually expanding black dot or like a narrowing tunnel that devours vision until everything is erased. This inability to see is also like a human self-defense mechanism that produces voluntary blindness against escalating violence.” M.Ridnyi

At street level, Serhij Zhadan expands on the theme of war destruction with his essay The Ruined Museum, printed in its Ukrainian original as well as in Russian, German and English translation. The essay recalls the bombing of a museum in Donetsk: “Understandably, we don’t pay much attention to ruined buildings, when every day we hear about the death of soldiers and civilians, when every day we see the names and photos of those killed in the war. Blown up bridges and wrecked train stations are only the background for this bloody summer.” S.Zhadan

     

     

"Blind spot" (Photo of the installation: DAAD / Konstantin Strilets)

read more: http://www.berliner-kuenstlerprogramm.de/en/veranstalt_detail.php?id=896