SD video, 05:28 min. 2011, re-cut 2016 No
Regrets is based on footage of the
suspension performance filmed in a night club in Kharkiv, a city in
the East of Ukraine. Suspension is a subculture distinguished by the
act of suspending a human body from hooks that have been put through
body piercings. Many participants are representatives of teenage
communities fascinated by heavy music, tattoos and piercing. Youth
radicalism is sublimed here in bodily experience and overcoming pain
thresholds, practiced as a protest against the routines of everyday
life and social normatives. Opposite to political activism, in this
case literally shows a desire to fly away from social relationships –
a breakup which is possible only through physical pain. Five years
after these filmed events, Ukraine was engaged in a war that provoked
a fatal challenge for youth. Apart from obligatory military service,
many young people joined volunteer battalions engaged in political
radicalism. Pain changed its role from a symbol of escape from social
normatives to a symbol of a new normality in the context of war. Video
accompanied by the sound of a jammed vinyl record and text from Edith
Piaf’s famous song Non, je ne regrette
rien. Originally this song referred to
a private experience of the singer but later it was dedicated to the
French Foreign Legion. Soldiers of the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment
were singing No, I regret nothing –
symbolical and controversial lines for different historical periods
and contexts.        "No Regrets" ("A Visit from Ghosts", Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv, 2016 photo: Natalka Diachenko) |
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