Anna Shpakova - WARM · Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, is a melting pot for changing Caucasus society that is trying to overcome a trauma of two recent wars and ﬁnd its own way

Anna Shpakovacurator [email protected] +7 916 323 6969www.groznyninecities.com

Wednesday, July 23, 2014

mailto:[email protected]




http://www.groznyninecities.com


GROZNY: NINE CITIES

«What, essentially, is today`s situation in the Northern Caucasus and Chechnya? It is a continuation of the collapse of the U.S.S.R… Russia as a state will cease to exist in its current form. Then it was a question of stopping the breakup of the country» (Itogi magazine, 2001).Chechnya has been for 20 years the most dangerous place on Earth, for both civilians and Russian soldiers. Journalists and humanitarian aid workers are not exempt from being kidnapped or killed by Chechen bandits or rampaging Russian soldiers and in a word it’s “insane” to go there, the upside is that we must! It’s the only way we can know how people really are living and dying, being a voice and eyes of Chechnya’s ongoing suffering. Chechnya is still a pressure point for Russia because of the extremely cruel war that left such heavy traces on the citizens of both nations. In the 2000s, Russians were taught by the media to fear and hate the Chechens. Suddenly Chechnya disappeared from the media reports, only to recently re-emerge with its renovated city centers and skyscrapers. Many Russians, who believe in strong-arm government methods, feel that Ramzan Kadyrov is more “effective” than Putin himself.


GROZNY: NINE CITIES

The story of the aftermath Chechnya is the story of the institutionalized oppression, with injustice generating new cycles of violence. Having survived 20 years of bloody conflicts with Russia’s military, Chechens live on the verge of a civil war while pretending that life has gotten back to normal.

Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, is a melting pot for changing Caucasus society that is trying to overcome a trauma of two recent wars and find its own way in between traditional Chechen values, Muslim traditions, and globalization.

The body of work itself is inspired by a Thornton Wilder’s book Theophilus North, and centers on the idea of nine cities being hidden in one, which give us a concept to explore specific aspects of the aftermath of two Chechen wars, considering them as ”levels” hidden within the capital of Grozny.

The project result of four years of work is an installation consisting of three screens multimedia film, 100 printed images and a web-documentary.



PROJECT CONCEPT

First city is the city that has ceased to exist – memory of Soviet multicultural Grozny that was bombed and burned down. We’ve been following the places that were dear and important for people of Grozny and recorded their memoirs. This will be the most abstract and lyric part of the project. Second city is the city of war, the cause of all the changes. The last, so-called counterterrorism operation officially ended in 2009. But in 2010 there were 37 explosions and terror attacks across the republic, and already 19 by June 2011 that took the lives of 7 civilians. In Grozny we witnessed and photographed the major terror attack since the start of our project – the storm of the Chechen parliament by three suicide bombers in October 2010. Third city is the city of religion. Chechnya under Kadyrov is undergoing total Islamization. Huge mosques are being built, women are ordered to wear scarves, men must wear traditional Muslim outfits on Friday. People have to be religious. Over the course of shooting in Grozny we’ve captured the most significant events and rituals to cover this trend, including the Sufi practice Dhikr, widespread in Chechnya, and exorcism, now supported by the local government as the way to cure people.


Forth city is the city of women. With the collapse of all the values after wars they must once again find their role in Chechen society. It is neither a role of a Western woman yet, nor a role of a traditional Muslim woman anymore. Fifth city is the city of men. It is important for a Chechen man nowadays to demonstrate his status with a gun or his car. At the same time he has to be responsible not only for the immediate family, but for members of his clan, not to impose the threat of the blood feud onto any of the relatives. We followed men to many “macho” events in Grozny, such as football games, street racing and meetings of clans for the blood feud ceremonies. Sixth city is the city of the nation’s servants, as they call themselves. Cult of personality is seeing its revival in today's Chechnya, with Kadyrov’s portraits hanging everywhere. Some people use them to benefit, some – trying to use them as “insurance”. While Kadyrov’s inner circle is trying to please him with money and business opportunities, the ordinary people believe he does not solve their problems because there is nobody to tell him about them. We followed Chechnya’s dictator and his people on a number of events, and Oksana Yushko photographed him in his official residence as well.

PROJECT CONCEPT


Seventh city is the city of oil production. Rosneft, the powerful pro-Kremlin monopoly that owns all the oil drills, enforced the end of second war in Chechnya to get hold of its resources. At the same time, oil reservoirs burning during the first Chechen war caused many health problems for Grozny inhabitants, according to the scholars in the Grozny oil institute and doctors in the cancer hospital. We merged these two parts together to give the strong pictures of oil drills in the beautiful mountains the strong human aspect. Eighth city is the city of strangers in mono-ethnic society, e.g. ethnic Russians and Turkish construction workers building skyscrapers. The soldiers interviewed stress that for them Chechnya is still not Russia, while Turks, mostly working for Bora Insaat company, enjoy the possibility of making money out of Chechnya’s passion for Gigantomania. Ninth city is the city of ordinary people and their passion for normalcy after 15 years of war. These are people who collect vinyl records, kept their puppets throughout the war, saved the libraries and carried on with their lives.

PROJECT CONCEPT




PROJECT CONCEPT

Olga Kravets: «I was a schoolgirl when the first Chechen war started. I graduated from university and covered the short war in South Ossetia as a photographer, and there were still things going on in Grozny. But by this time, nobody cared. While I was on assignment in Ossetia and Abkhazia, I met many Russian officers. In 2008, they were members of the professional Russian ‘peacekeeping’ force and earlie, they had been conscripts, fighting in Chechnya. And I started to feel a weird guilt, listening to their proud tales from the North Caucasus. It is because of them the child of my Chechen friend was afraid to go to Moscow and saying: “Mom, there are Russians, they will kill us”. It is because of them that he was surprised, when he did go, that he was made welcome. My personal appeal is to those Russians who leave nasty comments in blogs describing Chechens as wild animals. To those back in Chechnya, who think they need to create a semi-independent Islamic empire around Grozny, and cut Chechnya off from the outside world, the same way they want to cover up the women. My appeal is to those who think that this conflict is ancient history, and to those who turn a blind eye to it. I am tired of experiencing all this hate. If we don’t listen to each other, let’s look at the pictures at least. They can speak.»


Oksana Yushko: «This silent city is full of rumors, gossip, and ambiguity. Everyone sees the truth through his or her own lens, and shapes his or her own, individual Grozny. It is too dangerous here, not for you, but for ordinary Chechens. I'm not interested in politics at all. I simply try to understand life around me, life as it is. For many Russians, and most of the world, Chechnya is just a geographical point on the map, a place somewhere far, far away from their homes and daily life. People are tired of all these problems. Only a very few of them are interested in knowing what’s going on there. But for us, this project has become part of our life. We try to walk in those other people’s shoes, to suffer when they suffer, smile when they smile, witness what is happening, or help when we can. Though we are different, we are all the same.»

PROJECT CONCEPT


Maria Morina: «When I was a child, I was horrified by the cruel stories I heard about war crimes committed during the Second World War. I used to think that it was sort of a lesson, that humankind has learned never to repeat. The war in Afghanistan ended when I was seven years old. So the two Chechen wars seemed to me like history repeating itself. All these wars were scary… And I feel that we need to at least start to talk about this damage, to discuss what is really going on after 15 years of war. We made a list of nine aspects of the capital, Groznyto photograph and film, in order to try to show life in post-war Chechnya. We wanted to try to show life through this one city, as a way of showing people a place that is complex and hard to describe.»

PROJECT CONCEPT




Olga Kravets, Maria Morina and Oksana Yushko began working on their Grozny: Nine Cities Project in the fall of 2009, shortly after they founded Verso Images, a collective of emerging photographers interested in social change in the former USSR. The photographers decided to join efforts to produce a joint project on Chechnya, delivering three different views to an audience on the complex subject of the aftermath of the two Chechen wars. With each unique individual knowledge and style, they would be able tocreate large-scale, multi-platform project. The photographers shoot both 35 mm digital and6x6 film formats while also recording audio and video. Kravets worked in radio and print before moving on to photography and defines herself asa lens-based artist and journalist at large, producing installations and films as well asworking on editorial assignments. Kravets is a winner of the PDN Photo Annual 2012 Student Award with her Uhvatio Maglu project, Chevening Scholarship for her MA at the University of the Arts London, and was also a nominee of the World Press Photo Joop Swart Masterclass in 2011 and 2012. Morina is currently working on several art photo and video projects in the Ukraine, asdocumentary film on Nizhny Tagil youth selected for The Rencontres Internationales

ARTISTS BIO


Paris/Berlin/Madrid 2011/12 and won Honorable Mention in the 2012 International Photography Awards annual competition. Yushko stays dedicated to classic photojournalism, constantly producing photo-essays and magazine photo-reportages, which make their way into galleries and festivals. Yushko was a 2010 finalist of Conscientious Portfolio Competition with her personal project Kenozero dreams, which was also part of 2012 3d Copenhagen Photo Festival and 9th International Photo Festival BackLight 201, among others. The installation is a result of collaboration with visual musician Jose Bautista and curator Anna Shpakova. Anna Shpakova is graduated from Moscow State University, psychology department in psychoanalysis, psychology of art. Wrote her thesis on war and war photographers. Director of photography of various magazines in Russia (Afisha, Ogoniok, Snob). Curator of numerous exhibitions in Russia and abroad, including exhibitions for Moscow biennial, Tbilisi Fotofestival, Rencontres d’Arles, PhotoEspana. Commisaire of Russia for Biennal PhotoQuai 2011, Musée Branly, Paris. Founder of photography department of British higher School of Art and Design and Leica Academy, Moscow. Director of Photography RIA Novosti Agency, Moscow.




Yuri Kozyrev/NOOR, photographer, covered two Chechen wars: “The photographers have developed an extensive list of trusted contacts in the region; they have the ability to work with and to develop the trust of people in very difficult and often dangerous circumstances. They are extremely visual people who have demonstrated to me a great talent in understanding the power of images and good story telling through the development of characters, a sense of place and mood to convey what a situation or a story is really like. At the same time they have a great understanding of the new media.” From the Aftermath Project press-release: “The judges applauded the collaborative nature of the proposal, in a field which is often marked by fierce competition between photographers.” Sara Terry, Director/Founder of the Aftermath Project: “I also applaud the work they are doing, in continuing to cover the aftermath of a conflict zone that once drew journalists from around the world. Although the headlines moved on, Oksana, Maria and Olga remained committed to a story that deserves our continuing attention.”

COMMENTS ABOUT THE PROJECT


Roland Hancock, Daily Telegraph: “Grozny: Nine cities by Maria Morina, Olga Kravets and Oksana Yushko draws a portrait of the war-torn city that is the Magnum ideal of both art and reportage, mixing ambient sound, video and stills to create a view of a city trying to rise from its knees, stoutly refusing pity.”

Hannah Charlton, chair of the Moving Image Award 2011: “It is an extraordinary piece of documentary exploration: images of women alone or together, reflecting, remembering and grieving, sudden bursts of exuberant street dancing, or small signs of symbolic renewal, interspersed with the reminder of a military presence. What makes this video remarkable is the highly considered and delicate use of the different media - a sequence of dance stills, film of birds flying or a soldier’s boots and gun as he walks, all serving to convey the sense of a city and society struggling, in conflicting tempos, to find the route towards a new normal after two wars.”



Andrei Polikanov, director of photography of Russian Reporter magazine: The most impressive both photographically and emotionally project I have seen so far on one of the toughest subjects in the history of the Northern Caucuses. Professional skills, courage, dedication and compassion shown by Maria, Olga and Oksana in portraying the day-by-day life of Chechens deserves not only the highest respect but all possible help and support from the photojournalistic community.






— Winner for Stronghold Grant, Tokio 2014— Shortlisted for Bayeux-Calvados Award for web-documentry, 2014— Shortlisted for Carmignac Award, 2012 — Shortlisted for Anthropographia Human Rights Through Visual Storytelling Awards, 2012— Winner in the Multimedia Category of the Alexander Efremov Report Photography Competition, Tyumen, Russia, 2012 — Shortlisted for the Voies Off Prize, 2012 — Winner of the PDN Photo-Annual Contest / multimedia category, 2012— Nominee for Moving Image Award / Peopleʼs Choice, 2011 — Finalists of The Manuel Rivera Ortiz Foundation for International Photography Grant, 2011 — Grand Prize Winner in the Multimedia Category of the Lens Culture International Exposure Awards, 2011— Finalists of The Aftermath Project Grant, 2010

AWARDS


http://mrofoundation.org/

http://mrofoundation.org/

http://www.theaftermathproject.org/grantwinners2010.htm

http://www.theaftermathproject.org/grantwinners2010.htm

— Bayeux-Calvados Festival, France, October 2014 (multimedia exhibition)— Reminders Photography Stronghold Gallery, Tokio, August 2014 (multimedia exhibition)— WARM Festival, Sarajevo, June, 2014 (multimedia exhibition)— Tbilisi Photo Festival, 2013 (exhibition)— Browse Photo Festival, Berlin 2013 (multimedia exhibition)— Athens Photo Festival, Greece, 2012 (multimedia film) — Les Recontres dʼArles, 2012 (multimedia film)— Ojo de Pez Photomeeting Barcelona, 2012 (multimedia film)— Tbilisi Photo Festival, 2012 (multimedia film)— First Biennale of Photography of Lima, 2012 (multimedia film)— Palm Springs Photo Festival, USA, 2011 (multimedia film)— Bursa Photo Festival, Turkey, 2011 (multimedia film)

SCREENINGS AND FESTIVALS


— Kitekinto.hu, 2014— Photographic Museum of Humanity, 2014— Internazionale newspaper, 2013— Courrier International, 2013— GUP Magazine, 2013— Russian Reporter magazine, 2012— The Browse Magazine, 2012— The Aftermath. War is only half of the story. Vol.IV, 2011— Suomen Kuvalehti newspapaer, 2011— Lensculture.com, 2010— RVM magazine, 2010— The New York Times, online, 2012— Suomen Kuvalehti newspapaer, 2010— Photoraw magazine, 2010— Vice magazine, 2010— Russian Reporter magazine, 2010— The Globe and Mail, 2008

PUBLICATIONS


— Polka magazine, France, 2013http://www.polkamagazine.com/24/le-mur/chechnya-now/1526— Mediapart, France, 2013http://www.mediapart.fr/documentaire/international/grozny-derriere-la-facade-russe— France info, 2013http://www.franceinfo.fr/emission/hyper-revue-de-presse/2013-2014/violences-en-ukraine-02-20-2014-13-00— Cross Vudeo Days, Paris, 2013http://cineuropa.org/vd.aspx?t=video&l=en&did=241883

WEB-DOC PUBLICATIONS


http://www.polkamagazine.com/24/le-mur/chechnya-now/1526


http://www.mediapart.fr/documentaire/international/grozny-derriere-la-facade-russe

http://www.mediapart.fr/documentaire/international/grozny-derriere-la-facade-russe

http://www.franceinfo.fr/emission/hyper-revue-de-presse/2013-2014/violences-en-ukraine-02-20-2014-13-00








PUBLICATIONS


PUBLICATIONS


PUBLICATIONS


The main part of the exhibition is an audiovisual presentation that consists out of 3 screens multimedia installations (20 min), 100 printed photographs, 9 audio interviews (1,5 min each). The Multimedia are presented on 3 screens in 5x5m room. Next room to the multimeida presentation the exhibitions exists out of photographic prints, texts and soundtracks.

EXHIBITION

Ojo de Pez, Barcelona, 2012Wednesday, July 23, 2014

9 images supplemented by 1.5 min audio interviews on 9 major topics of the projects, that are played by mp3 players with earphones attached to the walls next to the print.This multimedia installation works best in a black room 5x5 meters without ambient light and all unsightly projector stands, hardware and wiring should be neatly dressed and shrouded in black fabric. The exhibition walls need to be painted white.

Ojo de Pez, Barcelona, 2012

EXHIBITION


Browse Foto Festival, Berlin, 2013

EXHIBITION


Tbilisi Photo Festival, Georgia, 2013

EXHIBITION


WARM Festival, Sarajevo, 2014

EXHIBITION



EXHIBITION



EXHIBITION


EXHIBITION

Web-documentary is the part of the exhibition shown at the computer with the headphones.


WEB-DOCUMENTARY


WEB-DOCUMENTARY


3-screens video projection (20 min):— Video format: 3840x720 (3 videos HD, 1280x720 each)— 3 HD projectors 1600x900 minimum resolution (e.g. The Optoma HD230x) — 1 MacBook Pro — MatroxTripleHead2Go DP http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/guide.html — 3 cables adaptors DP to VGA — Stereo Sound System

Photographs (100 images):9 color photographs 80x120 cm (lightjet prints mounted on dibond)24 color photographs 60x80 cm (lightjet prints mounted on dibond)42 color photographs 40x60 cm (lightjet prints mounted on dibond)18 color photographs 40x40 cm (lightjet prints mounted on dibond)8 color photographs 20x30 cm (lightjet prints mounted on dibond)

EXHIBITION MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION


http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/guide.html

http://www.matrox.com/graphics/en/products/gxm/th2go/guide.html

Text: Presented as 1 copyright text (english and french), 9 cut-out texts directly on the wall following 9 leading images91 captions following the photographs.

Audio: 9 audio tracks (1.5 min) contains interview in english on 9 major subjects of the project played by mp3 players (or mini i-pods) with earphones attached to the walls next to the print.

Web-documentary: 1 computer with the phones to present the web-documentary.

EXHIBITION MULTIMEDIA INSTALLATION


— Web-documentary: http://www.polkamagazine.com/24/le-mur/chechnya-now/1526

— 20 minutes multimedia version for 1 screen: https://vimeo.com/56980934 password: grozny2013nine

— 5 minutes multimedia https://vimeo.com/32580050

— http://groznyninecities.com — http://versoimages.com — http://mariamorina.com — http://olgakravets.com — http://youok.ru

LINKS




https://vimeo.com/56980934




http://groznyninecities.com

http://groznyninecities.com

http://versoimages.com

http://versoimages.com

http://mariamorina.com

http://mariamorina.com

http://olgakravets.com

http://olgakravets.com

http://youok.ru

http://youok.ru

Anna Shpakovacurator [email protected] +7 916 323 6969www.groznyninecities.com








Documents

Anna Shpakova - WARM · Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, is a melting pot for changing Caucasus society that is trying to overcome a trauma of two recent wars and ﬁnd its own way