GREAT PATRIOTIC, Kunsthall 3,14, Bergen, Norway, 2022
19.11.2022 - 29.01.2023
Curators: Ekaterina Sharova & Malin Barth
Artworks: FIREWORKS ON THE SWAMP, FAN OF THE LAND
Photos by Guttorm Glomsås

Kunsthall 3,14
Kunstkritikk
Bergens Tidende

The exhibition Great Patriotic, shown in the exhibition hall, presents three Russian artists whose works reflect civil society, questioning the grand narratives about the history of the country. Lately, the struggle of activists, journalists and opposition politicians facing state censorship has received broad media coverage. In addition, Kunsthall 3,14 sees it as pertinent to give voice to system critical artists from the civil population from the inside. Sergei Prokofiev, Evgeny Granilshchikov, and Zink Zine (represented by Sasha TSE) have all lived and worked in Russia until recently, when they fled their native country in response to the war escalations and Putin’s mobilization orders. The exhibited works are all produced in Russia before 2022, reflecting both uneasiness and anticipation of the coming violence outbreak. The artists employ the performative possibilities of video to document and express social and political processes in post-Soviet society and challenge dominant ideas about Russian culture. Especially about the Second World War, which is formally remembered as the Great Patriotic War in the former Soviet Union.

One can hardly exaggerate the importance of the remembrance of this war still in Russia today. A very selective narrative of the conflict with Nazi Germany forms an integral part of Russian political culture, functioning a tool for policymaking. Understanding Soviet wartime mobilization aids in contextualizing current state rhetoric. As the successor state to the Soviet Union, Russia’s self-perception of its great power status is arguably dependent on this legacy and a sense of moral superiority. Any challenges to Russia's image as the Second World War's victor and prime liberator might harm the country's sense of identity, a return to greatness, and geopolitical ambitions. The current Russian government is extensively using the Great Patriotic War as a unifying force and sacred myth, which involves constant makingpresent of the war experience as part of the rhetoric of renewed Russian nationalism. Officials condemn attempts to contest or disagree with the state-sponsored narrative as attempts at historical falsification, an action that is frequently criminalized. The memory of this victory and how it was gained were institutionalized in Russia's 2020 constitutional changes. The Putin regime’s efforts to (ab)use the memory of the war are welldocumented. But it is rarer to find coverage of how the Kremlin’s intensive efforts to appropriate the 1945 victory as its own effectually take away from the people the opportunity to create alternative histories. Great Patriotic is an effort to support Russian artists’ freedom to research their own complicated past, to engage in an unlearning process, pay respect to the suffering of the deceased, and to discover non-political means to move forward.

Sergei Prokofiev contrasts the wilderness of Russia with the unrest that permeates Russian culture. The videos Fireworks on the Swamp and Fan of the Land (2021) reflect the tense social climate and the oppressive political environment experienced during the last few years, expressed through an artistic exploration of pyrotechnics as a medium. In his research for this series, Prokofiev discovered that Russian state power has employed fireworks to communicate with its populace ever since the days of the Russian Empire. He made the decision to employ fireworks to reverse this former official language where pyrotechnics would be fired from military canons, to activate it for his own aim in order to metaphorically liberate various landscapes from the control of the Russian state. Over time, Prokofiev’s firework pieces have acquired ever-new layers of meaning and significance. From another vantage point, one can interpret them as imprints of human life, with all its excitement, traumas, and events that all of a sudden stop occurring and start to fade like a memory. Fan of the Land is a reflection on fan culture. Another group that extensively uses pyrotechnics are football hooligans. Young people in good physical shape, who are not afraid to pick a fight with police officers, are expected by some to instigate a revolution for freedom. They use the language of
military pyrotechnics, including smoke bombs, pyrostrobes, and stroboscopes powered by fire. Since nobody knows what is going to happen once they take to the streets, there is also a tangible tension lurking beneath the feeling of power this gives rise to. If the hooligans won their way, would they actually step aside to give room to a more democratic process?