Some time ago you would read here my usual artist statement, which would tell you that my works deal with the topics of history and the ways of documenting it, collective memory, urban transformations, a critical view on cinema and photography. The optic that united these distinct topics was a critical rethinking of the Soviet legacy. In addition, my works would react to the current political situation around me.

But on 24th February 2022, political situation around me became too big to handle. Russia declared full-scale war against Ukraine. When the first bomb was dropped on the Ukrainian territory, I forgot how to talk about art and its problems. How can I work with old ideas? How can I speak with old language? I can’t find words that can describe reality so powerful in itself. I feel that I can use only the words already spoken by someone.

Previously, the main task of my practice was to develop a theoretical system that can find a way out of the crisis for socially engaged art in the neoliberal art world. In some way, that question remains important, but it’s hard to imagine that the neoliberal art world still exists. As long as the war continues, art can only be “art of war condition”. Now I don’t have a distance to reflect on war, but maybe it’s not the time to have a distance to the event that causes people's deaths on the streets of my favorite cities around Ukraine.