War Witness Archive

War Witness Archive is an artistic inventory of memory about world wars. The project has started as the research of photographic archive related to the World War I history and is now developing in contrast to the World War II photographic archive. The Archive forms its body collecting testimonies about past events stored in the memory of contemporaries. The Archive constantly memorizes new states and directs the knowledge obtained on the work with its content - the unconcious nature of world catastrophies. And inside the Archive appears a space for dialogue concerning understanding and the possibility of witness's voice to be heard. 

This topic directs us to the caption At Theatre of War on the franking of stamps of  postcards sent from places of hostilities. Similar to it is the caption From the Serving Army. Noteworthy is the very formulation associating warfare with a show, as well as with the theatres of the absurd and of cruelty, and the sophisticated grimacing of actors. A comparison of war with theatre, theatrical war in a sense, prepares future spectators for war as a reality show and the news lines of media channels.

This topic researches our ability (sensitivity) to empathize. Is there a minimal threshold of pain or sufferings that drives a person to decisive actions such as to stop, help or prevent? On the other hand, is there a ceiling after which pain simply causes numbness and the wish to empathize changes into a wish to forget. What is the role of photography in forming a person’s reaction to another’s pain and sufferings? Can the image seen move a person to empathy in a case where he/she hasn’t experienced this reality him/herself? All the more so, if the photograph is over a hundred years old.

Drawings and notes that was created by the visitors of the pavilion, their reactions on the chosen photograph

Within this topic the essence of war is investigated as a manifestation of aggression that transforms nature, place, understood as human habitat, and the nature of man himself. Noteworthy is the question of whether occupation, imposing unnatural behaviour through fear and pain, can become a strength when directed against those who impose it?

Video installation by Konstantin Selikhanov ‘Forest’ is white noise, a pause, the discontinuation of the internal environment of the War Witness Archive, and also in opposition to the contemplative archive space and to the "discharged monotone" of the natural landscape.