The bouquets are so fresh and abundant in Lviv\u2019s Field of Mars that bees are foraging cut cornflower blooms. Walking the stretch of this improvised wartime burial site \u2013 an extension of the carpark near the inner-city Lychakiv Cemetery \u2013 I observe numerous mourners tending their loved ones\u2019 graves amongst all the commemorative flags. Their concentrated activity creates individualized plots: framed portraits of soldiers often enthusiastically posed, soft toys for missing parents, potted chrysanthemums mulched to last, well-rooted sunflowers having already reached full height; the physical remains of each person who died fighting Russian troops occupied with mementoes, a devoted counterweight to their absence.<\/p>\n
Despite the graveyard\u2019s public location, I feel my fleeting presence as an invasion of privacy. Unlike in the neighbouring late-eighteenth-century cemetery-come-museum, where I am one of many visitors to its tiered layers of historical perspective, here my presence as an outsider, an onlooker to recent loss, feels voyeuristic. Even if I\u2019m documenting only what seems considerate, mourners don\u2019t feel the need to take photos at this living memorial. So why am I? Why am I here?<\/p>\n
Bordering yet parallel<\/h2>\n
I have a valid, professional reason for being in Ukraine: I\u2019ve come over for the first time to attend the second symposium on the most documented war organized by Documenting Ukraine<\/a>, Institute of Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna<\/a>, a long-standing Eurozine collaborator, and the Lviv Centre for Urban History<\/a>. It\u2019s my job to cover Ukraine in European Dialogue<\/a><\/em>, the focal point established in 2014 that has taken on even more significance since 2022. But my decision to visit was based on more than a sense of duty and dedication to the subject.<\/p>\n Yes, I wanted to attend the two days of panel discussions and one day of workshops to get a better insight into how organizations, both national and foreign, are developing their evidence-building capabilities. Yes, I wanted to support the initiative that was being launched: the Institute for Documentation and Exchange (INDEX<\/a>), collectivizing the work of war documentation, initially from Lviv. Yes, I wanted to spend quality time with the colleagues I have worked with on pertinent texts, often at distance. And, yes, I wanted to meet writers who will hopefully become future Eurozine collaborators, especially those who are unable to leave Ukraine.<\/p>\n But, more than anything, I wanted to address the disjuncture between bordering yet parallel existences: namely, the secure way of life that I experience in the EU compared with everyday conflict in Ukraine.<\/p>\n Fall of the Rebel Angels, Frans Floris, 1554, Antwerp. Image via Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Europe is at war. But not so you\u2019d notice by the way everything ticks along beyond Ukraine\u2019s westerly borders. Am I here to make real what can seem abstract?<\/p>\n Turning what often seems intangible at distance more concrete at closer quarters did take effect by crossing the Polish border but was nonetheless mitigated.<\/p>\n War is evident in Lviv, even though it is one of the country\u2019s largely unscathed westerly urban centres far from frontline combat. But only because there are clear signs of how daily life adapts to disruption: the electricity going down periodically during the symposium held in a basement for security reasons, halting proceedings until the backup kicked in; petrol fumes from many other generators littering shop-lined pavements; a siren going off in the middle of the night warning of a potential air raid; a young woman in khaki driving the Uber away from the Field of Mars.<\/p>\n Lviv, with its ornate albeit tired architecture where oligarchs and foreign investors haven\u2019t yet moved in, otherwise resembles sister European cities built on past Austro-Hungarian expansion. Its vibrant cultural scene surpasses that of other similar-sized cities. And its cosmopolitan population \u2013 from those just about making ends meet to others outwardly comfortable \u2013 live a recognizable urban hustle and bustle.<\/p>\n Informal conversations with symposium participants reveal that the dichotomy between the awareness of ongoing war further east and a relatively safe life in Lviv coexists here too; not knowing how to reconcile different realities in times of war would seem to be a shared experience. But examples of finding the right approach to bridge the gap are overtly different for Ukrainians trying to reach out to their relatives who have served and survived. Waiting is tolerable, however, when, with relief, you know that the conversation can eventually take place.<\/p>\n The symposium covers a breadth of issues related to the complexities of archiving and documenting war. Topics include dealing with high emotions, acknowledging the physicality of places and bodies at war, developing good data collection practices, anticipating sustainable archiving processes, understanding legal constraints, and rethinking relationships between Western institutions and Ukraine.<\/p>\n During the final panel discussion, speakers are asked to describe how, in their view, solidarity has changed since 2022. For Angelina Kariakina, journalist and co-founder of Public Interest Journalism Lab, the first wave of responses that helped build national solidarity, both personal and institutional, have settled back into pre-emergency political divisions between various Ukrainian actors. And Volodymyr Sheiko, director general of the Ukrainian Institute, describes the needs for a more tangible unified approach: \u2018Solidarity isn\u2019t charity,\u2019 he says, \u2018it requires active participation.\u2019<\/p>\n I focus on reaching out to those who are working on projects that concern environmental reparation. Sociologist Daryna Pyrogova shares information about the 30% manifesto: a project, organized in collaboration with Daria Borovyk, Nina Dyrenko and Vadym Sidash, that raises questions about the post-war future of Ukraine\u2019s natural spaces. The group, which exhibited in the Ukrainian Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale in Venice 2023, is currently producing video interviews with key actors discussing the possibilities of transforming war-torn agricultural land, burnt forest areas, and polluted rivers and coastline into designated areas of natural habitat: the third of Ukraine that would be required to fulfil the EU Biodiversity Strategy rewilding quotas for 2030.<\/p>\n Writer and curator Dmytro Chepurnyi tells me about the Ukrainian Ecologies\u2019 artist in residency programme, which he is overseeing as a co-founder of the Ukrainian Environmental Humanities Network (UEHN) in collaboration with IZOLYATSIA. \u2018Diverse environments, their multispecies relationships and languages of expression, are in danger,\u2019 write the organizers. Artists and environmental experts are working together on projects aimed at either preserving Ukrainian natural habitats or revealing the impact war has on the environment, which will be published in cultural journal Solomiya<\/a>.<\/p>\n Anastasiia Ivashyna, a climate specialist at Ecoaction<\/a>, shares a graphic illustrating the amount of CO2 emissions caused within the first 24 months since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion with a percentage breakdown: of 175 million tons of CO2, which \u2018exceeds the annual emissions of a highly industrialized country like the Netherlands\u2019, while 29% is down to warfare, reconstruction is now on a par at 32%, the emissions from civil aviation rerouted to avoid Ukrainian and Russian airspace amounts to 14%, forest fires account for 13%, energy infrastructure comes in at 10% and relocating communities 2%.<\/p>\n The data visualisation chart shows how the impacts of war aren\u2019t restricted to the sites of bombings and combat. Although we know the effects of war aren\u2019t isolated events, it can\u2019t hurt to be reminded that every violent action has its knock-on effects.<\/p>\n Equally, I would come away from the symposium recognizing the many valid means of documenting this war. There are those understandably motivated to collate documentation that could become evidence that will later be admissible in court. And yet the breadth of skills on offer and different means of receiving knowledge suggest the potential of using artistic and scientific means to effectively communicate the impacts of war crimes as well.<\/p>\n A prime example comes in the form of Iryna Zamuruieva\u2019s practice. As an artist and cultural geographer, she looks at the interconnectivity and fallout of agrochemical production\u2019s weaponization. Having followed news reports of honeybee losses near neonicotinoid-sprayed rapeseed fields in Ukraine, Zamuruieva\u2019s article<\/a> develops an involved series of arguments that trace responsibility for not only biological destruction but also chemical warfare.<\/p>\n Zamuruieva, in scrutinizing those bright, near luminous yellow swathes, multiplying year-on-year in the Ukrainian countryside, exposes a practice that is far from optimistic. Referring to well-documented accounts of chemical producers \u2018intertrading\u2019 their poisonous wares, she identifies a lethal exchange between different \u2018fields\u2019: \u2018technology, understood as means to conquer, \u2026 shapeshifts the production of different kinds of violence: synthetic chemicals developed for warfare to achieve aims on the battlefield, making their way to serve as synthetic productivity enhancers on the agriculture field and back to uncanny war technology.\u2019<\/p>\n Globalized agrochemical giants, authoritarian governments and international authorities feature as quintessential perpetrators of harm. Familiar as we are in Europe with the toxicity of pesticides to pollinators and other creatures, including ourselves, less is known about the export of EU banned chemicals. Zamuruieva recognizes that it\u2019s not enough to ring fence one field, one country, one region: \u2018As long as producers make and sell toxicity, capital-creating loopholes will keep enabling profit at the cost of \u2018non-target<\/a>\u2019 lives and liveliness elsewhere.\u2019<\/p>\n And the misdeed always comes back to haunt, sooner or later: \u2018A large amount of pesticides banned in the EU is regularly found in traces of imported food and industrial crops.\u2019 As Zamuruieva reflects: \u2018Toxicity is an ouroboros; \u201cnone of us are free until all of us are free\u201d is more than a political slogan \u2013 it\u2019s a fact.\u2019 If only all forms of toxicity could be recognized as violent, self-destructive acts.<\/p>\n As Iryna Zamuruieva, I feel the importance of place. The question that I set myself in Lviv\u2019s Field of Mars shouldn\u2019t have been \u2018why am I here\u2019 but rather \u2018why here\u2019.<\/p>\n Driving back towards the border, I briefly saw multiple flags flying beyond the roadside. Through the trees after a small town, I immediately identified another Field of Mars. This time what looked from the taxi to be an actual field seemed even less war-like, physically that bit further from the sites of conflict \u2013 peaceful even. And yet, in this case, this unassuming site reminded me of the many fields, no longer recognizable for what they once were, where those soldiers lying buried may well have died \u2013 a stark reminder that duplicity possesses a solemn reality if we care to look.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n The Most Documented War symposium, held from 30 June to 2 July 2024 in Lviv, Ukraine, was organized by Lviv Centre for Urban History<\/a> and Documenting Ukraine<\/a>, Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/Fall_of_rebel_Angels_Frans_Floris_September_2015-1a-1024x794.jpg\")
<\/p>\nCoexisting dichotomy<\/h2>\n
Knock-on effects<\/h2>\n
Toxicity as ouroboros<\/h2>\n
Why here?<\/h2>\n
![Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\nEurope is at war. But not so you\u2019d notice by the way everything ticks along beyond Ukraine\u2019s westerly borders. Am I here to make real what can seem abstract?<\/p>\nCoexisting dichotomy<\/h2>\nTurning what often seems intangible at distance more concrete at closer quarters did take effect by crossing the Polish border but was nonetheless mitigated.<\/p>\nWar is evident in Lviv, even though it is one of the country\u2019s largely unscathed westerly urban centres far from frontline combat. But only because there are clear signs of how daily life adapts to disruption: the electricity going down periodically during the symposium held in a basement for security reasons, halting proceedings until the backup kicked in; petrol fumes from many other generators littering shop-lined pavements; a siren going off in the middle of the night warning of a potential air raid; a young woman in khaki driving the Uber away from the Field of Mars.<\/p>\nLviv, with its ornate albeit tired architecture where oligarchs and foreign investors haven\u2019t yet moved in, otherwise resembles sister European cities built on past Austro-Hungarian expansion. Its vibrant cultural scene surpasses that of other similar-sized cities. And its cosmopolitan population \u2013 from those just about making ends meet to others outwardly comfortable \u2013 live a recognizable urban hustle and bustle.<\/p>\nInformal conversations with symposium participants reveal that the dichotomy between the awareness of ongoing war further east and a relatively safe life in Lviv coexists here too; not knowing how to reconcile different realities in times of war would seem to be a shared experience. But examples of finding the right approach to bridge the gap are overtly different for Ukrainians trying to reach out to their relatives who have served and survived. Waiting is tolerable, however, when, with relief, you know that the conversation can eventually take place.<\/p>\nKnock-on effects<\/h2>\nThe symposium covers a breadth of issues related to the complexities of archiving and documenting war. Topics include dealing with high emotions, acknowledging the physicality of places and bodies at war, developing good data collection practices, anticipating sustainable archiving processes, understanding legal constraints, and rethinking relationships between Western institutions and Ukraine.<\/p>\nDuring the final panel discussion, speakers are asked to describe how, in their view, solidarity has changed since 2022. For Angelina Kariakina, journalist and co-founder of Public Interest Journalism Lab, the first wave of responses that helped build national solidarity, both personal and institutional, have settled back into pre-emergency political divisions between various Ukrainian actors. And Volodymyr Sheiko, director general of the Ukrainian Institute, describes the needs for a more tangible unified approach: \u2018Solidarity isn\u2019t charity,\u2019 he says, \u2018it requires active participation.\u2019<\/p>\nI focus on reaching out to those who are working on projects that concern environmental reparation. Sociologist Daryna Pyrogova shares information about the 30% manifesto: a project, organized in collaboration with Daria Borovyk, Nina Dyrenko and Vadym Sidash, that raises questions about the post-war future of Ukraine\u2019s natural spaces. The group, which exhibited in the Ukrainian Pavilion at the Architecture Biennale in Venice 2023, is currently producing video interviews with key actors discussing the possibilities of transforming war-torn agricultural land, burnt forest areas, and polluted rivers and coastline into designated areas of natural habitat: the third of Ukraine that would be required to fulfil the EU Biodiversity Strategy rewilding quotas for 2030.<\/p>\nWriter and curator Dmytro Chepurnyi tells me about the Ukrainian Ecologies\u2019 artist in residency programme, which he is overseeing as a co-founder of the Ukrainian Environmental Humanities Network (UEHN) in collaboration with IZOLYATSIA. \u2018Diverse environments, their multispecies relationships and languages of expression, are in danger,\u2019 write the organizers. Artists and environmental experts are working together on projects aimed at either preserving Ukrainian natural habitats or revealing the impact war has on the environment, which will be published in cultural journal Solomiya<\/a>.<\/p>\nAnastasiia Ivashyna, a climate specialist at Ecoaction<\/a>, shares a graphic illustrating the amount of CO2 emissions caused within the first 24 months since Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion with a percentage breakdown: of 175 million tons of CO2, which \u2018exceeds the annual emissions of a highly industrialized country like the Netherlands\u2019, while 29% is down to warfare, reconstruction is now on a par at 32%, the emissions from civil aviation rerouted to avoid Ukrainian and Russian airspace amounts to 14%, forest fires account for 13%, energy infrastructure comes in at 10% and relocating communities 2%.<\/p>\nThe data visualisation chart shows how the impacts of war aren\u2019t restricted to the sites of bombings and combat. Although we know the effects of war aren\u2019t isolated events, it can\u2019t hurt to be reminded that every violent action has its knock-on effects.<\/p>\nEqually, I would come away from the symposium recognizing the many valid means of documenting this war. There are those understandably motivated to collate documentation that could become evidence that will later be admissible in court. And yet the breadth of skills on offer and different means of receiving knowledge suggest the potential of using artistic and scientific means to effectively communicate the impacts of war crimes as well.<\/p>\nToxicity as ouroboros<\/h2>\nA prime example comes in the form of Iryna Zamuruieva\u2019s practice. As an artist and cultural geographer, she looks at the interconnectivity and fallout of agrochemical production\u2019s weaponization. Having followed news reports of honeybee losses near neonicotinoid-sprayed rapeseed fields in Ukraine, Zamuruieva\u2019s article<\/a> develops an involved series of arguments that trace responsibility for not only biological destruction but also chemical warfare.<\/p>\nZamuruieva, in scrutinizing those bright, near luminous yellow swathes, multiplying year-on-year in the Ukrainian countryside, exposes a practice that is far from optimistic. Referring to well-documented accounts of chemical producers \u2018intertrading\u2019 their poisonous wares, she identifies a lethal exchange between different \u2018fields\u2019: \u2018technology, understood as means to conquer, \u2026 shapeshifts the production of different kinds of violence: synthetic chemicals developed for warfare to achieve aims on the battlefield, making their way to serve as synthetic productivity enhancers on the agriculture field and back to uncanny war technology.\u2019<\/p>\nGlobalized agrochemical giants, authoritarian governments and international authorities feature as quintessential perpetrators of harm. Familiar as we are in Europe with the toxicity of pesticides to pollinators and other creatures, including ourselves, less is known about the export of EU banned chemicals. Zamuruieva recognizes that it\u2019s not enough to ring fence one field, one country, one region: \u2018As long as producers make and sell toxicity, capital-creating loopholes will keep enabling profit at the cost of \u2018non-target<\/a>\u2019 lives and liveliness elsewhere.\u2019<\/p>\nAnd the misdeed always comes back to haunt, sooner or later: \u2018A large amount of pesticides banned in the EU is regularly found in traces of imported food and industrial crops.\u2019 As Zamuruieva reflects: \u2018Toxicity is an ouroboros; \u201cnone of us are free until all of us are free\u201d is more than a political slogan \u2013 it\u2019s a fact.\u2019 If only all forms of toxicity could be recognized as violent, self-destructive acts.<\/p>\nWhy here?<\/h2>\nAs Iryna Zamuruieva, I feel the importance of place. The question that I set myself in Lviv\u2019s Field of Mars shouldn\u2019t have been \u2018why am I here\u2019 but rather \u2018why here\u2019.<\/p>\nDriving back towards the border, I briefly saw multiple flags flying beyond the roadside. Through the trees after a small town, I immediately identified another Field of Mars. This time what looked from the taxi to be an actual field seemed even less war-like, physically that bit further from the sites of conflict \u2013 peaceful even. And yet, in this case, this unassuming site reminded me of the many fields, no longer recognizable for what they once were, where those soldiers lying buried may well have died \u2013 a stark reminder that duplicity possesses a solemn reality if we care to look.<\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\nThe Most Documented War symposium, held from 30 June to 2 July 2024 in Lviv, Ukraine, was organized by Lviv Centre for Urban History<\/a> and Documenting Ukraine<\/a>, Institute for Human Sciences (IWM), Vienna<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n[ad_2]\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] The bouquets are so fresh and abundant in Lviv\u2019s Field of Mars that bees are foraging cut cornflower blooms. Walking the stretch of this<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":246810,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246809"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=246809"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/246809\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/246810"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=246809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=246809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=246809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/5\/54\/Fall_of_rebel_Angels_%28Frans_Floris%29_September_2015-1a.jpg\"){kind=link}