Ukrainian Sparks

In Kiev, the Ukrainian performance artist Gennady Gutgarts recently “installed” his project, “Sparks of Holiness.” His Sparks are vivid paint spots applied to the dark facade of the House of Unions, where the headquarters of the Maidan protest was situated during Ukraine’s protests and where, on the night of February 18 and 19, dozens died in a fire.

According to Gutgarts, his main inspiration was the sea of flowers that Kievans brought to the square in memory of those who perished. According to the art project’s website, it was based on two basic ideas: “the value of human life is absolute,” and “think every minute of your life.” As well, Gutgarts said, it alludes to “the horrific game of paint ball, which trains participants to treat life and death lightly... for some, these events were a game, yet real people died.”

Was it difficult to take on this project? How did it come to you? As far as I understand, you have done various actions and conceptual projects, but have never been associated with street art. All that is best in art and elsewhere occurs when one succeeds in turning off the self, in connecting with something truly powerful and important. If we talk about painting, and don’t delve into the underlying causes, this could be the state of nature or a person’s internal world. In any case, we are talking about a disaster. And of course we are talking about a disaster that swept aside the horrible quagmire in which our country was immersed. I perceived the events of last winter, with their inevitable and tragic denouement, as a natural phenomenon. Like a true natural phenomenon, the seasons, say, it does not have an exact ending, it transforms – sometimes rapidly, sometimes slowly – into the next phenomenon, which we are now observing. But at that point – the end of winter and the start of spring – there was a massive quiet after the hurricane. The hurricane came when the strong and weak moved mountains in the center of this ancient city. A silence descended on the burned-out streets, the sea of flowers arrived, there was a silence like that after an explosion, and the sense that we – splinters, fragments of something unknown – were soaring over a whirlpool. This, perhaps, is what helped me understand what I had to do. As a result, work on the project proceeded rather easily. It was really a hugely significant project, both for myself and for the city. And it has only a tenuous connection with street art.

Is this your first political project? And what does the experience seem like in hindsight? I would find it difficult to call this project political. But of course it has been interpreted in exactly that way. It is like riding in the metro and perceiving that it is not the wagon that is rocking you, but we who are rocking it. The experience has been colossal and I feel it will influence all my future art. I truly hope that Ukraine will not have to live through another such tragedy and that I will be able to resound more peaceful events.

As far as I understand it, it is important to speak of the Euromaidan events in the context of the European avant-garde? Malevich and Archipenko were born in our city. Tatlin took refuge here for several years. So we have been speaking in such language here for a long time.

How do you evaluate the present situation in Ukraine? Externally, everything changes very slowly – to this day, many frightening people are still in power, and many new politicians are cynically repeating the actions of their predecessors. Yet many people have lost their apathy, they have once again experienced the possibility of influencing their fate, the fate of the entire country. I truly hope that this is not an illusion. Kiev, of course, will develop as a major European city, and it is very important that this happen in sync with the rest of the country.

Acquaintances who saw us off from Kiev asked us to tell everyone in Russia that nothing bad happened here as regards the Russian language. This was a bit funny to us, since among my friends we would not have thought of this, yet the official mass media in Russia has been rather successful in convincing Russians of just the opposite...
Of course, for Ukraine, discrimination against the Russian language is an artificial problem. After the events of 10 years ago, the majority of my Russian speaking Ukrainian friends took increasingly greater pride in their Ukrainian identity. And this is not just for show, it flows naturally, you can’t falsify your intonation in friendly discussions. The image of us as a zombified Vuiki[1] is constantly broadcast at us from the outside, via soap operas, and from within, via local clowns. The ability to speak fluently in two independent European languages is a huge privilege shared by tens of millions of Ukrainians, something that tens of millions of Russians do not yet share. Yet it is curious that Ukrainians in favor of an exclusive union with Russia – most of whom are of retirement age, do not agree with this; this includes some of my friends.

Is it important to you that your project can be understood by anyone, regardless of the language they speak? Actually, what is your native tongue? My native language is Russian, but I speak Ukrainian fluently... The work offers a different schema, actually. It... divides people not into linguistic groups, but into those who desire to see and those who have closed their eyes.

Kiev gave me the feeling of a city that belongs to its residents... Even after these recent events, one often thinks that this is merely a feeling. For instance we saw a monument to some Soviet personage, on which someone had smudged out the regalia and wrote in yellow paint, “Murdering Communist.” One would like to do the same with certain Soviet monuments in Moscow, but it would be an unsafe project; the atmosphere there is entirely different. You know, there is another side to this. Ten years ago were the events on Maidan that we all know about. The entirety of the post office – that’s the building across the street from the House of Unions – was marked up with patriotic orange graffiti. Then, in the spirit of protecting a memory, a portion of that graffiti was covered in transparent plastic, so as to preserve it for history. Now imagine how these revolutionary slogans – “Revolution, yes! Yushchenko, yes! Yanukovych, no!” – were preserved there while everything going on all around them was something entirely different… such cynicism. So what is scary is that such slogans are not a literal illustration of what is going on. The Communist Party still exists, and is dealt with; and there are other political forces that turned out to be turncoats. I don’t want to start a political discussion here, but I think you understand me: unfortunately, street art does not always reflect the freedom that it should.

Does it ever? I lived in Scotland for a time and worked for a month at a festival there. I saw how street art can absolutely reflect the spirit of the people and the political system that exists. Here, unfortunately, it is a bit out in front of the real changes that we want to see, and that is sad. And there is a bit of irony, perhaps, as regards the significance of street art... There is a certain percentage of people, perhaps just one percent, that reacts to it, with whom it resonates. But 99 percent of people are very focused on their everyday struggles, their material needs, the handouts they receive from those who can offer them. As a result, while perhaps there is something to be proud of when we compare Ukraine and Russia in this respect... one hopes for more, one hopes that there is not an impression that this is simply a decoration...

An ideal world which does not exist in reality? An ideal world, perhaps... yet nevertheless sometimes we see flashes of that ideal world projecting into our reality and it makes us wish that it happened more often...

So all our hopes are with the daring performance artists? We will do our thing until some advertising director comes along and decides that there is good traffic here and says, “Thanks, that was really great, but now we are going to advertise my beer here.” But of course, graffiti or, for example, street theater, is wonderful.

NOTES

3. Vuiko is a Ukrainian word used in Western Ukraine to respectfully address an older man. However it has come to be a dismissive term used to describe nationalists in Western Ukraine by those on the other end of the spectrum, those who align themselves closer to Russia.