Ross Birrell, Mariupolonaise (2022)

Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv
Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Curated by Adam Szymczyk

The film, featuring Ukrainian concert pianist, Anna Fedorova, was screened online from 10.00am local time by each collaborating institution: Friday 16 -23 September 2022.

Mariupolonaise seeks to commemorate the victims of the Russian military airstrike on the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, 16 March 2022, which killed over 600 innocent civilians, including children, an atrocity classed as a war crime by the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe and Amnesty International. Six months on from this atrocity, the Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv, the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh, present the film Mariupolonaise (2022; Dur. 12min), a moving-image and sound work is based upon recordings of the Ukrainian pianist Anna Fedorova’s recitals at the Fryderyk Chopin Institute in Warsaw in 2010. The work is made in response to the emotional impact of Fedorova’s original performance and seeks to explore how the intensity of music and the moving-image might resonate with conditions endured in a time of war.

Research Question and Context
In the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the work questions how contemporary artwork might affectively commemorate victims of war crimes. The work emerges from my creative-practice research in the field of moving-image and sound installation, often produced in collaboration with classical musicians, in the context of political and social conflict, including Syrian Civil War in the work Symphony of Sorrowful Songs/Triptych/Fugue commissioned by documenta 14 (2017), the focus of an Impact Case study, REF 2021.

Process/Method
The video re-mixes (slows down, fragments, recolours) previously recorded footage from five recitals performed by Fedorova in a manner which seeks to intensify and re-contextualise the emotional impact of the original recordings. The mirroring of Fedorova’s figure, rendered enigmatic and ghostly, reflects several layers of cultural mirroring: The figure of Fedorova in the work is doubled and mirrored in a reflection upon what Andrew Wilson refers to as ‘Ukrainian dualism’, embodied in the intertwined histories of Ukraine and Russia. Prior to the conflict, Mariupol was city of approximately 1 million inhabitants, with almost half the population identifying as ethnically Russian and the other half as ethnically Ukrainian. The duality of the image was also a reflection of the cultural ties between Poland and Ukraine embodied in the portmanteau word of the title. Fedorova testifies to this relation in her recital of Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2 performed as part of the Ukrainian Freedom Orchestra tour in August 2022. In the film, Mariupolonaise, the figure appears only in flashing fragments and the piano is never seen - the body becomes the only instrument upon which acts of violence are visited. The audio is re-mixed from Fedorova’s recital of Chopin’s Polonaise in F Sharp Minor Op. 44. The sound is slowed down and layered, fractured and discordant, transforming the traditional dance into a soundscape of uncertainty.

Work remains currently accessible on main webpage of Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv (over past 5 months). The work has currently had over 900 views across the 4 collaborating venue websites.

An essay elaborating on the context and form of the work is currently in preparation for GSA’s Flow magazine, 2023.

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