Item Summary

Description provided by artist:

"March 21. Zombies. Today was probably the last rally for Ukrainian Kherson. Rosgvardia, which arrived in the city a day earlier, dispersed the protesters with stun grenades and gunfire. There are wounded. Gatherings are banned and people continue to disappear. Officials in the villages are increasingly being taken away in an unknown direction. Most likely, for "polite" conversations about the prospects of creating the “Kherson People's Republic”. Ukrainian humanitarian aid is not allowed through. In Chornobayivka, in addition to Russian soldiers, 3 million chickens are dying of starvation at one of Europe's largest poultry farms. There is tension in the air. Most of us understand that the relative silence that has lasted for the past few days is the calm before the storm. I often hear from people in the country of storytellers that they are not interested in events in Ukraine, because they are “apolitical”. And it happens that they simply do not believe us and tell us fairy tales they heard from their official fairy-tale media. Of course, it is much more pleasant to believe that you are involved in the great cause of a great nation than in the military blackmailing of neighboring countries and the murder of civilians. Not for the first time, millions of people have become zombies, unable to see, hear, think, speak, and empathize. Apoliticality is not a term that can justify cowardice and indifference to the barbarism that is carried out at your expense and for which you are responsible. Apoliticality is the impotence to effect change in your own country and the reason why someone replaces your goals with their own, destroying your life. Soon the fog will dissipate and you will face reality head on, as has already happened in the 1990s. The more stubbornly you resist, the faster you approach, and the denser it becomes. Collision will plunge you for a long time into the most unpleasant feeling - shame. But only if you didn't do what you could."

Photography, digital art, mixed technique.

Descriptive Information

Title
Z
Sort Title
z
Creator of work
Ray, Mikhail
Language
English
Date Created
2022
Series
The Storyteller: War Diary of Mikhail Ray
Rights Statement
In Copyright

Discovery Information

Subject
Arts and culture
Artists
Arts
Politics and government
War
Geographic Subject
Ukraine
Geographic Origin
Ukraine

Physical Characteristics

Height
112
Width
80
Page Count
1
File Count
1

Institutional Information

Collection
Ukrainian Art in Times of War: 2014-
Princeton Slavic Collections
Box number
Digital Box 01
Folder number
Ray_9
Barcode
000000000000000000
IIIF Manifest URL

https://figgy.princeton.edu/concern/ephemera_folders/997fa305-da08-4000-b78e-c78aaafba4ba/manifest