Images of Labor: De/Occupation of Watching

Thursday, 12 October 2023, 18.00 hrs
Screening and conversation with film producer, curator, and member of Freefilmers Yulia Serdyukova
Register tickets here

The experimental film My Favorite Job (2022), by Sahsko Protyah, screened on this occasion, documents the labor and the idle moments of a volunteer group who evacuated residents from the city of Mariupol, besieged by Russian troops, in spring 2022. The film both highlights and examines the transversal struggle that crosses both class and warfare. Any documentation is made under extreme danger of getting killed at the hands of the occupying army, since said photo or video may contain evidence of war crimes. The first-hand videos of mass destructions that appear in the beginning of the film were recorded and carried out of Mariupol at the operators’ own risk. The screening is followed by a conversation with Yulia Serdyukova who worked with Sashko Protyah as camera woman on the film and as part of the volunteer group evacuating residents from Mariupol.

Yulia Serdyukova is a member of Freefilmers, a diasporic cinemovement and NGO of filmmakers, artists, and activists working in solidarity with a broader network of grassroots humanitarian initiatives in the regions most afflicted by the war in Ukraine. Please consider joining BAK’s fundraising campaign to support Freefilmers here.

18.00 hrs
WORDS OF WELCOME
Wietske Maas

18.15 hrs
SCREENING
My Favorite Job (2022)
Sashko Protyah

18.50 hrs
CONVERSATION
Yulia Seryukova (online) and Olexii Kuchanskyi, moderated by Wietske Maas

19.30–21.00 hrs
DRINKS AND EXHIBITION VIEWING

All times are in CEST.

The Thursdays on which the public program takes place, the exhibition stays open until 21 hrs.
Also on these Thursdays, there is a curator-led tour of the exhibition To Watch the War: The Moving Image Amidst the Invasion of Ukraine (2014–2023) that precedes the public program at 17 hrs, given by Olexii Kuchanksyi. To register for the tour, please select it as an option when registering for the public program.

The public program as part of To Watch the War: The Moving Image Amidst the Invasion of Ukraine (2014–2023) is a series of hybrid off- and online conversations and screenings around discursive and artistic interventions that reimagine the social implications of watching the war—through ways that disrupt, subvert, and resist the normalization of antagonistic conditions that enable and facilitate wars. Convened by researcher and film programmer Olexii Kuchanskyi and moderated by BAK curator of research and publications Wietske Maas, this program, hosted in English, takes place at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst, Utrecht and online on 28 September, 12 October, and 26 October 2023.

The project To Watch the War: The Moving Image Amidst the Invasion of Ukraine (2014–2023) is accompanied by a crowdfunding campaign in support of Freefilmers—some of its members are artists included in the exhibition and public program.