The Last Artwork about the War
Information
2024,
4K video, stereo sound, 21 min., in loop
Commissioned and produced by Steirischer herbst ’24
With the kind support of ERSTE Foundation
Short description
Nikolay Karabinovych’s latest audacious manifesto film presents itself as nothing less than “the last artwork about the war”
We see one room, one session: a patient lost in his own memory and a therapist whose questions lead far from healing, to an abyss of absurd dialog in the spirit of modernist theater. Gradually, the hero's personal trauma becomes intertwined with the historical trauma of an entire country, and the dream of the end of therapy coincides with the dream of the end of an endless war.
Through a kaleidoscope of images, where “Victory” (Победа) is a Soviet car, an 18th century frigate, a deserted Antarctic station and a vanished village, the film asks the main question: what does it mean to win if war knows no end credits?
A daring claim stands behind Nikolay Karabinovych’s new film, namely to be the last work about Russia’s continuing assault on Ukraine—possibly in all of art. It looks at the war from the unusual angle of a psychoanalytic session.
This is the story of a man, who once got lost, and now trying to find some answers.
The reluctant patient dreams of ending therapy and finding liberation—a liberation that turns out to be identical with that from enemy occupation in an endless war. The dialogue between therapist and patient soon takes a turn for the absurd in the tradition of modernist theater. In their conversation, personal, historical, and political dimensions meld and fuse, evoking ambiguous images of victory and liberation that might never be attained.
The last film about the war, 2023, collage, 29x45, paper
The last film about the war, 2023, collage
What does it mean to win?
Victory “Победа” is a Soviet car, a 44-gun sailing frigate of the Azov and then the Russian Black Sea Navy, launched in 1782, a passenger ship that appeared in the film “The Diamond Arm” called “Mikhail Svetlov”, a Russian budget airline, a part of Aeroflot, a disappeared village in the Dzhankoy district, a toponym in the community of Backa Topola, in the North Backa district of the autonomous region of Vojvodina, an abandoned Soviet remote Antarctic station and a brand of watch.
Installation view, Neue Galerie Graz
Exhibitions
2024 Graz, Neue Galerie Graz
Press