Not a dream: Extension until February 15th! At the ArtEast Gallery Berlin-Kyiv

Not a Dream

"Dreaming is usually compared to something that seems incredible. If the ghost of a dream does not immediately disappear in the morning, a person prefers to get rid of the nightly gloom  as soon as possible, as if living through a dream has nothing to do with life itself. In many traditions, much attention was paid to the interpretation of specific dreams. The phantom of dream was considered an important episode of personal inner sight experience.

Currently, Ukraine and the rest of Europe are living as if in two parallel realities. For the Western world, the war mostly remains on the surface of the news screens. The scale of Russian crimes in Ukraine is so terrible that one’s mind refuses to perceive them as a domain of human existence, and tries to throw them all beyond vigilance, towards the vague realm of dreamland. However, in the rationality of the daylight, diplomatic and commercial relations with a state that commits all these crimes like a perverted butcher still seem to be quite acceptable.

The fear caused by the threat to somehow established mode of existence provokes instinctive blindness. Thus, the shock of war undermines ordinary perception of reality. The events during the war remind us of a dream which is impossible to wake up from. At the same time, it is extremely necessary to act there, overcoming muteness and numbness of limbs that are so inherent to a dream. It is all a challenge to the intimacy of humanity, which is forced to go back to so-called common places and re-examine them again, to finally wake up in its historical and political essence."