roman khimei and yarema malashchuk, pedagogies of war — counter
roman khimei and yarema malashchuk’s “pedagogies of war”
she first named the installation "you shouldnt have to see this", from the first time we met she called it that way—hi, nice to see you, she said to me, or something like that, it was in the thyssen in madrid, we set it up in the dark room with the courtains and the long floral paintings and the hanging white flower chandeliers that weren't turned on, she said she called the pieces "floating mirrors", where i’d gone with a bunch of my guys i soaked in all the imagery with, especially the ones that were positioned on the cupboards, the three of us imagined all kinds of war fantasies on these kids all in our minds, on that doorway back then, the first time the installation was set up, and then it would sometimes happen that if we’d had a good look and got a good price for the museum entry that we’d take a little trip to the prado, jump up on one of the castle-like ledges on the side of the museum, spend a night there usually, getting in sometime in the afternoon and leaving at dawn or sometime the next morning, it depended how late a night we’d had, to tell the truth on how drunk we’d got
it was roman and yarema and me working on the pictures then, an old camera that yarema's father owned, but he’d been scared of the art world so he was rarely or never on board with putting our stuff up in the thyssen, i didn’t know why the museum had that name, yarema had asked his father about it of course, but his father hadn’t wanted to answer and refused to, a bit abruptly, one thing for sure anyway was that yarema's mother, his father’s wife, wasn’t named yarem, for whatever that’s worth, but anyway yarema's father got a full half share of what we made from the installation since he owned the monitors and the cables, or maybe not quite half, we thought it was too much, more than was reasonable, so we usually rounded down a little, to put it that way, but anyway never mind that, when we’d had a good photo and had a lot of money to spend, yes, then we’d treat ourselves by paying a visit to a restaurant near the thyssen, las terrazas del thyssen it was called
and my friend francisco had left a review "museum cafés are usually more of a convenient choice than a logical one, and this is no exception. €16 for two double coffees and two regular croissants isn’t great value for money. but it’s convenient if you are visiting the museum. the indoor and outdoor seating areas are pleasant, and while the staff were somewhat cold, they were efficient." and we always went here, they had good country cooking there at a more reasonable price than the other places, the other places near madrid we knew of anyway, but to tell the truth there weren’t that many, i probably hadn’t, and probably haven’t to this day, been to any other places in madrid besides the thyssen terrace, and well i’ve been to the bus café and the coffeehouse, but those are probably the only places i’ve been, usually i always ended up at the terrace, that’s how it was with that, and that’s what happened that day too, yes, the day i met her for the first time, and it happened quite simply like this, that she came over to the table where yarema and roman and i were sitting with our meatball dinners
she put both her hands on the edge of the table, looked straight at me, i don’t remember exactly what she said to me, but she said dude, hey dude, nice to see you again, you have to go back to ukraine and capture all these kids, don't just take a photo of them dead, take a photo of them alive too, she said, it was something like that, so i guessed she must have made a mistake and thought i would ever disagree with her on this, but i couldn’t remember having ever seen her before, of course it was possible that i’d drunk so much the time we met that i couldn’t remember meeting her, but that wasn’t really very likely, it was true enough that i did have a bit to drink sometimes, quite a lot sometimes, yes, but i was rarely or never as drunk as all that, no, and there she stood looking at me, yes, and i was seeing her for the first time, that i could remember at least, yes, it was a long time since i’d drunk enough to not remember what happened, things like that happened only when i was really young, and only a couple of times then, before i learned to eat enough and not overdo the drinking
but on that day, at the terrace, the day she and i stood there at our table, pretty drunk even though it was a weekday, and called me by my name, and wouldn’t stop. thats when i realized, wait, this is russia talking to me, its been russia all along, russia is here to tell me to take these photos, its been russia this whole time. roman stood up in fear, yarema spit out his drink. we didnt know what to do, russia itself wants us to take these photos. should we still do it, is it still ethical? we sat there, smitten, but we knew what we had to do. we have to reveal the intimacy behind what is now a destroyed soul, millions of kids being transported back and fourth, with no clue what to do, war refugees, thats what i said. she looked at me, the mother of all children, i had to look her in the eyes, she said, listen, you will hang these in the thyssen, and i will stop doing it from that day onwards, how does that sound? i looked her back, she looked at me, i was looking at her, she was looking at me. fine, i will do it if you stop. but she betrayed us, she did. its like nothing even stopped, its like nothing at all even happened. not at all, nothing happened.
note: this counter is based loosely on the structure of joe fosse's "vaim"