Untitled

Realized 2015 – Ongoing.

Table, printer, internet interface, paper.

Open Group (Yuriy Biley, Anton Varga, Pavlo Kovach, and Stanislav Turina until 2017)

In January 2015, when the project began, the number of casualties in the armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine had reached 5,358. This included people from both sides of the conflict, including civilians (according to UN data).  

To have an understanding of the meaning of this abstract number, each participant of the Open group (Yuriy Biley, Anton Varga, Pavlo Kovach, Stanislav Turina) started recording new acquaintances they make on daily basis, documenting:

- name, surname, or the name the person presented himself/herself with;

- acronym of the first letters in the name and surname of the Open Group participant who made the acquaintance;

- the date (year, month, day) the encounter took place;

- place of the encounter, and certain private details necessary to recall it. 

As this exhibition opens, the last official count (on March 15, 2017 according to the UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine) documents that the number of casualties had increased to 9,940 persons. 

The Untitled project will continue to record these acquaintances until the amount of the ‘new acquaintances’ corresponds to the final number of deaths in the armed conflict in Eastern Ukraine.   

The new acquaintances are registered online on a daily basis.

 Created with the support of PinchukArtCenter, Kiev, Ukraine. Exhibition Future Generation Art Prize @ Venice 2017, 57th Venice International Art Exhibition - La Biennale di Venezia (2017). Photographed by Sergey Illin. 

 Exhibition "Open Group. Due to the circumstances'', galeria Аrsenal Białystok, Poland, 2017. Photographed by - Maciej Zaniewski.