Zentrum Fokus Forschung
The conference Digital War: Online-Media, Visual Politics and Crowdsourcing in the Russian War against
Ukraine takes the opportunity to investigate the digital war on social media and online platforms that has accompanied Russia's
war of aggression against Ukraine since January 18, 2022. In this context the participants analyze digital society and its
relationship to war, violence, and power in a critical and reflective manner. In his book Radical War: Data, Attention and
Control in the 21st Century, published in 2022, the sociologist and political consultant Matthew Ford, who is invited to the
Vienna conference, argues that the Russian war in Ukraine is the first war between two states in Europe, that would be mediated
by digital technologies and would blur the boundaries between soldiers and civilians.
Lesia Kulchynska (Kyiv/Rom): Limits of witnessing,
and the role of art during the networked war
The war in the digital era is accompanied
by an inseparable from the instant and massive witnessing. Every citizen equipped with a smartphone can produce and circulate
the instant evidence of every crime committed, document and share her own war-related experience. In the background of the
mass production of visual evidence of the war, what is the role of art?
Social media became
a platform for sharing artistic messages related to war, providing the desired instancy of the audience outreach and its emotional
engagement. Yet after the first year of artistic witnessing of war, this strategy seems to face its limits: from algorithmic
content moderation to the saturation of the attention market, loss of news value, and doubts in its efficiency.Exploring the
influence of the architecture of social media on the artistic practices of witnessing and on setting its limits, I will try
to map the artistic strategies that go beyond the established logic of networked war.
Yana Barinova(Kyiv/Vienna): Casted image: artistic representations of Mariupol from 2014 till
nowadays
Yana Barinova is sharing her own story, given that her family is from Mariupol.
In addition, she is picking out some artworks from well-known artists who've shown the harsh realities during the occupation
of Mariupol and the Azovstal siege. The presentation will be a mix of personal and artistic viewpoints.
Kateryna Lysovenko
(Kyiv/Vienna):Painting/War
The painterKateryna Lysovenko talks about her creative-artistic understanding of aesthetic resistance in times of
war, death, violence, destruction, genocide, thought control and the massive restrictions on human rights and freedom of expression.
She willtalk about the connection between the image and the ideology regarding her own artistic practice, she will also discuss
the context of the art field and art education in Ukraine, and she will talk about monumental art in Ukraine, because it's
connected with her paintings.
Screening: Chornobyl
22.Directed byOleksiy Radynski, Ukraine, 2023, 20 Minuten.
______
Credits:
Abb. 1: Der Account @xenasolo, der von einer weiblichen
TikTok-Nutzerin betrieben wird, kontextualisiert die Situation in der Ukraine für ein englischsprachiges Publikum. (Quelle:
Tiktok)
Abb. 2-4: Quelle: Kateryna Lysovenko
Digitale Medien und Bildpolitik im russischen Krieg gegen die Ukraine
Konferenz
24. Oktober 2023 - 25. Oktober 2023
Auditorium, Vordere Zollamtsstraße 7, 1030
Wien
