Catalogue > At random

The work contains sounds extracted from the amateur videos filmed during the protests in Belarus in 2020. The videos are mostly very brutal and full of violence and evoke pure and irrational rage and hatred. By cutting off the images and leaving only the sounds I want the viewer/listener to concentrate on what is behind: sounds of the beatings, a dinner in a kitchen with shooting in the background, heavy breathing of those running away, sobbing of a person filming from a balcony, etc. I provide CCTV camera footage from Minsk for my work. Nothing is happening on the screen, it's just a square and people walking by, living normal lives, but the sounds you hear prove that they don't live normal lives anymore. At the same time, this duality reminds us that active protests were totally suppressed. This very view from a CCTV camera looks almost exactly like a view from a prison cell camera - same angle, same grey colours, same texture, and same figures down there. The final part of my work is a footage from a police wagon showing police beating the detained after they were brought to the detention centre.

Born in Belarus in 1986. Studied languages in Belarus, Poland and Germany, which later influenced my artistic practice and let me not be limited to only one cultural context. Different approaches to education in Belarus and Europe gave me a strong push for further personal development. Served mandatory military service in 2009-2010. There I observed the state system of patriarchy and violence, which I would later often refer to in my projects. Studied at the School of contemporary photography Docdocdoc in St. Petersburg, participated in Simon Menner's master class in Minsk, took the online course More than a project, went to residencies organized by ISSP and Sputnik Photos and basically never stopped self-education. In the winter of 2022-2023, I attended the Social Camp course organized by the Goethe Institute to support civil society in Belarus. After the events in Belarus in 2020, I focused on the modern archive and propaganda narratives, and how an authoritarian system creates an alternative reality in the age of the Internet. In 2015 I got polish citizenship, now I have two.