from the foldings

Lesia Pcholka, 
artist, researcher, founder of the VEHA archive

Memories are limited by the length of our lives;

each new generation takes responsibility for their preservation and for the cultural and social development of society. Through historical circumstances, into which we are born, and events, which influence us, we shape new history.

Post-Soviet Belarus has passed the generational threshold - 30 years - in a mothballed state of irremovability of authority and continuous violence. During this time, a new generation has grown, united by the protests of 2020 and returned idea of future. Nevertheless, to envision the future, one must understand the past.

Belarusian culture is in depression today [1]. At the moment, all independent galleries inside the country are closed, the most important civil initiatives are either eliminated or considered "extremist" by the state. Everything Belarusian and contemporary stands in opposition to the post-Soviet / post-socialist authoritarian state, since it bears a threat of solidarity and grassroot action.  

Significant part of the development of Belarusian art occurs in forced emigration, and is limited in resources due to the lack of legal protection and broad informational support. There are known cases of refusing legalisation or even attempting to extradite Belarusians who are facing / might be facing administrative or criminal penalties in their homeland. And the ones who get the chance to apply for a visa or residence permit in one of the European countries, might be waiting years for a decision, not being able to work and sustain themselves. This state of in-betweenness does not foster artistic practice, but only suppresses it. One must know that there are special paragraphs for considering visas in Germany: obviously, for Ukrainians and also for Russian dissidents. Nonetheless, there is no such separate condition for Belarusians. To find a lawyer willing to take Belarusian cases is a problem. The situation might be better in particular European states, e.g. Poland. But generally speaking, everything is very complicated in legal terms.

Mobility, which was always an acute question for Belarusians, is still very limited. The problem was and is especially acute for artists, whose incomes rarely meet visa center requirements. In order to get a visa, you need a steady job and income. It is near to impossible, when you work as an artist. Belarus is an independent country with informational autocracy and has never had democratic governance. Up to 300,000 Belarusians have been forced to leave the country since May 2020, according to the report [2].

Regarding media support, information about the Belarusian reality hardly ever reaches mainstream European news outlets. During the last two years there are five known cases of deaths in custody, and the number of politically imprisoned is only rising with each day. Belarusian prisons are torture camps in the center of Europe, but hardly anyone from the West knows about it. There is also an open question of re-socialization of former political prisoners: these individuals often lack study and employment opportunities inside the country, and mechanisms of integration in the European labor market haven’t been sufficiently worked out yet. Together with the general difficulty of obtaining a European visa, this situation might seem as just another form of captivity.

Among those who are imprisoned, or at risk of imprisonment, are cultural figures who stand in opposition to the regime, opposing the official ideology built on nostalgia for the Soviet Union, memorialisation of the Great Patriotic War (World War II), and constant russification [3] of the country's population. Many aspects of contemporary art continue to exist only thanks to the initiatives of specific people (under threat of persecution). Public presentation of alternative projects in the country is virtually impossible. The Belarusian independent state, cultural institutions, as well as memory are being destroyed; this is occurring without overt military action.

Formats and approaches to the documentation and preservation of photographic documentation differ significantly between European countries. This is due to varying levels of social and cultural support throughout different periods of history, the scale of military conflicts and political repressions experienced by the population of a particular country.

In totalitarian and authoritarian regimes historical archives are often limited, with no independent memory-institutions engaged in analysing and preserving the country's history at the state level.

The access to many Internet resources is limited [4]. There are no digital archives of photography museums.

To fill this gap, I am working on creating alternative practices and mechanisms for the preservation of photography. In 2017, I founded VEHA archive [5], a platform for collecting vernacular photography and analysing the visual history of Belarus. But since the 2020 protests, the regime has sought a monopoly control over all public spheres and the process of presenting the country's history and working with archives and topics of national culture is perceived as posing a security risk.

The territory of today’s Belarus has been a confluence of various states, under different cultural, economic, and religious influences. Many wars have taken place on this terrain, limiting the accumulation of knowledge and the preservation of archives. For example, some Belarusian photography archives were taken away to Russia.

The questions of nation and nationality in today’s Belarus do not belong with the new wave of nationalism, occuring in other European countries. In Europe, the concept of forming and negotiating nations is already outdated. Such discussions seem patriarchal. Today, Belarusians are forced to answer questions of the 19th century about language and national revival, resisting Russia's colonial influence. But Belarus has its unique dictator, who is against nationality. Therefore, it turns out to be a schizophrenic state of independency, a state without the support of national culture.

Aside from such internal problems, there's Russia, willing, like any empire, to suppress the development of its colonies. A Belarusian national movement does not happen in a democracy, but in a state transitioning from authoritarianism to totalitarianism.  This complex and not yet completely understood or culturally digested experience sparks discussions about the national idea, but does not enter the global discourse.

The first and last democratic presidential elections in Belarus were held in 1994. After the turbulent collapse of the USSR, the elected president successfully responded to the public demand of so-called "stability". At that historical moment, there were no democratic institutions inside Belarus; people voted intuitively, not understanding what a real election was. Repression and total control within the Soviet system led to a kind of political atrophy of the population. Belarus is not an exception: populism, against a backdrop of poverty, came to power in Russia, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan, and other post-Soviet countries.

In Belarus, information autocracy was systematically being constructed. Television and newspapers came under state control in the 1990s. Censorship regulated the information field within the country, creating an illusion of prosperity domestically and abroad. Despite the legislative violations and mass repression accompanying every subsequent election in Belarus, representatives of a number of Western countries repeatedly expressed their "deepest concern", but nevertheless continued to engage in trade with Belarus, thereby contributing to the militarization of the authoritarian regime. And even now, almost four years after the once again falsified presidential elections and two years after the full-scale invasion of the Ukraine, Belarusian civil society continues to struggle for attention in the information field.

Today our citizens live within their society, aware of its problems and strive to improve the situation. The 2020 protests in Belarus were an example of a new form of revolution, where, thanks to new technology and the rapid spread of information, everyone could be a leader and involve new people in political processes. However, as in the case of Hong Kong, (r)evolution occuring within the society does not damage the pillars of the regime, which is becoming more repressive, maintaining control’s totalization [6].

The reinforcement of control and censorship also affected the appearance of Belarusian art and the way arts are presented in the public sphere. With galleries closed, the exhibition format became participatory, focusing more on meanings rather than forms.

Many artists explored themes of history, archives, trauma and memory by creating platforms

such as: Anti-war coalition art, Kalektar.org, Veha which gather the work on aforementioned topics.A lot of Belarusian artists reflect on preservation and erasure, memory and oblivion in their works nowadays.

But then, "It’s not the time now", is what the artists from Belarus might hear from European curators. For example, I have faced a cancellation after the beginning of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when the representatives of a cultural institution in Europe simply stopped responding to letters regarding an already agreed-upon exhibition with defined deadlines. Sometimes Belarus just disappears from the list of participants, though individuals from the country are present in the exhibition. For example, I was invited to participate in the Polish-Ukrainian project for the creation of posters. Many artists had double "citizenship", while I was mentioned as a Polish artist. 

And all this is with the desire to cancel Belarusian culture in the frame of "decolonisation", it is absurd. In the country, which throughout the centuries has been treated as "a buffer zone" between Europe and the Russian empire, a permanent russification hasn’t stopped and is only gaining momentum. This politically correct treatment simply shows off the real insensitivity to subject matter. 

The previously mentioned peaceful protests of 2020 were the only viable option, which led to widespread consolidation and irreversible changes in society. Therefore, for Belarusians, the events of 2020 constituted a revolution. Through societal solidarity in demanding change, Belarus became a political subject. However, after Russia's full-scale invasion of the Ukraine in 2022, Belarus found itself in political captivity [7], failing to achieve democratic changes.

Russia gradually absorbs Belarus, and Belarusians are subject to disappear as an independent country. Despite active protests against the war in Ukraine and against both Belarusian and Russian regimes, many of our artists face cancel-culture on institutional and everyday levels in Europe as a result of their passport.

Academic institutions abroad refuse to support scientists and students from Belarus, galleries terminate cooperation, since they either see no difference between Belarus and Russia, or agree to Ukraininan colleagues’ demands not to cooperate with representatives of the aggressor country.

We live in a new era but are compelled to discuss the construction of nationhood because in Belarus’ current state heritage is a dynamic communicative structure. Culture, which has the potential to formulate new meanings, had not previously built stable and robust socio-political institutions, before the invasion of Ukraine. And this is why through acts of remembering and archiving, people are (re)defining the heritage for themselves. And thus, archiving can be a creative practice in Belarus nowadays.

The cancellation of Belarusians is gradually decreasing, but this is  related to the waning attention on the war in the Ukraine. Moreover, the global level of conflict and violence has increased so much that the number of political prisoners in Belarus neither impresses, nor concerns anyone in Europe.

Since last year, Belarusian government restricted the rights of those in exile, including a ban on passport issuance abroad and arresting returnees. This regime used facial recognition technology for the tracking and identification of street protesters in 2020-2021. Any partisan symbol, such as a white sheet of paper on a window, can be a reason for detention.

The fact of being expelled from your own country and the lack of stable and sensitive support inside the EU adds to the feeling of frustration and places Belarusian artists and researchers in a rather precarious position. I don’t want this apparent "double punishment" to be heard as a complaint. To my mind, everything that's going on right now is developmental. It's not easy and sometimes it's not fair. But there can also be a lot of positive things. Artists in emigration have more opportunities to discover themselves, show their work publicly, learn languages, etc. And it is not the first wave of emigration. After every presidential election in Belarus, those taking part in protests were forced to leave the country. But, before 2020 people abroad didn’t really form a diaspora or solidarity networks, they integrated and disappeared. The new process taking place now includes openly identifying as Belarusians and forming communities, institutions, and groups in a range of different countries. On the global scale, these processes might seem small, but progress and change are obvious.   

The language of art is a language in which one can freely discuss problems, seek solutions, and create new meanings. Forced emigration and the inability to return have given me the distance to understand its internal processes better. We can spend days discussing ways to exist as "a buffer zone" between the West and Russia, or we could rather consider our cultural community beyond state borders.

What Belarusian artists are capable of influencing today, is the degree of preservation of cultural layers. Preserving data for (re)interpretation, rather than restoration. I’m creating an online photo archive, making objects related to history, and this is my form of resistance.

That I ended up in this booklet is a coincidence, but my voice will become part of the puzzle, providing information for you and preserving data for restoration.

Photo by VEHA Archive, collection "Ruins of Belarus"
Translated from Belarusian by Hanna Horn

Support by EU4Belarus-SALT eu4belarus.info