Dead do their work, 2016
Concrete, stain, grass. 50x30x40 cm
In the moment when everyone believes in the end of the history, it has remained about its recurrence. Life but not the time could be interrupted. Time is stable and constantly goes forward.
We wanted to breath out and close the book of the great battles. Nobody could imagine that small fights exploded in 1000 kilometers. Nobody could imagine that this cozy liberal world, to which we aspire, would be unsteady. Nobody can be confident in tomorrow. Stability is a myth that could not be sustained even by the politicians. And what shall we, who griped in a vice, do?
To live. To live counter to planet crises and sufferings, individual pain, losses and tragedy, overwhelming hopelessness. To live counter to all the prophesies of the end of the world.
Meanwhile our real human losses will feed our soil. Year after year their lost souls will nourish little weed sprouts with life, trees will fill its circulatory system, birds will make nests under blooming crowns. Every spring, every year.
Thousands of human victims, that flashed through social media timeline, will form the world of living beings. They are seeds for the humanity future. Today dead mold the landscape that doesn’t need the living being’s presence but it still doesn’t leave us behind. It is objective, sound circulation of time and life. Whatever happens dead do their work.
The history of mankind will never end till there are dead and alive. This recurrence exist beyond ideology, social and political formation, beyond religion. This is the matter of life and this is the only thing that holds human being in this world.
This piece was created as a reflection to personal loss of close person, the beginning of war at the Eastern Ukraine and poetry lines of Serhiy Zhadan:
They came here first and first they died
Blood on the shirts is just a spot
Even after the death, even when you’re dead
It’s possible to take care of grass and fields
Death seems like sorrow
But it always has its reasons
Dead do their work
In the grey area trees are in bloom
Olga Chekotovska 