Echoes of War
Audio-video installation, 2014
The work is produced as a metaphorical reflection on Russian aggression in Ukraine and its imperialistic effect on Belarus. Uncovering hidden political processes and strategies of modern media wars, the installation is capturing a new chapter in global geopolitic, where intoxicated alpha males over and over break the ground under civilians’ feet, where media channels play a deceitful ping-pong, forcing people to hate each other.
Belarus takes a pseudo-neutral position in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict. Depending on Putin’s Russia by many aspects, the country has no voice in the situation.
Artist's Bio:
Jura Shust was born in Belarus, 1983. Being a front man of the conceptual audio-visual group IOD, he studied Media and Visual Communication at EHU (Vilnius, LT). Focused on political engaged art, he was involved in international projects as “Opening the Door?” CAC (Vilnius, LT) and “Europe n” GFZK (Leipzig, DE). In 2013 Shust obtained MA in Fine Arts at KASK (Ghent, BE). A year later he had a solo show at “Ў” gallery (Minsk, BY), and the group show “Coming People” at S.M.A.K. in Belgium Ghent, where he currently attends HISK residency program. A Brother and sister cleaning a carpet on the street that bears a post-soviet name “Peace street”. The sound is similar to a war cannonade, reflects from the concrete walls, wanders around the sleeping district and covers its indifferent body. This daily heartbeat immerses the street in a hypnotic trance, as if the war is becoming a part of it, more and more ordinary, less and less disturbing and tangible.