Bud’mo

Multi-channel video with sound

Berlin, DE
2023

Nadia Kaabi-Linke produced this video installation specifically for the exhibition Seeing Without Light. It was shot in West Ukraine in March 2023, one year after the full-scale Russian invasion. The artist filmed in two specific sites, each representing an episode of violence from the Second World War period (1939–1945). The first one took place in the forest Chornyi Lis, where Soviet troops shot and buried hundreds of prisoners interned at the local headquarters of the NKVD (Soviet Interior Ministry and secret police). The second happened in Bronitskyi Lis near Drohobych, where German troops organized the massacre of almost half of the nearby city’s population.

— Sam Bardaouil

 

 

 

 

For her solo exhibition at Hamburger Bahnhof, the artist has created a new video and sound installation that was shot in Ukraine in the spring of 2023. Titled Bud’mo (a popular Ukrainian toast that loosely translates to “let us be”), the work is a poetic yet sobering acknowledgment of tragedies perpetrated by man and of cycles of life and death. The video and sound composition was produced in Ukraine during Spring 2023. The installation is a multi-channel projection that transports visitors to the so-called black “partisan forest” Chornyi Lis (black forest) and the Bronetskyi forest in Galicia. It refers to historical connections and partly forgotten or hidden overlaps of Ukrainian, German, and Russian history.

 

— Excerpt from the exhibition catalog

 

Timebased

Media
Video installation with sound

Duration
18“

Dimension
300 × 1000  cm

Exhibition
Seeing Without Light. Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie

Collections
Hamburger Bahnhof – Nationalgalerie, Berlin
Burger COLLECTION Hong Kong

Credits

Field Recording and Sound Composition
Ostap Manulyak
Photography
Oleksandr Roshchyn
Dolly Grip
Mihailo Melechin
First Camera Assistant
Dmytro Mislinchu
Second Camera Assistant
Mikola Nester
Editing
Timo Kaabi-Linke
Manager of Production
Vyktor Shevchenko

Directed by
Nadia Kaabi-Linke

© NKL 2023

Links
Seeing Without Light
Chorniy Lis, Ivano-Frankivsk
Bronetsky Lis, Druhobycz

Installation view of Bud'mo, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, 2023

Birds’s eye detail

Installation
Bud’mo, 2023

 

©Photo: Kaabi-Linke Studio | TiKL / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2023

As we finally reached our destination, we got stuck in the mud. Chorniy Lis – black woods in English – was where we wanted to shoot the first images for Bud’mo. A muddy path between farmland and a graveyard was the only way; without the digger that pulled our film truck step by step, we would have had no chance to get there. Then, on the horizon where the fields between Demjaniw Las and Chorniy Lis touched the sky, we saw the figure of a man approaching slowly. He came closer, took his time for a short chat with a goatherd nearby, and then came over to our truck. He had been looking for horseradish. Look what I found, he said. He was carrying a heavy shell covered in dirt. It was hard to dig up the ground. The fields were still full of stuff like this. The metal was heavily weathered and sticky with mud. Hard to tell whose shot it was. Germans? Russians? Ukrainian partisans? First or Second World War, who knows? And who would care, anyway, he said. The only thing that mattered to him was that it was still in the soil that should nourish the people who lived here. And, while looking for horseradish, it had always bothered him.
He laughed and moved on a few steps. Then he rummaged through his pockets and turned around. I also found these, he said, showing us a handful of bullet casings. They’re not that old, he said. They’re for sure of Soviet origin.

 

Timo Kaabi-Linke

Picture of the team for Bud'mo, Nadia Kaabi-Linke, 2023

Production team in Ukraine, from left:

Ostap Manulyak (Field Recordings and Composition), Nadia Kaabi-Linke, Oleksandr Roshchyn (Direktor of Photography), Dmytro Mislinchu (First Camera Assistant), Vyktor Shevchenko (Manager of Production), Mihailo Melechin (Dolly Grip), Mikola Nester (Second Camera Assistant), Timo Kaabi-Linke

 

©Photo: Kaabi-Linke Studio | TiKL / VG Bild-Kunst, Bonn, 2023