Object:
Telephone «for the outside»
The exhibition of the Museum of Resistance presents a spare "clean" telephone with which Mykhailo Rai went outside during the occupation, as well as the book "Kherson. Diary of the Occupation", created after the liberation in cooperation with the Gallery "Sklad No. 5", Cherkasy.
Two telephones and the Kherson diary of Mikhail Ray
This is a story about how an artist kept a diary during the occupation, which became known all over the world.
When Russian troops entered Kherson, photographer Mikhail Ray decided to stay in the city as long as he could to capture the life under occupation. His weapons were texts and photo collages, as well as a phone from which he could send messages to the outside world.
Actually, he had two phones: the "main" one, with which correspondence was conducted, and the "empty" one, that is, thoroughly cleaned of any private information, without access to social networks, without a history of messages. During the occupation, all pro-Ukrainian activists, and in general all normal people, knew that you had to carry a "clean" phone with yourself, because at any moment you could be detained and searched by the Russian military. In the case of the slightest suspicion, a person was taken for questioning, there, under torture, the password to the phone was punched out, and thus the Russian FSB could obtain even deleted information. So, with a "clean" phone, it was safer to walk around the city and pass through roadblocks.
What Mikhail shared on social media would definitely get him "a ticket to the basement." His digital photo collages conveyed the surreal atmosphere of a nightmarish dream from which Kherson wanted to wake up, but could not. Thanks to the perspective from his online diary, Kherson was soon seen both by the whole world and even in Russia. Mikhail named his series of collages "Kazkar" (A fairy tale teller), referring to the President of Russia.
Fragments of the "Occupation Diary".
Kherson, Ukraine, 25th day. Z is for Zombies
Today was probably the last protest of Ukrainian Kherson. The Russian Guard, which arrived in the city a day earlier, violently dispersed the protesters with stun grenades and automatic rounds. There were wounded. Protests are now banned, and people continue to disappear. Officials in the villages are increasingly being picked up and taken in an unknown direction. Most likely, for polite conversations about the prospects for the creation of the "Kherson People's Republic". Ukrainian humanitarian aid was not allowed to enter the city again. In Chornobayivka, in addition to Russian servicemen, 3 million chickens are dying of hunger at one of the largest poultry farms in Europe. There is tension in the air. Many understand that the relative quiet that has lasted in recent days is the calm before the storm.
I often hear from people in the country of storytellers that they are not interested in events in Ukraine, because they are "apolitical". Sometimes they just don’t believe us and retell fairy tales heard in their official fairy-tale media. Of course, it is much more pleasant to believe that you are involved in the great cause of a great nation than in the military blackmail of neighboring countries and killing of civilians. Not for the first time in history, millions of people have become zombie-like, unable to see, hear, think, speak and feel empathy. Being apolitical is not a term that can be used to justify cowardice and indifference to barbarism that is being committed at your expense and under your responsibility. Being apolitical is the powerlessness to change something in your country, which results in someone replacing your goals with their own, destroying your life. Soon the fog will clear, and you will face reality at full speed, as it once was in the 90s of the previous century. And when you face this reality, you will plunge into the most unpleasant emotion – shame, for a long time. But only in case if you didn't do what you could.
Photo: “Occupation Diary” of Mikhail Ray
