Graphite and coloured pencil on Fabriano paper
A large scale hand-produced diagram revealing the sociological,
geo-political, and geological factors underlying the dramatic rise
of the industrial city of Donetsk and its repeated rupture into violence.
The diagram has two sections, the first of which describes the city solely
as a continuum of materials formed by stellar nucleosynthesis during the
early stages of the universe's expansion. Each element necessary for the
commercial production of iron (upon whose presence the city’s economy is based)
is visually represented; iron, carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium etc.
The founding of the elements, their reactions with each other during the
unfolding formation of the universe, the formation of the Solar System,
the Earth, the oceans, the formation of the atmosphere and biosphere are
described by the division and reunion of coloured lines representing each
element in the diagram. The first section of the diagram is one hundred
and thirty six meters long - each meter represents one hundred million
years of time. Human civilization makes its appearance in the last 0.1mm.
The second section necessarily changes scale and attempts to position the
agency of various human individuals within the context of this universal
geologic contingency, describing the effect historical figures and political
events have had on the rate of extraction of raw materials from underneath
the city. The work simultaneously reveals the complexity and impoverishment of
geo-philosophical analysis - and visualizes an unimaginable chronos in a way
that begins to reveal the conceit behind the Anthropocene concept. The work
mounts a challenge within the genre of the site specific by asking the question -
if we accept the concept of universal contingency, just where does the site end?
The project itself was started in Donetsk in 2012 (before the current military conflict).
Due to the escalation of violence, however, it was cut short before completion.
The planned installation site of the work was occupied by DPR militants in 2014.
The work had effectively become displaced along with 1.5 million inhabitants if
the Donbas region, however, Chaney continued to research for the work in his studio
in the UK and on residency at Bergen Kunsthall in 2015. The work was finally resolved at
Tranzitdisplay in Prague.
For two months the exhibition space became a laboratory. In the first room the audience
could see the immense diagram, a graphic visualization of the transformation of matter
throughout the deep history of the universe. In the second room the work followed the
complex threads of geological transformation and addressed their relation to the scaled
down socio-economic reality of the human. The ongoing conflict in the Donbas region was thus
contextualized as a product of the contingent interaction of slow geological processes and
turbulent industrial development.
Background history:
The city of Donetsk was founded by John Hughes, a British citizen
and self-taught engineer from Merthyr Tydfil, South Wales. Hughes
was commissioned by the Russian Tzar to start a massive ironworks
in the frozen Ukrainian Steppe in 1869, an impetus arising from Russia's
military failure during the Crimean War (1853-56). The Tzar, realising
that Russia's technologies of war were far less advanced than those of
his enemies, headhunted Hughes from London's Millwall Docks where he owned a
foundry specialising in the production of iron fortifications. Hughes raised
the necessary capital in London to form 'The New Russia Company' and construct
what quickly became the largest iron works in the Russian Empire. Hughes'
foundry in Donetsk was not only responsible for producing all manner of military
hardware, but also the iron rails that soon spanned the Empire, rapidly enabling
the belated wide-scale industrialisation and future military/industrial superpower
status of Russia and subsequently the USSR.
Donetsk was developed upon a uniquely accelerated military industrial complex
that has repeatedly led to its autodestruction throughout modern history.
The city has been at war five times since 1917 as different forces sought control
over its military/industrial assets. During the Soviet era Donetsk became a favourite
city of Stalin, who regarded it as a pre-existing model for his program of deculturisation.
Since the 1870's, deterritorialised workers had been brought from all over Russia and
conditioned into the mythologies of the productive hero worker. This made the population
particularly vulnerable to the Soviet propaganda that followed. The compound legacy is a
deep and lasting identity crisis. This fact has surely not gone unnoticed by the current
Russian administration during its recent manipulations in the region. After the breakup
of the Soviet Union the heavy industries of the Donbas region were privatised and Donetsk
was subjected to the worst kinds of corruption, violence, and gang warfare. The 1990's are
known locally as 'The Donetsk Wars', with hundreds of public executions and gang warfare
incidents fresh in the living memory of the younger generations. Out of this chaos the Donbas
oligarchy arose, who then legitimised their corrupt and violent medievalist style of ultra-capitalism
by forming the Party of the Regions, placing at their head a former bus mechanic and gang leader from
Donetsk - Victor Yanukovych. The 2014 Ukrainian 'Revolution of Dignity' against the corrupt political
oligarchy and the subsequent eruption of war in the Donbas are on some level direct
consequences of a geologic reality.
Chaney began developing the work with local research partners during repeated visits
to Donetsk between 2012 to 2014. The work was to be installed in time for the 2015
celebrations planned for the birthday of John Hughes. The diagram itself was designed
for a specific building on the territory of Izolyatsia in Donetsk. However, Izolyatsia
was occupied in June 2014 by the forces of the Donetsk People's Republic. The DPR continue
to use the art centre as a training camp, weapons storage facility, and military prison.
The rooms that were set aside for Donetsk Syndrome Diagrammatic have been used for torture
and executions without trial - by testimony of recently released prisoners. Research for
the work was abandoned temporarily when the war began. However, the work quickly took on a
specific cadence – the very socio-political elements that the work was attempting to reveal
and speculatively contextualise were now acting as agents upon the work itself. Donetsk Syndrome
Diagrammatic will probably never be installed in its intended site. It has fallen prey to its
local conditions and became 'non-sited'.
Link to review in frieze magazine 2016