PAUL CHANEY

2014 - 2024

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16,000cm x 60cm 

Graphite and coloured pencil on Fabriano paper

 

Editions:

Make Voices Be Heard, Fotograf Festival, 2024
Solo show, Tranzitdisplay, Prague 2016
 

Description:
A large-scale hand drawn diagram revealing the cosmic and geologic contingencies contributing to the dramatic rise of the industrial city of Donetsk, Ukraine, and its repeated ruptures into violence. 

 

The diagram attempts to represent the space-time continuum of materials existing at a single location (Donetsk) starting from the big bang until the present day, and attempts to locate the agency of human protagonists within cosmic and geologic agency. 

 

The diagram has two sections. The first section describes the origins of the geological materials underneath the city. It starts with the elements hydrogen and helium which formed 13.7 billion years ago at the birth of the universe, and then shows these materials transformed by stellar nucleosynthesis into the heavier elements of Iron, Carbon, Oxygen, Nitrogen and Calcium during the early stages of the universe's expansion. Each element necessary for the commercial production of iron and coal (the basis of the military-industrial complex of Donbas) is visually represented. The founding of the elements, their interactions with each other during the unfolding formation of the Universe, Solar System, Earth, Oceans, Atmosphere and Biosphere are described by the division and union of coloured lines representing each element. 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 changes scale and attempts to position the agency of various historical and contemporary figures within the context of this universal contingency by depicting the effect political events have had on the rate of extraction of raw materials from underneath the city. This section of the diagram is accompanied by vitrines containing archival  materials from the late 19th century.

 

The work reveals the simultaneously complex and impoverished modus of geo-philosophical analysis, and visualizes an unimaginable chronos and contingency in such a way that makes the conceit underlying the notion of the Anthropocene undeniable. The diagram expands upon a theory/fiction exploration of the ‘Carboniferous Insurgency against the Sun’ undertaken during research at FIELDCLUB and the installation The Sun is Black in Prague in 2011.

 

On a formal level, the work explores representation, diagrammatisation and scientific abstraction as an epistemological problem, and mounts a challenge to the notion of the site specific by asking the question - if we accept universal contingency, just where does the site end?

 

Background to the work:
Research for the work started in Donetsk in 2012. The work was planned to be permanently installed at Izolyatsia – Center for Cultural Initiatives in the city of Donetsk itself. Due to the outbreak of violence and the subsequent occupation of Izolyatsia by DNR militants in 2014 the work was never completed. The work had effectively become displaced along with more than 1.5 million inhabitants of the Donbas region. 

 

Studio-based research for the work continued in the UK and during a residency at Bergen Kunsthall, Norway in 2015. The first paper edition of the work was shown in Tranzitdisplay in Prague in 2016. The work was remade and shown again in Prague as part of ‘Make Voices be Heard’ – a group exhibition across multiple venues exploring contemporary colonialities on the European Continent for the 2024 edition of the Prague Fotograf Festival. A scale model of the building in Donetsk that was scheduled to originally house the installation was included in this exhibition.

Historical background:
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 types of military hardware, but also the iron rails that soon spanned the Empire, rapidly enabling a belated wide-scale industrialisation and the future establishment of the USSR's military/industrial superpower status.

Donetsk was developed upon a uniquely accelerated military industrial complex that has repeatedly led to its destruction throughout modern history. The city has been at war five times since 1900 as different forces sought control over its military/industrial assets. After its founding in the 1870's, the city attracted economic migrants from all over the Russian Empire looking for a new start. During the Soviet period, Donetsk became a favourite city of Stalin who regarded it as already deculturalised. During Stalin’s red terror, the city became a refuge for displaced Kulaks and suffered disproportionate and violent reprisals. After the Second World War, deterritorialised peoples were forcibly moved to the Donbas from different regions of the USSR and then conditioned into the mythology of the Stakhanovite hero worker. 

 

After the breakup of the USSR, the heavy industries of the Donbas region were privatised and Donetsk was subject to extreme corruption, violence, and gang warfare – known locally as 'The Donetsk Wars'. Out of this chaos the Donbas oligarchy arose who then legitimised their style of medievalist technocapitalism by forming the Party of the Regions, placing at their head the former bus mechanic and gang leader from Donetsk - Victor Yanukovych.

The legacy of the rapid industrialisation of the Donbas is a deep and lasting identity confusion – a condition that has been the basis of political manipulations in the region starting well before 2014 and continuing to this day. The 2014 Ukrainian 'Revolution of Dignity' against the corrupt political oligarchy of the Donbas, and the subsequent eruptions of war in the region and beyond, are a direct consequence of a cosmogeologic reality.

Link to review in frieze magazine 2016

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All images on this page: Fotograf Festival, Prague 2024