Repeat After Me, 2024
Open Group / Marta Czyż
„Repeat After Me” is a video of performative character. It presents civilian refugees, who talk about the war in Ukraine using remembered gun sounds - they imitate and encourage others to repeat. The audience can engage in the repetition in a space designed as a military karaoke bar of the future. Here, you will not hear the sounds of popular hits, but shots, blows and sirens, and the lyrics - description of deadly weapons. This is the soundtrack of war, recreated by its witnesses. By repeating after them, we learn the language of their experience. Open Group was founded in Lviv in 2012, by six Ukrainian artists. The core of the collective are Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach and Anton Varga. The video was filmed outside of Ukraine, in places, where Ukrainian refugees found shelter: Vienna, Wrocław, Berlin, New York.
The producer of Repeat after Me (2024) is Zachęta – National Gallery of Art. This film was created specially for the Repeat after Me ll exhibition presented at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, in the Polish Pavilion in Venice (20.04–24.11.2024), curated by Marta Czyż. Polish participation in the 60th International Art Exhibition in Venice is financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland.
© Open Group: Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, Anton Varga, 2024. The presentation at Open’er will be the first one after Venice Biennale.