 Welcome to today's safe havens, freedoms talk. My name is Ibeda Ramirez and it will be moderating today's conversations. Today's talk will engage in conversations on how archival interventions by choice or necessity can offer pathways from reflection, preservation of local histories as well as space for subversive persistence, and particularly at the personal or hyper local level. I'm really happy to be joined today by artists, archivists and memory workers, Lesia Chalca and Leah Dosier. I wanted us to have a conversation on how archives in our archival interventions can challenge power. While my research focus is within diasporic archives, in particular relating to indigenous communities in the Americas. I can see overlap amongst three of us, whose work and in many cases live personal experiences, consider archives memory as bridges to displace an ancestral lands as a result of past and ongoing colonial and imperial projects. There are a lot of diasporas originally originate largely through the colonialism. I am of a matter and get your descendant from Koyasu, which is present day Bolivia, but I'm speaking to you from present day Detroit. Also the anti the territory of the Anishinaabeg, who includes three fires Confederacy are the obituary, Ottawa, and what about what about me peoples here in the United States. In a recent panel, Dr. and I'm Bella Lopez and Afro indigenous scholar and poet reminded us that much of force migration, whether in the global south here in the western hemisphere, or within the United States, for years does act transatlantic slavery, as always in a part of colonialism, whoever said communities have made such records to, in fact, historical admission from the official record has long been part of an intentional long legacy of targeted epistemological which marginalized communities. In essence, records and archives of expressions of power relationships that are socially mediated, or as archivist Dominique Lester describes assertions of power. Archivist memory workers artists and others within this work center, the specific constructions and negotiations of memory of the socio political context other to how records are created. What conversations actions need to take place for local histories nuances and local preservation practices to be honored incorporated in this work. Those are some of the questions I look forward to talking about today with both of you, but to kick off our conversation. Leslie and Leah will guide us through visual represent presentations of their respective work in relation to archives and memory. So, let's see, we'll start with you for your presentation. And now, only in the form of online, we collect thematic photos from private collections and archives and add them to our archive, combine them with one topic, and publish them in books. The first such project is the best side, which describes the life of the interwar period. On the photos, you see people in the folded historical period, but it is clear to make photos with their best side. On the background of fabric, it is such a test to imitate the photos of the smoke in the studio, which were photos of the studio, which were only in the cities. But here, on these photos, we see the jacarot of the Belarusian village. Here, in 2018, the first photo book was published from the photo studio of this collection. The money was collected by the crowd-company, then in 2018, it was still in March in Belarus. The next one is a book. The next project is called The Watcher of the evening and I will start with a photo of the smoke. This is a portrait drawn on the background of fabric by Davanov. In this project, we have two embellishments of people. We have a collection of Amal 2000 photos of the smoke and, as it were, photos of the smoke of the Belarusian visual history of the 20th century. These two plots, fun and storage, were mostly documented, and more than a dozen of them were kept in the family archive. We made a few copies with this photo book, and so we gave out two volumes in the 21st century, in Belarus, according to the law. And in this photo book, not all of them, but the best part was when 300 of them were lost in this book. And the second project is the people of the forest. These are photos of the smoke of Belarus, their relationship with wild nature and forest. The same way, on the last three days, a book was published, but already in Poland. In a certain way, in the time of the day, we work together, collect photos of the smoke and create such an independent archive. I can say that now I don't want to go to Belarus. I was forced to leave in the 21st century, after my detention and prison. And about the political process, I am now in immigration and working on a family photo book, the same way over the archive of protests in my country. Okay, thank you so much, Lesia. And now I'll give the floor to Leah. Hello everyone. Thank you for having me here. So, I'm Leah Doslav, I'm an artist. I also have some background in cultural anthropology. I'm originally from Donetsk, from Eastern Ukraine. Now this city is occupied by Russia. So when I moved out because of war, I started naturally to work with collective trauma and war in my art practice. And then I brought it to my perspective. And now, also together with my co-author, and we work on collective traumas, historical traumas, and worse in general. And I want to share with you one of our projects, which is actually based on an archive we stumbled upon. Let me start sharing. Am I sharing? Yes, okay. So, this project is called Black and Blue, and it started actually with an archive, a very specific archive, when it was an artistic residency in Vienna a few years ago. Some family I know invited me over a demo, and they asked, then asked me if they can show me something, if they can share their family archive with me. But it was very specific archive. It was an archive of some person who was a father of a person who invited me over. And this person was his owner of archive. He was a soldier who served in the Waffen during the Second World War. And his family wanted to share his archive with artists and give us an opportunity to. Think about what can be done with this material, how can we work with it. And believe me, it was a very massive body of knowledge, historical knowledge, because this guy who managed to fight. He brought his camera with him, and he, like, documented, like, every, every place he went to. Also, this archive has very specific tags, places, dates. And what was very, very interesting about this archive is that when the soldier went to East. I mean, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, also some parts of Russia, he would take pictures like here. It was ground, soil, dirt, like, nothing, just soil as a resource. Mostly, I mean, just one, one page, but I mean, there are hundreds of pictures like that. And then also he had some breaks and locations. And for that he went to West. Then he would take pictures like that. I mean, beautiful pictures of buildings, of architecture, you know, culture, civilization, something beautiful. Something based on culture and knowledge. And also what was very specific about this archive that you can very find any traces of actual war. The ruins, dead people, something really bad. No, nothing. Just some places and beautiful pictures of western civilization, like here. And then when he went back to the front, like here. So we decided that maybe we can understand that archive as perpetrator's case, you know, because mostly when we talk about archives, we talk about point of view of victims or oppressed people, oppressed categories. But this archive was something very else. So we started to think about what we can do with that, because I mean, it's nice to have an access to archive. It would be many things, it would be a source of historical knowledge, for example. But when you're an artist, you have to create something from it. So we decided to recreate pictures. And some photos we saw in this archive. We use actual soil, I mean, literally. And we created some number of pictures from this eastern region. It's all mixed. It's this particular one, I think it's from Ukraine, near Odessa, but also Poland, Belarus, Russia, and so on. It's a mixed because for him it was like, you know, we land on the east, which is more like soil and resource and something that have to be taken over. With some occasional people in it with some occasional buildings somewhere in the ground. But mostly it was about this way. Ground and so as a resource. You know, as part of land. Sometimes like this, and also like this. And more of them and also later added this traces of blue paint. Because also what we work with is absent. And sometimes it's much more telling than objects that are in the picture. Because in this photo, like in this body of archive. There, there were very little mentions of war, I mean, there was something like three or four pictures with actual wins. But no more and no traces of Holocaust, for example, nothing like that. Never a dead person, nothing like that. So we added this blue traces to show that one hand. It's like sky in skies blue and it's a guy so it can be a buffer. So he's found a big amount of time up there. But also if you saw pictures from guest chambers. There are some light blue traces of gas, because gas produces this kind of blue paint. So so we wanted to mark the space of absence with some present presence of atrocities. And they're like not here in the frame but they are still here. And also we added this beautiful architectural pictures from various other places. Yeah, that's how it looks in space. And we printed them really small. And this picture made from soil. And also we added some video to this project because I mean nothing has happened in here in the video. So we added some sound for a picture to add this notion and just in this feeling of time. And also soil or the word to something you can touch and something you can feel as, you know, as the ground. Yeah, I think I saw this all from my side and maybe we can discuss later. Yeah, that sounds like a great idea. And thank you so much Leah for endlessly after your presentations and I look forward to talking a little bit more about both of your works. Now, now as we transition to the to the conversation phase. So I, like I had passed on some of the questions that I wanted to kind of talk about this today. I guess one of the questions that kind of kicking this off was sort of thinking about you know how both of you are using archival interventions. And it's, you know, you both talked about it a little bit already in your presentations but how is that kind of taking place in your artistic practice. Or how does that maybe how is that grounded in your own local identities networks you know that's part of you know your practice or also maybe cultural memory traditions rooted in history or geo localities. Yeah, so maybe less. Yeah, you want to start and then we can go with Leah. Okay. Well, the first thing is to say about authenticity, then the official policy of memory in Belarus. These people practically do not have access to their history and the document of memory. Well, the process changed, I don't know how to summarize it. Well, this archival was meant to attract attention from ordinary people to their own unique history, to show their importance in the history of society, to work with history of study. We chose that this is one available tool at this moment to work with what we have. And then, for example, our last project, or it seems to be about landscapes, it was a project of people in the forest, the forest that I have been working on for 40% of the Belarusian territory. I mean, I think it's true to very different stories. It's a brief word, brief 2014 and now, because when we're talking about authenticity, it means that you have an access to something right, that you can actually work with your archive you can hold in your hands, and now this photos as a physical object. It's becoming very problematic because, for instance, my old version of archive now is in Donetsk, it's occupied, I have no idea what happened there, and it's not only just about my identity. It's not about local identity, but about my Ukrainian story and story of my family in general, because my archive, my family almost started from the beginning of the 20th century. I think the most out of your picture is even pre-revolution, probably late 19th century. So, now it's lost technically. We don't know what's happening. I don't have any pictures, like, of my grandmother whom I still remember. And now it seems that memory, like living memory is longer, can survive while some physical archives cannot. So I still remember people who are on the pictures which now are lost. And it's very problematic, and I mean on very many levels, on historical level, for example, because, for example, recently by Russian shellings was destroyed an archive of criminal stuff from Soviet period. And now historians cannot work with it, it's lost, because some parts were digitalized, some not. And my role as an artist now I think to find a solution to start to think in this direction, like, what we can do now, what can be done, how can we work with this very problematic situation when, like, real archive, real documentation is absent, or we cannot get access to it, how can we re-imagine it, how can we work with this knowledge of archive, with this idea of an archive, with this memory of something which is supposed to keep the memory. Yeah, so it's now it's getting more complicated, but I mean, it's also very interesting that probably I would prefer not to have such an opportunity to answer this situation. Yeah, thank you both listening and reading also your responses. I think, yeah, I think absolutely. A lot of the times, like you're saying Leah, and like you mentioned, Lesia, these sort of spaces, specifically when literally the humanity of the people of certain groups is the point is for that for the destruction and obliteration and that includes also language and culture and etc. And so what do you do sort of, you know, when you either can physically access it like you're kind of saying Leah, or it's been destroyed, or you're literally prohibited from practicing it out loud. So, and I think it's interesting how both of you, I think reading about your work, and how you sort of, and your writings are looking at some of the, I think at the archive that you have, Lesia, how it's very much the personal or the family archive I think has sort of been a a common theme and I think it's, you know, one thing that I said at the beginning was that a lot of the times right it's sort of these institutional or sort of like bigger kind of archive that even if they are in essence existing a lot of times they also have a lot of pieces and are sort of curated to kind of say a certain historical sort of recollection to, to I guess to appease those in power. And so I think I'm really interested also in my work in the personal or the family archive. You know, I think because it's a very unmediated or immediate it also right, you know, I think allowing us to really witness our specific constructions and negotiations of memory right. Right, right, like the archive, the, the archive right and photos of Belarusians like in the forest because of that connection with, with nature, you know, and and and maybe the tactile sort of you know like being in a place and, you know, and that sort of like sensory experiences being memories, right? And so I feel like the personal or family archive in some cases can sort of be that, that kind of in some way space that kind of witnesses these sort of kind of mediations happening with other objects, right? Or photographs or paper or, you know, in my case, you know, dance is something that I think a lot about, you know, if I were to say, what's in your personal archive, what's in your family archive, I'd probably say, oh, like probably, you know, dance steps, maybe photographs of dance steps of, you know, certain dances from Bolivia. So I think my next question, you know, I think, you know, kind of, yeah, why have both of you, I guess, and you kind of touched on it about this, like kind of what, why have both of you incorporated the familial or the personal archive a lot, you know, or maybe kind of what do you think that that sort of type of archive that actually a lot of the times is usually, you know, within professional archival studies, at least in the United States, is very much sort of put to the wayside and not in kind of ignored. Why do you think maybe, why do you think that maybe the set of archive can sort of, you know, provide to the conversation, whether a creative or maybe, you know, or just kind of archival conversation and how has it kind of manifested in your work, both of you? Well, that is, the question is absolutely about the familial or the personal archive, and here, of course, we have a certain situation with Lee, absolutely, because it is one of the information we have, we have access to our history of others, except for the familial archive, but when you work with the familial archive and you can say that we have a private memory or any historical idea of having a voice and a vision, and therefore it is a very important factor for the perspective in general of history, because at the end of the institution, these voices and vision do not arise and are only placed on a certain normative symbolism that is just to be translated, but also easily filled with new senses. Therefore, for me, the future is when each and every actor becomes walking through their history and having access to the archive, creating space for discussion and memorizing the memory, they are better friends of history. I think on a personal level, for me, my familial archive is a remembering because as a child, I used to look through it very frequently. I mean, I loved to touch it, to read all these small letters and photos to ask questions about, okay, who's this guy, who's this guy, oh my God, grandfather in Norway, this is new because I mean, this man is so handsome, but wow, I mean, it was my real impression because I discovered who just photos of my grandfather, who I know is an old man already, he was super handsome and a young person. And also for me, as archives could show a gap between official knowledge and family history, between what could be seen and what is remain hidden for a long time because as I started to talk about my grandfather, he was born in 32nd, 1932. This is the year when it's great for me all the more in Ukraine started and my grandfather survived. But as I mentioned, he was super handsome, he got super good education in hierarchy, despite he was from small village in central Ukraine, which was really tough in the 50s in Soviet Ukraine. And then he moved to the next, when my father was born, when I was born. I mean, for me, he was an icon of success. I mean, this ideal man, it was him. And then a few years ago, he wrote kind of memoir, kind of my memory, what I remembered, and he gave us all to read it if we are okay with it, because also he mentioned us. I mean, he's still living, he's 19, but he's still lives. And I started to read about his early years, and I was like, oh my God, he was like, okay, I survived a whole lot more, but it influenced me so badly that I was ugly. I was unhappy. I was in poor health. And I mean, it's a man who still, even now, exercising twice a day. So, you know, it's like picture, self-image of person who went through some kind of trauma. And how can we see this person? It's very different. It's very different. And this giant gap between it, I think it's very telling. And also, we cannot discover it when we just look at the pictures. But I mean, together with personal story, I think it can work out very well. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think kind of, right, we can kind of make assumptions. We can kind of make, maybe even kind of have, in some ways, sort of an incorrect interpretation what actually the person, persons actually think of themselves. And I think, Leah, last day, I mean, in your written response that you sent over, I think you talk about also how in the level of family archives and even that, so from what I understand, I think also sometimes it can even, in some ways, be also manipulated as well, right? Like it's also like sometimes not even like the space of the family or personal archive is also absolvance of sort of that, that maybe the institutional archive falls under consistently. So right, and I think that's why also sometimes, yeah, like we, it could be mediated, it could be unmediated, the personal family archive or it could be mediated, right? And so I think, yeah, and I think both of you in terms of it's not always very much so, maybe, yeah, it's not so maybe like perfect or maybe it kind of could, you know, you sort of like, you know, the accompaniment of stories or of the voices or of narrations of folks themselves or we can also make assumptions too. So I thought that was really interesting that both of you say as well, because a lot of the time maybe, you know, one is sort of like praises the family archive or the personal archive, you know, I sort of as innocent or I sort of like with no imperfections, but it also, you know, can fall to that, to the manipulation or to maybe sometimes that. So I thought that was interesting. I don't know if I'm, yeah, I don't know if I'm, Leah, I don't know if you can maybe, yeah, if you have anything to, based on what Leslie, I mean, Leah said that maybe you like to kind of respond for what I said. Yeah. No, I mean, it's this conversation is so broad that I can go in hours. I mean, so we really have to narrow it down and maybe I would mention, I mean, I started to talk about it, that I'm really interested in what's absent because the picture, I mean, photograph as a medium is very limited. I mean, it has its own limitation and what is in the frame. It's sometimes not, what is this all about? I mean, if we read it, no, Marianne Hirsch or, you know, other people who wrote about Holocaust, we can, but also what is very, very, very bad. That we also have the situation now based on our experience. And when we look at the photos of people who survived through some horrible events, sometimes you cannot tell from their faces or their posture or their clothes that they have been through something. Yeah, I mean, we read this in Marianne Hirsch when she wrote about a herality who survived in a concentration camp and then it was a young woman. And then she took a picture and sent this picture to everyone just to let them know that she survived. And also there is this picture in the book and you can see just little, like a young girl standing near some tree and you cannot tell that she experienced some really bad things. And now my friend who like survived in Wucca and she is now in the United States on some scholarship. She's like, oh, you know, people tell me all the time you look much more better than they would imagine based on your experience. I mean, what kind of command is that? What kind of, you know, what's happening? Ah, I see. And, Lea, you've already made a comparison of my current photos, right? As if you've already done it with your own time. Well, I can add that the old photos, as Lea said, were limited because it was not available to most people and there were not many of them. Well, most of them repeated various such stories and ways of photographing. Now, for example, to show a photo and a sense and with the current light, the influence, then Belarus, and what is the meaning of Belarus today, it is not documented. There are no independent media and with the current photo, there is no way to get it. There are also cases of repression, we just can't see it. And we can't, kind of, express our attitude to what is happening now. Lea, please, can you help me with the fact that I have enough food and I'm going a little, but maybe I'm not giving you anything. No, that's okay, it's just a question. Can you give something to what I said there, so that you can reflect, that's all. Okay, thank you. Okay, thank you to you both. So I think for the next question, I kind of wanted to get more a little bit into kind of the artistic expression of the materiality. And we've already started talking about like the limitations of materiality, like photographs for example, right? So I think in the question that I asked, specifically thinking about communities that have sort of faced forced displacement and kind of how that affects maybe the characteristics spatially, temporally of how diasporas remember. And so I kind of wanted to talk a little bit about that kind of the dialogue between, so you know, monomic systems and by monomic I think sort of like, what are sort of the artifacts or the expressions that are kind of used in tandem with expressing a memory. And so I'm interested, you know, in sort of how sort of this has this played out, you know, within your respective artistic expressions, its materiality when talking about memory. And then also what are some limitations, which I think came up already in your comments about, you know, family archives and the photograph. And I think Leah, you said something really interesting, right, that a lot of the times, you know, an archive in itself, you know, it can be sort of maybe stagnant or sort of, you know, kind of immobile and sort of kind of where, where it's sort of there's a limitation of kind of like how you remember and you have to maybe be in a place and maybe, you know, touch or smell or hear, I don't know, you know, the sort of sensory, sort of maybe, you know, arts can provide us. So yeah, so I think that's the question I'd love to ask both of you. Kind of how does materiality, expression, aid in this idea of the archive and memory, but also what are the limitations of it as well? So maybe Leah, we can start with you and then go to Lesia. I mean, limitation, I already mentioned, the main limitation is everything can be destroyed or taken from you. And it's also a situation which needs to be dealt with. And when the Russian occupation started in 2014, like we got this post to, you know, to think what could be done with it. Can we tell? And a few years later, we created together with Lesia in Kiev an exhibition. We called it Reconstruction of Memory. We invited artists with this background of internal displacement or who had to moved out from the circuit by territories to create something about what happened to them. Because at the moment, we were not sure how could we talk about what had happened. I mean, it's obviously an occupation. Obviously the territory is lost. Obviously people are suffering but what had happened on, you know, this like epistemological level. What language could be used in order to describe what happened? I mean, what we lost, but not in terms of material, like just, you know, stuff, but in terms of memory, in terms of identity, in terms of, you know, personal continuity of personal history, first of all. Yeah, so we asked people to create something for us. It was really interesting because we started this conversation, obviously too early, too early, because a lot of people refused to take part in it because they were like, no, no, it's too hurt. I cannot talk about it now, sorry, get back later. And some people recreated something for us. I mean, it was most obvious way to do and is it what we like implemented with this title Reconstruction of Memory? But also it was obvious that it's an attempt which would fail because how do you recreate a memory? It's impossible, right? So Anthony Dostoev, for example, he recreated his family album, the way he remembered it. And it was just very raw collage, very like brutal, I would say even, like in purpose, to show this process of occupation not just on the level of territory but also on the level of personal memory. And for this he used photos from anonymous sources, just from flea markets. We could not tell who these people were. We just can guess that they came from the same social background also from this post-Soviet or something like that. This from like shared space, more or less. And we could guess. So as he said in this description, I occupied memories of some people the way Russians occupied mine. So this was his attempt to think about what could be done with this, like lost materiality. And as for me, I tried to create like really long group photo. I just took this very long paper, 20 meters of paper, and I was just like drawing these silhouettes without faces, just unrecognizable people who are standing or sitting together, but you cannot recognize them. You cannot say who they were, you don't know their names. Because for me, this was like just, I tried to get this feeling of belonging chest through this performance, I would say, because it took me something about like 12 hours. I don't remember because, but it was great. Interesting, but somewhat painful experience because you know, the wrist is hurting. Yeah, so, so yes. And also some artists we invited, we constructed their personal space because it's also could be understood as part of our craft, right? Just in very, very literal sense, but anyway. So I absolutely agree with the question that this is a question after the war. And when it comes to, for example, the law of Belarusian independence and the relationship with the world around and among themselves, then I can say that up to the 20th year of Belarus, there were few people who knew and few people from Belarus and Russia, as well as two independent countries. And only during the active part of the protest, from the 20th to the beginning of the full-scale war, in the course of these 1.5 years, there was a period of self-preservation. When the ideas stopped actively in the middle and within the country, people began to express their identity and in general, to deal with their culture. But it was only 1.5 years, because it was very little time even for the ascension of what had happened. Well, and nothing ended, because the protests were going on. Lithuania has twice as much of this year. And, well, and the Russian troops that are now in Belarus. Therefore, the ascension and some basics are only after the end of the war. Now, in Belarus, there is total darkness. Therefore, it is made up of all independent cultural institutions, and I do not believe in all of them. And now, in Belarus, there is a turn for the Belarusian language, in Ukraine. You cannot speak your language. Well, I do not have any positive predictions now. Therefore, I have a lot of questions, and I would like to send them to you. Thank you. I guess, because both of you talk a little bit about this idea of, I think, yeah, sometimes like also like literally the inability to actually maybe make or produce or even like say, you know, how can I express in a material way a memory when it's also traumatic. And that's still something that you know, it's still happening, right? In the case of what's happening right now in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. So I think maybe going to the last question, just jumping a little bit around. Yeah, I'm thinking a lot about Lea about the work, you know, that you do in regard to commemorative practices, collective trauma, you know, to do this location repression and again, like kind of the epistemological violence, right? That has happened in the past or in the present, you know, in this case. And so, you know, thinking about, and also obviously, and I think this that's something that also indigenous peoples, a lot of that violence that maybe happened centuries and today, you know, still affecting generations later, you know, and internally, we were rating, you know, in us. And so I think considering what's happening, you know, in the world, you know, it's crucial as empathy and care within this type of work, within memory, archival work, whether, you know, it is within an actual archival institution or practice, you know, maybe in the context where I'm coming from, but also in terms of with artists, right, as you all are also working with communities or with other folks and, you know, kind of ask them to kind of share about, you know, and do community archiving. So I'd love to hear your perspectives on this specifically. Yeah. Yeah, I would say, I would say that empathy is a necessary first step. But I mean, it just first step and like, row empathy as an emotion, you know, it's just this feeling to be nice to understand one. It's not enough. I mean, now, especially when there's full-scale versions and versions started, we can definitely say that empathy is not enough for understanding because empathy is something very different from understanding. And it's, you know, it's a story. But then you have to develop real knowledge based on real facts based on personal maybe interactions with people who can explain what had happened to them, what is happening to them or what had happened to their ancestors, for example, for like previous generations, because empathy just very, something very fluid, you know, something in the air. And it's nice thing to say. Even patronizing sometimes also. Yes. Yes, it could be weaponized. I'm so empathetic towards you, but you know, you have to and blah, blah, blah, blah. So yeah, so it's just not enough. And I mean, when you look at this pro-Ukrainian initiative, pro-Ukrainian events, I mean, I've been in it, like since the worst started, I mean, I have a record and my colleagues and friends had even more because, I mean, what is the so-called public intellectuals who are now talking hats in Ukrainian case. Because, and I have this experience and this impression that sometimes, I mean, sometimes it's, you know, you are empathetic towards someone. You want to give a voice towards someone, but okay, what happened next? What is happening with this voice? Is this voice being heard? Is this voice being understood? Do like we as this so-called voice having real impact, you know. Is this a space for real change, you know? So, yeah, for me, it's very complicated. I mean, so, empathies, you know, could be tricky. Well, let's say that I... Well, it's clear that we are getting together with Povapov and all the photos that we are collecting and it is expressed in the way we use them. In the sense that we don't change anything, we make books, then we use them with Povapov. But for me, for example, personal contacts are very complicated and that's why all the work is done only in online format. At a given moment, I don't have the empathy to just, for example, talk to people about their family history, how it was before. Now I'm just trying to minimize communication with people to the point where my voice is just some kind of minimal, but it's cute. Thank you. I'm sorry. Thank you. And I think thinking a little bit about, right, the kind of like that work, right, of care, maybe better, maybe then empathy. I think just the, you know, like how, of the complexities also that kind of that encompasses. But I think maybe thinking about another theme that I found between both of your work, right, this idea also of agency, a lot of agency, and of sort of like also of action. And I think Lesia, you know, you talk a lot about the living archive, which I like really love. And so I think thinking about the question about, you know, how is an archive positioned, you know, to support or incubate, right, the building of sort of of solidarity amongst one another, relationships amongst one another, you know, and ultimately action, you know, you know, whether it is actually action in terms of like, you know, changing policy, you know, thinking about or like laws or, you know, or, you know, or even in terms of just like preserving history, which also in itself, you know, it's also a challenge in itself. So yeah, I guess I'd love to hear about kind of how does that look like for both of you in the context of your work? Yeah, agency. Thank you for the question about communication. The question about agency, I don't know what to say, people who are using it, But this was the whole question, it was all in the car, because it was sent out. Yes, yes, I know. This is the last one, I don't think it's written here that this is a question for you. I know, but it's 5. Sorry, we haven't talked about the technical part. Oh, okay. Okay. I can say that this is a question for the connection between generations. The line of just the transfer of information between generations, which is stored in family archives, it would be in ordinary life, it was torn. And it seems to me that this is our generation, the process of the archive and the update of this story of generations, of different generations of our fathers, ancestors, and so on. We can now communicate and build a joint phenomenon of our students, past, future, and, unfortunately, believing in your own history, you can get to the bottom, which are happening from the perspective of the experience, the experience of other people, other generations, and to make a biological basis. Now we are torn from our history, and that's why it seems to me that it is happening that it is happening now. For example, the war with Russia has never ended in Ukraine. It was like that for everything, for everything. Every generation was dying and trying to save themselves from the emperors, the same was with Belarus. It was destroyed, it was all permanent, and what is happening now, what is being done in Ukraine is just a refusal to convey this new generation to the outside world. Ukraine people remember that some relations with Russia, of course, in Belarus they forgot about it. Therefore, it seems to me that only the collapse of the first can mean for us the future. Yeah, I think I would like to mention not an art project, but another type of project we did together with my friends from NGO After Silence. They are collecting oral histories, and also they are working with the photo archives of people who were deported to Siberia from the western part of Ukraine after the Second World War. This event is largely unknown because, I mean, Ukrainian history has so many tragedies, deportations, starvation, another type of bad stuff that this deportation was somehow in the shadow. Yeah, but we worked with pictures, like photos of these people who survived this deportation and then went back to their home. So my friends invited me to find something in this picture to interpret somehow what can be seen on this picture, or sometimes what is not in there, which is also important. And we found some very interesting cases. For example, I mean, like, people had to survive. It was really tough there. Of course, they want to like left in the middle of nowhere with no food and nothing, but I mean, they had to live to survive together in some small building with really bad, really, really bad, you know, environment. Also, it was very cold and they lack of food and basic stuff, actually. But when you look at the pictures, you can hardly tell that it was bad. And people are smiling, people are posing in their best clothes. Somehow they all or some of them managed to sneak or to create already their national clothes, which was kind of not very welcomed or prohibited. Also, they managed to perform religious rituals, cultural rituals, which were prohibited by Soviet state, by regime. And also, sometimes you can see that people are smiling that they were dressed, but for example, that men are wearing women's clothes. You know, you can sometimes you can tell from how buttons, right? That it's like on the wrong side. Everything is nice. Or, for example, you can see that women in very nice dresses are posing or group photos, but sometimes you can see that all dresses or some of them are made from the same fabric. Because, because it was very limited. You can use what you can get in real life situation in normal real life situation. I can hardly imagine that women would be like glad to pose in same dress is made from same quote, same fabric. So I mean, you can tell from the small details that something is very long, but it's not obvious. And also what was very interesting, I think, also in this kind of identity level that there are almost no landscape photos. Somehow, they took pictures of themselves of some rituals, or how they work or how they do something, but it's barely any photos of, you know, forest, or, you know, nice river or sunset. Also, from their like memories, you can tell that they were like, they wanted to go back, and he wanted to see, you know, trees, they had at home, plants, they had at home, like animals, they had at home, that they perceive this landscape as something foreign. You know, so maybe I'm just, I'm just thinking maybe they were in conflict with this landscape with this nature and they didn't want to picture of it, or maybe it was like limited resource, and they just wanted to take pictures of something more important to them like their friends or family. Yes, so. It's like really interesting. I'm just thinking about some archives here in the US about Iranian diasporas that, you know, specifically once the Shah came to power, I believe, and a lot of people had to leave and assume they're going to come back and then couldn't come back and then a lot of the generations, you know, the kids that are born in the United States or found those photographs in suitcases and they said that a lot of them, specifically from middle class families found, you know, tons of photographs of, I believe it was like the specific lake or specific kind of vacationing spot that it's apparently like a lot of diasporic Iranians, you know, kind of had it was like a genre of photographs so I think it's interesting. I mentioned this idea of like, and you know, these are different, you know, in this case, people are remembering right like a positive association right of a natural nature spot right. So I was talking about the folks who are, you know, were displaced and just couldn't bring themselves to take photos of the landscape, because of the missing and the nostalgia of what was I guess the landscape back at home. So I think even in in in that kind of what are the patterns that I thought that was that was fascinating. So just being mindful of time. I just want to ask one last question just to kind of wrap up. And I wanted to go back to question for just to kind of close it up. And basically, I, yeah, I think it's a very simple question it just kind of is thinking about what, you know, let me go here. Okay. Kind of, you know, obviously, considering what's happening, taking place right now in Ukraine taking place right now in Belarus, you know, why is documentation archives so important in this current moment. And I want to turn the conversation on that question and that meditation. So maybe. You can start again. But it was, in a sense, why do you think that the documentation of the archive is just a direct archive and it's very important right now in Belarus. So let's go. Now the work of the archive with the archive is a work with our history. We work with family archives, as I already said earlier, with one of the available information that we have. Well, it's the same with everything that was done earlier, you can evaluate. The archive needs now to assess its trauma, assess the fact that it happens, it happened earlier. The archives will be needed for open courts and the archives will be needed for the future. All the archives were open. The people did not give up their history. So now we are working with family archives and we are working on the way the archives were open. How people sense their importance. I mean, what's now happening in Ukraine is a Russian invasion. Of Ukraine, I mean, it's obviously a colonial war with clear genocidal intent. And as all colonial wars, it also has the aim of erasing Ukrainian identity. So personal archives also could be perceived as a form of resistance. So we are very interested in creating circumstances when these archives can survive, can be digitalized or moved to safety. Also, because we need these to have this continuity of our history to have this resistance to this Russian narrative. And we don't ever, like, you know, real people or real country or real language. So basically, I mean, it's very obvious answer. It's very obvious reaction, but I mean, war sometimes demands really obvious reactions and really obvious actions. It's one of that. And also what Lesya mentioned, that we need to document what's happening now in order to give statements later, in order to bear witness to later, in order to receive a justice, because I think, yeah, we will do that. Just we need to strive first. Thank you both for being here today and having this conversation, collective conversation together. And also, I appreciate hearing directly from folks from our give us a memory workers and artists, you know, directly, you know, from Belarus and Ukraine specifically since a lot of people talk about that part of the world right now, but it's always important to hear specifically from the perspectives of folks who have experience and are experiencing what's taking place over there, because of Russian colonialism so thank you both so much. Just for for being here. And so, I guess, thank you and thank you all for for joining us today and and looking forward to keeping in touch.