ARCHIVO LAB | Visual Artist 2024

AGNIESZKA RAYSS

Poland

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

Agnieszka Rayss is a photographer, lecturer, and curator. She is a co-founder of the Sputnik Photos collective. She graduated in art history from the Jagiellonian University in Krakow, and now lectures at the School of Form at SWPS University in Warsaw. She is interested in topics related to myths, history and its reinterpretation, and the post-Soviet heritage of Central and Eastern Europe. Her early works were devoted to pop culture manifestations of transformation.

Website

LAB PROJECT

© Agnieszka Rayss

War on Telegram

I started to follow Telegram channels with coverage of the war in Ukraine 2 years ago. I watch videos users publish there and I take screenshots of the explosions, ruins, and battle scenes. I treat Telegram as a huge archive of conflict. I don't know yet what I will do with this visual collection, I will probably process it in some way, to ask a question about the nature and representation of war. Various images convey images of war - from painting, through photography, film, and modern technologies. Another such medium is social media, films recorded by "ordinary people" and professionals showing the heroism of soldiers and the enormity of destruction. A new war, very close, images similar to what we have already seen and what we can imagine, and yet "real", not a movie, living people, fighting soldiers, bodies of victims, destroyed cities. New images of this war are created every day, there are more and more of them. Close your eyes, think "war" - what do you see?