Open Group – Repeat After Me

A few weeks before Russia’s full-scale invasion, the State Emergency Situations Service of Ukraine started distributing a several-page manual on how to behave in the area where military actions are happening. The order and type of action severely depend on whether the attack is assault rifle fire, artillery shelling, multiple rocket launcher shelling, or even aerial bombardment. Very often, the only way to distinguish the type of fire is to determine different weapon types by sound.

Exhibition opening: November 25, 2022 (Friday) at 7:00 p.m.
Where: Galeria Labirynt, ul. ks. J. Popiełuszki 5, Lublin
Accessibility: The exhibition is held on the ground floor. The exhibition is unsuitable to people with sensory hypersensitivity. The work emits loud noises. Noise cancelling earmuffs can be borrowed free of charge from the bookstore. Quiet hours at the exhibition – Wednesdays 3:00-7:00 p.m. Opening and discussion interpreted simultaneously into English – please pick up the device at the bookstore before the event; interpreters: Justyna Chwedyk, Katarzyna Krysa.
Exhibition on display: until 12/02/2023 (Tue–Sun, 12:00 –7:00 p.m.)
Entrance: PLN 5/2 (free admission to the exhibition opening)

Curator: Waldemar Tatarczuk

Discussion: November 25, 2022 (Friday), at 8:00 p.m. [PL+UA+EN]; participants:

• Kateryna Iakovlenko, Halyna Hleba (curators of the exhibition „I Dreamt of the Beasts”)
• Iryna Polikarchuk (coordinator of the exhibition „I Dreamt of the Beasts”)
• Yuriy Biley (Open Group)

Guided tour: November 26, 2022 (Saturday), at 12:00 p.m. [PL+UA+EN]

The video participants are civilians temporarily replaced from different regions of Ukraine in a camp for war refugees in Lviv, sharing their memories and expertise in the sounds of war. Reproducing various types of weapons, they conduct a kind of karaoke instruction, which, while transmitting simple sound sequences, is still unable to convey the experience that exists nearby, the experience that has become the price for this knowledge. This knowledge is a new reality for Ukrainians; possessing it helps to survive.

“From the moment we hear the first air raid siren, our ‘internal alarm’ is on alert. It keeps us in constant tension and makes us listen to every sound, every rustle. Sometimes suspicion creeps in even in silence.”

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Оpen Group was founded in August 2012 in Lviv by six Ukrainian artists. The group’s structure changed over the years, and its presently members are Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach, and Anton Varga. They occasionally invite other artists or others to take part in their projects and join the Open Group.

Group’s work is based on research of the interaction and communication between peo-ple, artists, situation and space. Also, their artistic practice is based on the study of the concept of “collective work”.

Group members have been running independent art spaces, such as Detenpyla Gallery or Еfremova26 Gallery (2013-2014) in Lviv, since 2011.

Open Group won the Special Distinction of the PinchukArtCentre Prize in 2013, and the Main Prize in 2015. Their works were featured at the Ukrainian National Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale. In 2016, the Open Group curated the show “Dependence Degree, Collective Practices of Young Ukrainian Artists 2000–2016” (Wrocław, Poland).

In 2017, the group’s work was presented in frames of the Future Generation Art Prize @ Venice 2017 (collateral events of the 57th Venice Biennale). In 2019, the Open Group was the curator of the National Pavilion of Ukraine at the 58th La Biennale di Venezia.

Sponsor of the opening of the exhibition Browar Tenczynek