OVERVIEW

I spent a month in Ukraine last year, spread over two trips, and have many close Ukrainian friends, both inside and outside the country. I was due to visit for a third time the weekend of the invasion, and so when the war broke out I thought about how best I could help.

I settled on projecting a few pro-Ukrainian messages onto some prominent locations in London to show support for my friends in Ukraine - some of whom are fighting - and to raise money for Médecins Sans Frontières using the custom link uk-raine.org.

I also decided that the campaign needed a logo. The Ukrainian flag is too impersonal, and Zelensky is too personal, so I found a picture of my cat where she’s looking particularly grumpy and made a photo-realistic stencil out of it, like the iconic Che Guevara T-shirt. She’s cute but fierce, and also currently kidnapped by my ex, so is the perfect mascot for the people of Ukraine.

We ended up projecting onto 3 different locations, with different messages for each:


HMS BELFAST

On 24 February 2022, the first day of the invasion, a Russian warship contacted the Ukrainian soldiers stationed on Snake Island, a small island of military significance at the edge of Ukrainian territorial waters.

The exchange was recorded, and the commander of the Russian ship told the Ukrainian commander of Snake Island to surrender or they would be bombed. The Ukrainian commander thought for a couple of moments, and then said "Русский военный корабль, иди на хуй" ("Russian warship, go f*** yourself"). Ukraine then lost contact with the 13 soldiers stationed on the island, and presumed them dead.

The phrase became a symbol for the defiant attitude of Ukraine in the face of the Russian invasion, so to show support I projected “иди на хуй" onto the side of HMS Belfast (“Русский военный корабль” wasn’t necessary, given the location), which I knew would make my friends fighting in Ukraine laugh.

I also projected a couple of Zelensky’s more militaristic quotes: “I need ammunition, not a ride”, and “you will see our faces, not our backs”.


ITV TOWER

This war is a tragedy for Russians as well as Ukrainians. I visited Moscow in 2019 and 2020, and had a composing commission for a group exhibition there before the pandemic hit.

The day of the invasion I texted a friend in Moscow, who was horrified by what was happening, and now doesn’t know when he’ll be able to see his sister again who’s in London. I asked him if he had any suggestions for a message of support for Russians who are anti-Putin, and he said that “Путин хуило” was the standard phrase of resistance, which means “Putin is a dickhead”. The phrase has been chanted by Ukrainians in football matches, and was even displayed on Russian electric car charging stations after they were hacked by Ukrainians.

I wanted to do a projection onto the ITV Tower, because it’s in such a prominent location on the Southbank, and not illuminated or surrounded by other buildings. The only problem was that the sides have a grin pattern that only allows 5-letter words or shorter. I realised that “Путин хуило” fit perfectly, and couldn’t resist. (See the video for the animation.)

And, of course, I also put up my cat’s name, Tiggy, in English and Ukrainian.


RAMBERT

The last location I chose was the Rambert building on the Southbank, which is less prominent than the other two but has the advantage of being a perfect projection surface. I decided to make these projections more personal, and everything I projected was either a quote from someone I knew personally in Ukraine or was connected to them.

I projected amateur footage of the vacuum bomb exploding on my friend’s old school, set inside the word “Kharkiv”, as I thought that this breach of the international rules of war was not sufficiently widely known about.

I also told the story of my friend Grisha climbing the Kotelnicheskaya Embankment Building in Moscow after the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, and painting half of the yellow star blue, to turn it into a Ukrainian flag.

The rest were quotes from friends. One was from an 18-year-old I met at a legendary Kyiv nightclub called ∄. He offered me some of his gin-and-tonic and then introduced me to his cousin, and we all ended up hanging out on-and-off during the rest of my stay. They’re now hiding in the basement of their 13-story apartment block in Zhotomyr, with 2 mothers, 5 kids, and a dog.

Another quote was from a girl I met at a friend-of-a-friend’s birthday party on my 2nd night in Kyiv. I was about to enter another birthday party - this time a surprise one for a friend in Paris - when she messaged to say that her house had been bombed, and sent me a picture of the pile of rubble it had been reduced to.

Every quote has a story.