The first chapter of the Fotograf Festival introduces the work of two artists. UK-based artist Paul Chaney began preparing his extensive installation Donetsk Syndrome Diagrammatic in 2017 during his stay in Ukraine. It was originally intended for the Izolyatsia platform in Donetsk, but these plans could not be realised due to the war. Chaney therefore reconstructed the installation in the form of a large-scale diagram, adding more findings from his research on the 14 billion years of development of one of the territories richest in minerals. Since 1917, this region has experienced five wars. The result is a crisis in its inhabitants’ identity, which made Russian infiltration and destabilisation possible, culminating in the current war between Ukraine and the Russian Federation.

In the lower room of the gallery, the installation is complemented by Spider’s Envy, a 21-minute black-and-white film made by Albanian artist Genti Korini in 2022. The film presents a fascinating conversation between an artist and a critic about the relationship of modern art, with its preference for abstract art and individualism, and the socialist notion of the “new human” and artistic realism as an opposition to decadent bourgeois art. Amid the ruins of modern architecture develops this gripping dialogue – which has lost nothing of its currency – accompanied by iconic photographs of modernist architecture. The text is based on the writings of the Albanian art historian Alfred Uçi.