I have some news I’ve been willing to share earlier, but as a person with a certain amount of prejudice, I have put it off for a month until I started. I’m happy to share that I’ve received a virtual mobility grant from Culture Moves Europe (a European Union-funded project) for over a month. This means that for the duration of this grant, I will focus on just that one thing – and, trust me, this is a privilege.

So what is this project? This project started (mostly in my head) last June while I was in Kyiv visiting friends, just after the Dam of Kakhovka was blown up. Given my interest in ecologies and inter-species relationalities, catastrophes, and disasters, this could not have gone any other way. Reading about the multiple impacts of war on the ecosystem on so many different levels, I immediately started constructing a project around the topic. The outcome of this work will be spanning across various media. At the moment, I envision a video installation that could later become a documentary film, but text and sound work are inevitable, too.

Why virtual mobility? Because no funding institution would approve travel to a country currently in war. During this period, I plan on doing what I lack the most time for. As in much of my research-led practice, in this project, at this stage, I will focus on readings. The articles I am looking at should help me understand the entanglements and interconnectivity of things that are part of the subject of this project and identify people, scientists, and artists I would like to converse with later. All this will (should) end up with a preliminary script (so excited! so anxious!) leading up to the project’s next steps.

Lastly, that image? It’s a mural on the wall of the Natural History Museum in Kyiv from my visit there in December 2023. The metro stop I climbed out of on my way home that evening after my visit to the museum a week later was damaged by the debris from a missile.