What is the sound of war? The Polish Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2024, curated by Marta Czyż, attempts to answer that question through Repeat After Me II by the Open Group, a collective of Ukrainian artists. Its protagonists are Ukrainian civilians who have been displaced by the ongoing war with Russia. They tell their stories, casually referencing the weapons that drove them from their homes. They use their voices to recount what these weapons sounded like, inviting the audience to join them in a macabre karaoke, as they imitate the sounds of guns, bombs and aircraft. Czyż and Open Group member Anton Varga joined STIR for a conversation about their work.

Two iterations of the work from 2022 and 2024 make up the Biennale presentation – in 2022, the artists speak to refugees in a camp outside Lviv, Ukraine, but by 2024, they are filming refugees scattered across western Europe. They document Ukrainians in banal outdoor settings—near parking lots, in a grass thicket—far removed from the chaos and violence of war.

A woman seated by a cluster of buildings speaks about the bombing of the theatre in Mariupol, a port city in Ukraine. When Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, domestic and public spaces across Ukraine were suddenly repurposed into shelters. In Mariupol, the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre was designated as one. On March 16, 2022, the theatre was bombed while it was packed with civilians sheltering from enemy fire. The Associated Press estimated that over 600 people died in the attack. Russia denied responsibility for the bombing. The woman’s family survived; they were in the least damaged section of the theatre. “Aerial bombing,” she tells the camera, going on to produce a sibilant sound. She follows up with a full-mouthed “tuhfff”, reinvoking the sound of bombs landing on the theatre. A shadow passes over her face as the sounds taper off into silence. “Repeat after me,” she instructs her audience, inviting them to recreate the sounds of bomber aircraft.

The Open Group—with three permanent members since 2019—Yuriy Biley, Pavlo Kovach and Varga, has been part of the Biennale’s previous editions; they were participating artists at the Ukrainian pavilion in 2015, and curators of the Ukrainian Pavilion in 2019. At a time when it is imperative to imagine “community” across national borders, the Ukrainian presence in Poland’s national pavilion reflects that pressing need. But what would it take for the Biennale to recognise the Ukrainian refugee crisis in deeper and meaningful ways, the artists wonder? With six million displaced and a war brewing “a few hundred kilometres” from Italy, as Varga points out, the Biennale’s main programme, in his view, is lacking in Ukrainian representation.

With six million displaced and a war brewing “a few hundred kilometres” from Italy, as Varga points out, the Biennale’s main programme, in his view, is lacking in Ukrainian representation.

Even so, Repeat After Me’s presence at the Biennale is a minor miracle in itself. Poland’s nationalist-populist Law and Justice Party previously chose artist Ignacy Czwartos for its national pavilion; his work Polish Exercises in the Tragedy of the World: Between Germany and Russia cast Poland as a victim to the whims of Russia and Germany. Czwartos’ works featured contentious representations of figures from European politics and history, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russian President Vladimir Putin connected by a St. Andrew’s Cross morphing into a swastika. When the party was voted out of power at the end of 2023, several sweeping cultural mandates were reversed, including controversial appointments to public institutions and the curation of Poland’s national pavilion in Venice.  

In images of the Biennale installation, we see a row of microphones lined up in front of the video screens, all eerily silent. The work’s structure sets up ethical dilemmas for viewers: What does it mean to participate in a karaoke of war? In recreating these sounds, does the audience risk trivialising the memory of war? Or are they acts of solidarity, a reminder that silence is complicity?

Watch the full interview by clicking on the cover video. Video script by Harshali Pagare.

The mandate of the 60th Venice Biennale, which aims to highlight under-represented artists and art histories, aligns with the STIR philosophy of challenging the status quo and presenting powerful perspectives. Explore our series on the Biennale, STIRring 'Everywhere' in Venice, which brings you a curated selection of the burgeoning creative activity in the historic city of Venice, in a range of textual and audiovisual formats.