Valentyn Odnoviun: Architecture of Evidence
© Valentyn Odnoviun, Traces of Memory
This page directs you to several bodies of work by Valentyn Odnoviun.
"Architecture of Evidence" (2019)
The project “Architecture of Evidence” is a combination of projects “Surveillance,” “Horizons,” “The Process,” “Traces of Memory,”, "Concealment" and "Imprints". This work presents “abstract”-like photographs linked with historical events in Eastern Europe and were mainly taken in prisons of former oppressive regimes. These places were used for political and war prisoners, and objectionable “unwanted” people for their dissent and “anti-ideological” activities.
These series show how images can become evidence of an event and create a paradoxical perception. They call into question the relation between what we see and what we perceive before the act of recognition.
The photographs, as patterns and traces, emphasize the borders of human perception and where the consequences of human action meet reason. Actual photographs are both documentary and subjective, they embody real traces of events, objects and memories, serving as platforms for imagining them in a more interpretative and conceptual form. Historical origins influence us more than most of us realize, they are a part of our surroundings, our logic, and what makes sense when we put them together.
Project supported by Lithuanian Council for Culture.
Surveillance (2016-2018)
The series consists of photographs of the walking yard and prison cell door spyholes in former KGB prisons in Baltic States and Ukraine, Stasi former prison in Germany, and former UB prisons in Poland.
The main tasks of the State Security agencies were spying on the population, fighting dissidents, imprisoning and eliminating objectionable “unwanted” people using the same methods and building on the knowledge of similar regimes. Surveillance may have taken new forms, total physical and mind control of society remained its essence.
A spyhole is a detail. Spyhole is a very informative object. A lens through which the warden looked at people inside a prison cell or a walking yard. It is one of the visual communicative channels which obscured the personality of a prisoner into an object of surveillance.
KGB (Committee for State Security,) was the main security agency for the Soviet Union till its collapse in 1991.
Stasi (Ministry for State Security,) was the official state security service of East Germany which was part of the Soviet bloc until reunification of Germany in 1990. UB (Department of Security) Combined the punitive functions and functions of special secret services between 1944-1956.
Horizons (2018)
From the period of 1939 until 1944 Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany. Many people were imprisoned, executed, and sent to concentration camps. The main oppressive function was carried out by the Gestapo (Secret State Police of Nazi Germany).
After the end of WWII, Poland fell under a communist regime for more than 40 years. State Security agencies such as the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs of the USSR) and UB (Department of Security of People's Republic of Poland) established their offices and headquarters around Poland, very often using the buildings previously used by the Gestapo. Basements of the headquarters were mainly used as prisons.
The series presents seven photographs of the stairs leading to these basements of former Gestapo, NKVD, and later UB headquarters and prisons situated in different cities of Poland, which very often contained solitary prison cells, interrogation rooms, and rooms where executions were carried out between 1944 and 1956. UB combined the punitive functions and functions of the special secret services. Formally engaged in the provision of law and order and state security, in fact it was an instrument for the pro-Soviet Polish regime’s political repression.
Project supported by National Centre for Culture, Poland.
Traces of Memory (2015-2016)
External basement walls of the Berlin School of Industrial Arts and Crafts were built in 1901-1905. The broad light shafts with the white glazed slotted bricks were designed to improve the light in the basement. In 1933 the Secret State Police Office moved into the building. Walls of the Berlin School of Industrial Arts and Crafts basement became the Gestapo prison and place of unspeakable crimes. 39 cells were used for holding Jewish people, opponents of the regime and other objectionable “unwanted” persons.
The Gestapo had the right of preventive arrest and imprisonment without trial. “Intensified interrogation” of prisoners in the Gestapo prison could last from several hours or days to many weeks and months. The Gestapo was responsible for implementing the so-called “final solution to the Jewish question” in Poland, the Soviet Union and for the deportation of European Jews. From 1933 to 1945, approximately 15,000 persons were held in the “house prison” at the Gestapo headquarters.
This project depicts wall tiles from the basement rooms of the Gestapo in Berlin, These tiles are witnesses to the inhumanity against entire peoples and they carry the memory of those events.
Concealment
Photographs of the painted over windows of the prison cells in the former secret KGB prison in Vilnius, Lithuania. The same place was used by Gestapo while Lithuania was occupied by Nazi Germany.
Imprints
These photographs depict prison metal bunks with body "imprints" of detainees of the former detention center in Vilnius, Lithuania. The body movements erased the paint on bunk surfaces leaving traces of the prisoners’ presence. Throughout the history of this building, starting from 19th century, this place was used as a political prison. Later, it was used as a Detention Center by Lithuania until 2019.