Listeners
Ihar Hancharuk
Since the first presidential election in Belarus in 1994, Aliaksandar Lukashenka has ruled the country. Every single election campaign has been accompanied by falsifications, protests, detentions, arrests, beatings and torture. Under his rule, Belarus has fallen under strong dependence from Russia, making it impossible for Belarusians to hope for a better future. The Soviet era has been idealised; the USSR is set as a role model, a past to be proud of, and a future to aspire to. The influence of propaganda is immense, with all media controlled by the state. After the falsified presidential election in 2020, I’ve been focusing on internet-era methods of state propaganda, documenting the authorities’ attempts to create an imaginary happy Belarus, with no signs of dissent or protest.
One of Lukashenka’s rituals is to visit factories or industrial plants, meeting the labour collectives there. Such meetings always follow the same scenario: Lukashenka gives a monologue, employees are lined up in motionless rows to listen to him. Sometimes they ask preplanned questions, whilst cameramen record everything from a tried and tested angle, giving viewers near-identical shots from the different places Lukashenka visits. In this way, state television broadcasts an image of communication between government and people; an illusion of dialogue, as well as a sympathetic portrayal of a president amongst his people. The image of the working man is also important: it represents loyalty, because the working classes have always been considered his primary support base.
Ihar Hancharuk (b. 1986) is post-documentary photographer and visual artist from Belarus. With a background in foreign languages, his creative work makes use of photographic and digital archives, including video footage. Haranchuk’s projects refer to questions of national and personal identity, collective memory, and the influence of mass media on contemporary life; he also addresses the patriarchal violence to which he was exposed during a period of mandatory military service, concluded in 2010. Among others, his works have been exhibited at Krakow Photomonth, Poland; National Center for Contemporary Arts, Belarus; and Circulation(s) Festival, France.
#будущийзащитник (#youngsoldier)
Living in an authoritarian country, It’s hard to ignore the ever-increasing militarisation of Belarusian society. We are constantly reminded of both war and our enemies. The cult of Soviet victories in WWII is omnipresent. War is everywhere: in movies about brave Russian soldiers, in books, in school, in university disciplines, in contests, in state holidays, in war monuments, in street names, in jokes, even in kindergartens. The latter has always been the most disturbing for me; when a society militarises its children, it surely won't end well.
In 2019, an Instagram post appeared in my feed showing a newborn in a military beret. I checked the hashtags; that's how this project started. As it turned out, there are several thousand posts on Russian-speaking Instagram tagged #будущийзащитник – meaning ‘young soldier’. The hashtags correspond with pictures of kids of all ages, often dressed up as soldiers, from amateur snapshots to those made professionally. Some of the kids are just 2 or 3 years old.
After my discovery, I felt that our society was heading for disaster. That disaster came in 2020, when the presidential election was falsified, leading to peaceful mass protests that were brutally suppressed by police and special forces. Hundreds of detained protesters later reported that they were tortured, humiliated, and severely beaten. Despite the unprecedented violence, which has been documented and made public, the government refuses to admit any of it.
When working with this contemporary online archive, I try to understand if the violence we see today has its roots in the militarisation of children. Who is to blame for these Instagram posts? Is it the parents who orchestrate the images, or the social media platforms that facilitate or encourage their posts? Since the police recruit our own citizens, not those from abroad, I want to understand the forces in our society that make some of us capable of such cruelty.