"Not Simply Game"

The project "Not Simply Game" was created within the exhibition "Points of Approach" with the focus on complex experience and traumatic memory associated with the aggression of the RF in the East of Ukraine. The Dnipro was explored as a city located closest to the front line, where the largest volunteer organizations, centers of assistance to military and internally displaced citizens are located.“Not Simply Game” is a relational art project. The project carried out field research of the problems of a wide range of people with disabilities, appeared in Ukraine as a result of the war, highlighting the life of increasing number of wounded young people without legs and arms. The methods of rehabilitation by collective sports discovered in the Dnipro have shown the way and brought hope to many veterans and their families. Project researched the post-traumatic rehabilitation by sports in a sitting volleyball team, which is constantly replenished by ATO veterans, organized by Paralympic Olexiy Kharlamov, a refugee from Donetsk: https://youtu.be/wM6YBQApglA. In the project there are video installation, photography cycle and spatial installation with 8 TV monitors on the floor with interviews with sitting volleyball team members, where the viewer faces an ethical choice. He/she can take headphones to listen to the interview and reminds standing, in the position as a healthy person above the amputee, but he/she can get down and get closer to the person what exactly the "points of approach" are about.In a video the sounds of flips of balls grow into shots - both realities of war and peaceful life meet in space of gym. The project is about trauma and overcoming of both physical and psychological pain – how to transform the painful experience into the driver for social change. The project actualized and opened up to the wider audience the experience of the disabled and the wounded ATO participants, who together with their families and children form communities that became the most vulnerable as a result of the war in the East of Ukraine, often left without proper economic, psychological and public support. Project brought an attention to the inclusion issue in Ukraine, but also to the most unspoken in the world 5-year ongoing war in Ukraine. It bring our traumatic experience to the international community in order to force the Russian Federation to stop hostilities and withdraw its troops.