Valeria Shakhova

About

Valeriia Shakhova was born in Irkutsk, Russia, has started studying at Bauhaus University Weimar in 16/17, made her Bachelor in Product Design and started the Media Art and Design master program in 21/22.
Website with works/cv: valeriiashakhova.com

Master thesis

Abstract:

This project is based on a year of experience with volunteer activity and the stories from the Ukrainian refugees collected during it. It strives to present the collected stories in the multimedia exhibition, grounding them in the reality of the situation with the help of the real sentimental objects connected to the stories.

The stories of Ukrainian refugees are stretching across many different places in many different countries, telling us about suffering, pain, and terror, but also about resilience, strength, and hope.

The exhibition context also plays a big part in it: the Other Music Academy was hosting the refugees from Ukraine from March until May of 2022 and is still seen as one of the important places for the community. The context of the space itself would provide great additional value to the exhibition.

To let the visitors immerse themselves in the exhibition fully, one can create a narrative space both in reality and virtuality, experiencing both abandoned and new-found homes.

In order to create a rich narrative and awaken empathy in the visitors, it is also important to communicate the the cultural and political context of the situation, alongside the sentimental values of the objects and personal stories. Presenting such a big amount of information would be possible with the help of modern AR technologies, which would create an additional dimension of virtuality to be used in the exhibition, providing a layer of easily accessible factual information.

The target audience of the exhibition is the wide public of Weimar, equally the members of the university, the persons living in Weimar and also the refugees who were coming from Ukraine. The goal of this exhibition is, most importantly, giving the refugees from Ukraine a platform to talk about their experiences, while providing realistic stories and examples to the refugee problem for the academic society and educating the wide public from Weimar on the political and cultural background and wide going consequences of the war in Ukraine.

In case of securing more funding, it would be possible to invite more university students and refugees of any nationalities to participate in this exhibition, making it a collective effort: the university has a number of students building up personal contact with refugees or being refugees themselves; there is also a considerable amount of artists, musicians, and activists among the refugees, who are eager to share their cultures.

Areas of research:

• Narrative exhibitions
• Narrativity, interactivity and space
• AR or VR in the exhibition context
• Political, historical and cultural research for informational support of the narrative

Relevance:

Crisis of empathy:

During the work on my bachelor thesis, I made an expansive exploration of the topic of emphathy and the ways to awaken it, while working on telling a personal story of a good friend of mine, a woman from Turkey who had to leave her home country to escape governmental persecution for her peaceful fight for the human rights.
As a result of this research I concluded that emphathy can't base itself on the personal narration alone, especially in case of the citizens of the counties foreign to the spectator: without understanding of the political, cultural and social backgrounds, the spectator would have great difficulties in actually developing empathy for the protagonist.
This also applies to the Ukrainian refugees: while Ukraine is much closer to Europe that Syria, Kosovo and other countries where other refugees came from; and while Ukraine and East Germany do share certain common historical background; and the Ukrainian refugees enjoyed much more acceptance than the refugees of other nationalities; there are still wide spreaded misconceptions and misinformations, coming hand in hand with plain obliviousness, clouding judgement and creating resentment.
And exactly in the current social climate we would need education of the wide public on the complicated political issues, reasons and backgrounds, but told in the relatable, human way.