Chernobyl and Pripyat in the Ukraine, next to Russia. 29 Years after the nuclear disaster…

Hotel in Pripyat Plaza

Some said 'brave', some couldn't understand why we would even wish to go there, some were envious…we (me, my partner, my 2 x 21 year old daughters and one boyfriend - I was very impressed they all desperately wanted to come) were excited and really had no idea what to expect.

Personally and ostensibly it was for my MA research (though no excuse needed) and I was looking forward to meeting the re-settlers and to discover their reasons for choosing to go back and live on the edge of the exclusion zone which is still a very dangerous place to live due to the invisible enemy  'radiation poisoning'. It has been said that the longevity of the re-settlers lives is due to their quality of life and happiness in being 'home' which negates the effects of the radiation. The danger of which is more  preferable to them than living in a city's high-rise away from their farms and the countryside. 

Ivan (Mikhail) Ivanovitch, Security (!) and Ivan's house

Me and a happy Ivan

However, after my visit, I realised there were so many other aspects regarding the 'Chernobyl issue' that I couldn't confine my interest to just the re-settlers and I have reverted to my original thoughts about dark tourism, collective trauma and collective memory, then overarching or underpinning this, the 'correctness' of interpreting such unspeakable, atrocities and heinous issues via an aesthetic means. (N.B. I may be visiting Auschwitz later this year).

The trip itself was mesmerising (for want of a better word) from start to finish. There were days either side spent in Kiev and an airbnb apartment which were fantastic, although kind of 70's, and unbelievably cheap.

Back to the 2 days spent in Chernobyl. Radiation dose expected equivalent = one hospital x-ray.

We were with Chernobylwel.com (fantastic!) - a tour, only/easiest way to get in, and of a very mixed group, 17 persons and a guide. There were other families and some couples, some groups of friends and a few people travelling alone which was a very nice mix. People from USA, Finland, Germany, Austria, Spain, Sweden, UK and Switzerland at least, which I loved and people of all ages 18 -70.

On the minibus on the way to the power plant + Laura

We weren't quite sure exactly where we were going and in what order but this was where we went, in order (I think!) This was after we checked in at the hotel, in CHERNOBYL, within the 30km exclusion zone, which extends on the north side into Belarus, Russia.  We have stayed in much worse Travelodges in the UK. The food was, shall we say, interesting - plain and typical Ukrainian food,  and the blob of tomato sauce on the side of plain pasta or rice we found quite amusing. Every meal was a set menu (all inclusive :-) and we were all served at the same time, it reminded me of school trips abroad years ago.

Itinerary:
DAY 1: 

Abandoned house in Chernobyl town

• Chernobyl Town: 
The Angel of Death monument/memorial 

• Rusting boats - docks (quickly & from a distance)

• Robots (used in the clean up operation)

• (small) Kindergarten 

• Cooling towers of unfinished reactor 5 & 6, due for opening in 1988 for Reactors 5 and 6 

• Chernobyl nuclear power plant

• Reactor number 4 - viewing platform and VERY close
• 
Fireman memorial
• 
Bridge & giant catfish

• Reactor number 4 & Memorial

• New sarcophagus ('safe' distance)

• Pripyat ''Ghost City'': (inhabitants were given two hours notice to evacuate, almost two days after the explosion - already too late)
• 
Cafe 
• 
Prometheus cinema

• Local Council Admin Building
• 
Pripyat Plaza-

• Polesie Hotel

• Palace of Culture: "Energetik" 

• Amusement park

• Soccer stadium - Stadium Avangard
• 
Middle/Grammar school 

• Swimming pool 
(in use by the liquidators and other people working in the Zone up until 1996)
• Tower block 

(roof of)

We got back to the hotel sometime before 8pm (there's a curfew), had dinner and sampled the bar.
Oh, there are no toilets in Chernobyl/Pripyat that you can actually use, only bushes (!) so be prepared to wait up to 6 hours if you're like me, then also be prepared for the most awful toilet ever which is located at the checkpoint... not sure it was better than a bush to be honest.

Radiation detectors going in and out of the exclusion zone

DAY 2: 


• Chernobyl Zoo (I would say small farm or pets corner)

• Bridge of Death; where people flocked to watch the flames of the explosion and consequently received lethal doses of radiation. I think if it had happened at Hartlepool, the people of Billingham would have probably done the same. Also, there were people travelling on a train going under the bridge on their way to Moscow at the time of the explosion who also received very high dosage of radiation, an extreme case of wrong place, wrong time.

• Pripyat:
 Hospital, one of my favourite places, very emotional and evocative.

• Combined School (collapsed in April 2013- the snow that falls in the winter has caused most of the damage to the city, I think soon it will all possibly be too destructed to visit)
• 
Greenhouse

• Telephone exchange?
• 
Jupiter Factory (could have stayed here all day)
• 
Police station and cells with exercise yard
• 
Old Fire Station (with garage), all the men who worked here died.

• Kindergarten 2 ( a bigger one)

• Open air military museum (possibly, it was somewhere with trucks)

• Meeting local inhabitants in the Resettlement zone (unbelievable and great for my research) I have recorded an interview but can't get it off my phone as yet.

• Late lunch at power station (an experience, I wouldn't like to eat there every day - rumour has it it's always exactly the same) - there are still workers building the new (overdue) sarcophagus which will protect the world from the radiation that is still being emitted and possibly escaping as we speak through the holes in the old one.

• Vehicle graveyard - Chernobyl (possibly through the red forest - I wasn't even sure where we were at the time)

Swimming Pool, Pripyat

Gymnasium, Pripyat

Pripyat, can't remember which building it was

I am now desperate to return and hopefully this time next year I will. I found out so much information, one thing I hadn't realised was that a second, more powerful explosion was only very narrowly avoided, one which would have wiped out the whole of Europe -completely. We were so unaware. And 'Tens of thousands of Soviet citizens filed into Chernobyl to help, considering it their patriotic duty; all were exposed to dangerous levels of radiation with no warning from the government.'
 And did you also realise that the Chernobyl disaster was instigation for Glasnost and the fall of the USSR. It truly did change the world in many ways. 'According to Gorbachev, the Chernobyl explosion was a turning point that “opened the possibility of much greater freedom of expression, to the point that the system as we knew it could no longer continue.”

Reactor No.4, the bad part is behind the concrete blocks

Inside the unfinished cooling tower

An overview of the disaster and situation is here.

The whole experience was like NOTHING I have ever experienced before. The pictures you see on the internet give NO indication of the feeling you get by being there. It is truly amazing, I have never seen anything/anywhere like it in my life… it is the most unbelievable, disconcerting, silent, strangely beautiful place I believe I will ever see.

I still haven't managed to work my way through all my photographs so these are just a very small selection of the first lot- it is SO difficult to give a good indication of the whole trip. I will publish a couple of albums on my Facebook page as soon as possible.

Men working on the new sarcophagus

Housing block in Pripyat

Changing rooms - football stadium

Ferris wheel built for Mayday 1986

Children's coat hooks in the Kindergarten

Kindergarten

Inside the cooling tower

Poster inside the school

Print-cess...

These are some of the prints I did at the weekend... there is one I love as is (for now and not shown). There are 4 that have potential within a collection (of what I'm not sure/worrying about) with more work; i.e. more layers of print, perhaps some overdying and some embroidery. There are also two that are awful and unresolvable. They are all loosely connected to my concept in terms of distressed surfaces, negative space, a 'void', part or age worn objects. 

Trace left by an object

Faded and worn detail

But as I am itching to get started on some design work I am just flinging out initial ideas using 'materials', I'm sure whatever they finally turn into in another 18 months or so will be a million miles away from these samples. In a way it's quite nice not to have a definitive end use in mind but I'll probably get into trouble about that! Since September I have swung from creating haute couture level fashion fabrics (my ambition) to making huge 3D sculptural embroidered light pieces (not my usual thing but a challenge) to producing an installation for exhibition (as that is not commercial so it must be art must it not?!), and this is looking like the beginning of a furnishing fabric collection. My own suggestion to myself is that I aim for a collection of just beautiful fabrics for now and worry about that or see where it goes in about a year.  (That's a must...I MUST think they are beautiful)

Discharge on Indigo, screenprint

I will be writing an essay this week and I must include my intentions (so I had better decide what they are). My journey through the process of reading, research and thinking has led me now to some fairly specific, narrowed down and in depth, conceptual yet vague, ideas of what my 'subject' will be but not necessarily of my practical outcomes.

I think this has got something

Peer Presentations...

(and learning outcomes)

I was *lucky* with my group 'No.9'. Me, Jacek, Darryl & Ulysses. I went first, this is an excerpt from my introduction;

'I am a textile and surface designer specialising in fabrics for fashion, embellished surfaces and embroidery, now leaning towards textile art. I want to create work that has meaning and more depth, and as a vehicle for raising awareness of issues for international exhibition.'

Working Title(s):

1.     The Presence of Absence 

2.     The Trace of Heterotopia 

3.     Motherland  

I showed 3 examples of artwork, a flick through this blog and my bibliography to illustrate that I understood and was achieving the learning outcomes (!). It went well, I appeared organised and thorough, it didn't matter that I had done the preparation in order to reduce my nerves and help me remember what I wanted to say! The feedback was very positive for which I am grateful. It was more interesting and exciting for me to see what the others, from different disciplines i.e. photography and graphic design, were working on. Then we had to post one image and 20 words on a Tumblr page. (Have a look!) This is primarily for other (and prospective) students to get an idea of what we, as current MA students are all working on.

After that we had to find a partner who was not in that group or from our discipline to dissect the feedback and rewrite our original presentations. I was with Javier, we didn't really do that, but we did talk about our work and he invited me to be in his magazine about 'Memory', I accepted of course. So I now have a 'collaborator'.

Aside: I am rather disappointed in myself for not taking any photographs of today's activities.

Alice Kettle: Pause (detail)

Then a late lecture about her work by the Alice Kettle who is a research fellow at MMU. Interestingly she said there would possibly be an opportunity to work with her on some unknown future project. I'm up for that! Wow.

P.S. I may have to change over to Wordpress, I'm having trouble with my formatting.

The Great Digital Stitch Off

I'm on the train with a choice of work to do (no internet connection)...

a. Evaluate my progress with, and results of, digital embroidery 

b. Practice my presentation for tomorrow (in my head)

c. Start my reflective essay (2,500 words)

d. Watch a download of 'The Great Comic Relief Bake Off', Series 2, Ep.1 (not strictly work)

I might as well start at the top of the list as I would like to put off b and c for a good while.

I now have some experience (though not mastery) of;

• The industrial Brother 12 head embroidery machine at MMU: frame size = 30 x 40 cms (?)
• The Ethos embroidery program and the 5D Pfaff programs 
• The domestic Brother 1 head embroidery machine in the fashion dept at CCAD: frame size = 10 x 15 cms plus PE Design Plus program

Most of my samples have been produced on No.3 to date as this is more accessible (during lunchtimes and straight after work on a Tuesday), and the program much simpler but it is limited in size and doesn't really do what you want it to do (yet). There are somewhat haphazard options and a few ways of tweaking things but overall, very little flexibility. I find it surprising that in this digital age all this software is a total nightmare. None of these programs are very intuitive even though I have used Ethos for laser cutting for a few years now, so it is somewhat disappointing to find it's not the same. I do feel it should be easier and wish Adobe would design one. OR that someone would design a computerised machine that would just stitch directly from Photoshop or Illustrator. Am not sure how many different programs I can fit inside my brain. 

However, I still  want to  explore it as a technique, I have some ideas in my head and if they work out I will be happier and much more inclined to persevere and see what can be done. If they don't I shall be rather disappointed. Something Jane McKeating said in my tutorial still resonates with me -  that my artwork is very flat-looking. And it is. So I would like to translate and emphasise that flatness through digital embroidery (free machine embroidery would not be flat enough). It's  the opposite of what I love about hand embroidery...so I'm quite excited to mix it up.

So, the samples; 

On No.3: 

See last post...(Textural) cross stitch works so perfectly it's untrue, I especially like the double stitched areas although the thread does then snap rather a lot. Eventually, I would like to see how high I can build it up but better not do that on someone else's machine. 

Intention: To play with gradient colour and avoid it looking too chocolate boxy. Explore/use the reverse of the work, with the anchor threads.

• Import an image and this program generates the stitches for you, like it or lump it, (although there are 9 versions to choose from with very slight differences- a bit like the filters on a phone camera). What I do like is that you can select your colours and change them easily. All the other samples I have done are ok but remind me greatly of embroidered patches for jeans (still available in Boyes Stores) or logos on school uniforms, that's a size issue.

• It has given me a feel for the technique and generated ideas for at least 3 further samples I want to do on this machine before I commit fully to the big guns.

No's.1 + 2 worry me. I have had my inductions, producing a sample, but there is no way I can remember how to use these programs or the machine. I have popped onto the computers and played with some files on a few occasions in-between lectures but have forgotten the most basic instructions AND that is with referring to the manual. However, I have still booked a slot on it for 2 weeks time.  And I will annoy the technicians. A lot. I know this. I apologise in advance.

A question... or 4

digital cross stitch

the reverse

 

Whole negative space sample

                     More negative space - before ink

Remainders of laser cutting - space

found box - 'memory'

placed collage (not there now!)

I'm at the crisis point of Practice 1: the written element is almost upon us and I think its time I started thinking about it, seriously, and not least because I've belatedly discovered that it happens to be more important than the actual practical work. This MA is actually not (just) about doing a project and some beautiful (!) work;  researching, making visual studies, on through the experimentation and design (and make) process until the culmination of a final collection of 'whatever'. That which I had previously thought I was doing... it's ALL about what is behind that.
I was at this point thinking I would evaluate the digital embroidery I have started investigating. BUT I need to really think about where it's come from and why I am doing it. 
There are other, pressing questions I keep asking myself (because I know I have to) but I still can't answer them. And I need to answer them, in order to write this work - so:

1. What is it I need to find out (through my practice)?

2. How is the theory I have done imbricated in my practice?

3. What makes my work meaningful? and finally the hardest question of all...

4. What is the wider NEED (for my work)? Is there one?!

I may just have to come back to the evaluation of my digital embroidery samples. sigh. Meanwhile, above is some sketchbook stuff... next post will be what it's all about (Alfie).

In Conversation...

Random Middlesbrough photo - 'ghost' building

S:

'Rather belatedly, I just wanted to tell you how much I'm enjoying reading your blog about your MA. You write so well, it makes it really interesting to read about it. 

I love the piece you've done on the seacoaling, it looks beautifully delicate but with a strong story behind it. The Contested Territories work reminds me of a really interesting programme I caught on Radio 4 a while back about how archeologists were getting a lot of stick for finding evidence that went against commonly held beliefs about history, in places like Israel and the Palestinian territories. 

It was great to see your sketchbook too. I've always liked the idea of the presence of absence, it can be a surprisingly strong force but not always consciously known about. I'd just been thinking about starting a discipline of doing something in a sketchbook most days even if I don't know what the end purpose will be, and so seeing yours has inspired me and spurred me on.

I hope it's going well and that your Brian doesn't get too stressed by it. 

Cheering you on from the sidelines ...'

 C:

'Thank you so much for your encouraging words!!! I really appreciate you taking the time to give me such great feedback...the tables have turned :-)

I AM less anxious about it now and I enjoy being there although I would get more work done if I just stayed home, although then I might as well have done long distance learning and not had the intellectual stimulus (!) and I'm sure I'll find time whilst there at some point to get on their machines, I have done a few samples but I'm still not enamoured by machine embroidery per se (yet).

The 'embroidery' MA thing is still unclear mainly because I have been too embarrassed to ask WHAT qualification I am studying!!! (Maybe its an MA in 'Design', I should know by now!)

I'm glad you like my textile piece, there is a lack of background samples but I hope it will suffice. I will be exhibiting it at college (CCAD) in March - we  all (dept staff ) have to put our research work up so it will come in handy, although as I won't be in Paris this time I will have to hang and style it myself, but it does mean I will have the opportunity to add a soundtrack.

Will look forward to seeing your new sketchbook!!! '

To present (in a formal and ceremonious way)...

I present...

A research study project on a (local) contested territory.

On a productive and painless morning, the last session with my lovely group, we surveyed our (very hard to get) exhibition space and then went and played a game to generate a jumble of phrases to describe our joint 'production', it was a great idea which luckily worked first time, whether anyone else will be able to understand it is debatable (though not that necessary) but it's conceptual and fits with the theme! I will be really sad not to be in this class anymore. I am thinking of going to do a 'Contested Territories' MA instead.

Contested Territories Selection

So then, I had to centre myself and focus on the 'presentation' of my work to 2 lecturers. It went much better than I had hoped, because they were nice. It was very positive overall although my blog should be more academic and my final piece should really have been more minimal/abstract. I can live with that. I think I may even pass but only if someone lovely irons my exhibit before it gets hung. I am grateful it's getting hung (and wafted).

Now just to electronically submit and turnitin. Then on with the Practice 1 module (after Paris of course).