Introduction
We have a new take on the role of art in society – it must be relevant, courageous, activist. And eternal.Footnote 1
This quote from the website of the Ukrainian virtual museum Meta History: Museum of War Footnote 2 (hereafter MHMW), a museum that went online on 4 March 2022,Footnote 3 is straightforward: we take sides, we try to influence the ways people make sense of the full-blown Russian invasion of Ukraine, and lastly, we are here to stay. The date when the MHMW went online makes it evident that the museum is a direct response to the war. While the museum does not directly fight the occupying forces on the battlefields, the quote implies that the war ecology extends beyond Ukrainian soil.
Drawing on memory, war and museum studies, this paper aims to shed light on virtual memory-making as the Russian invasion unfolds. More precisely, it does so by zeroing in on the virtual MHMW, exploring how the museum becomes an active agent by mapping its evolving assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari Reference Deleuze and Guattari1988) from March to August 2022. By proposing an ecological understanding of war (Ford and Hoskins Reference Ford and Hoskins2022) that encompasses more than the actual battlefields in Ukraine, I analyse the virtual modes that the MHMW is adopting to create what I term ‘instant memories’ (Ekelund Reference Ekelund, Glaser, Håkansson, Lund and Lundin2022, 78) in order to recollect, remember and mediate the war. Hence, the MHMW is considered a memory agent and a ‘site of persuasion’ (Morphy Reference Morphy, Karp, Kratz, Szwaja and Ybarra-Frausto2006), which does not simply exhibit artefacts but conveys ideas, effects and stories shaping the understanding of the Russian invasion. Thus, by taking into account these various modes, this paper asks how the MHMW is taking part in repulsing the Russian invasion of Ukraine through its engagement with the war. I argue that the MHMW is an emerging assemblage that is involved in the production of ‘instant memories’ (Ekelund Reference Ekelund, Glaser, Håkansson, Lund and Lundin2022) and ‘online crowds’ (Stage Reference Stage2013) to actualise the capacities of its memory work. The museum employs virtuality in its various manifestations to evoke affective responses.
For an exploration of the museum's engagement with the war, I employ qualitative methods informed by digital ethnography and digital methods (Caliandro Reference Caliandro2017; Pink et al. Reference Pink, Tacchi, Horst, Lewis, Postill and Hjorth2016). This allows for a broad conception of the MHMW, encompassing not only the exhibitions but also the museum's infrastructure. Analysing the infrastructure and visual material aligns with Niederer's (Reference Niederer2019) call to consider the technicity of digital platforms alongside their content. Similarly, understanding the fieldsite in (digital) ethnography as a network (Burrell Reference Burrell, Hjorth, Horst, Galloway and Bell2016), I illustrate the mobility of the social realm by following the assemblage of people and things in the virtual museum. This correlates with Rogers’ (Reference Rogers2015, Reference Rogers2019) argument on ‘follow[ing] the medium’, which engages with data in a way that recognises the medium's inherent logic. Bridging these approaches, Caliandro (Reference Caliandro2017, 551) proposes ‘mapping the practices through which internet users and digital devices structure social formations around a focal object (e.g, a brand)’ as the main task of ethnographers navigating digital spaces.
To map the assemblage, this paper provides a contextualisation of the MHMW within broader efforts to commemorate the Russian invasion in Ukraine since 2014. Before turning towards the main theoretical concepts: assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari Reference Deleuze and Guattari1988), the ‘new ecology of war’ (Ford and Hoskins Reference Ford and Hoskins2022), ‘instant memories’ (Ekelund Reference Ekelund, Glaser, Håkansson, Lund and Lundin2022) and the ‘online crowd’ (Stage Reference Stage2013), in the next step, digital methods are applied to better grasp how the museum has evolved over the first months of its existence, what its affordancesFootnote 4 are and how it is connected to other digital entities. After covering the infrastructural dimension of the museum, the focus shifts to artistic engagement with the war and the purpose that is thereby pursued. I subsequently develop a discussion that focuses on how new technologies have altered the workings and structures of war, museums and their blending together by acknowledging the multiple configurations of human and non-human elements which render war tangible for everybody, at least in a virtual sense.
Contextualising – the MHMW in the new ecology of war
On 24 February 2022, the silence of the dawn was broken by incoming shells, mortars and rockets as the Russian army crossed Ukrainian borders from the north, south and east to start its illegal war of aggression against Ukraine.Footnote 5 Since that day the occupying forces have been shelling, killing, murdering, raping, burning and looting to destroy the independence of the Ukrainian state, topple its government and deny the Ukrainian people their freedom to choose their own destiny. Harrowing accounts from places like Bucha, Mariupol or Kherson meticulously recount the atrocities perpetrated by the invaders.Footnote 6 To facilitate legal procedures for war crimes committed, international bodies are currently documenting the atrocities in the territories liberated by the Ukrainian armed forces in 2022 (OHCHR 2022).
Even while the intensity and the sheer scale of the war since February 2022 marks a significant turning point, the fact that the Russian state and its proxies in Donbas have been waging war in Ukraine since 2014 should not be ignored. The military, cultural and economic aggression against Ukraine over these years has razed vast swathes of the Ukrainian south and east to the ground and has made these regions largely uninhabitable.Footnote 7 The significance of these events has left numerous traces on Ukraine and its landscapes, including on memory politics. Since the outbreak of the war nine years ago, multiple steps have been taken to document, archive, legislate and remember the war (Marples Reference Marples2017; Olzacka Reference Olzacka2021; Törnquist-Plewa and Yurchuk Reference Törnquist-Plewa and Yurchuk2019; Zhurzhenko Reference Zhurzhenko, Barkan and Lang2022): from the famous decommunisation lawsFootnote 8 (Marples Reference Marples2018) to monuments commemorating the Maidan and its fallen heroes, for instance in Ternopil, Mykolaiv or Poltava,Footnote 9 to museums narrating contemporary Ukrainian history.Footnote 10
In this regard, the MHMW joins the ranks of actors shaping cultural memory – here understood as the ‘interplay of present and past in socio-cultural contexts’ (Erll Reference Erll, Erll and Nünning2008, 2) – to commemorate the war (digitally). As highlighted by Olzacka (Reference Olzacka2021, 1040), museums in Ukraine have recently been active in shaping (state) narratives of the Russian invasion and fostering forms of activism and participation to discuss the Ukrainian past, present and future. This ‘digitally-driven museum front’ (Olzacka Reference Olzacka2023, 3–4) goes beyond the functions typically associated with museums preserving, displaying and interpreting objects.Footnote 11 Rather, Ukrainian museums of war take up multiple roles to pursue ‘museum activist’ practices (Sandell and Janes Reference Sandell and Janes2019, 1), emphasising the need to act.
This entanglement of mnemonic, activist and digital practices renders the case study of the MHMW particularly intriguing since the connective environment enables the emergence of new museum forms (Olzacka Reference Olzacka2023; Walden Reference Walden and Walden2022). The MHMW illustrates the in-between nature of museums and similar entities that are both subjected to and actively participating in the connective turn (Hoskins Reference Hoskins2011). While leveraging the possibilities and multiplicities of the connective environment, the MHMW simultaneously relies on more traditional forms of communication to shape a specific narrative (Walden Reference Walden and Walden2022, 32–34). The following analysis of the MHMW thus provides valuable insights into new modes of remembering in times of connectivity and war.
At the core of the MHMW lies digital remembering of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. More precisely, the MHMW is a virtual entity set up by the Ukrainian NFT (non-fungible token) community in collaboration with the Ukrainian Ministry of Digital Transformation and Ukrainian and international artists after the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 to fight the occupiers in digital spaces and beyond. Besides political support, the launching of the MHMW was, for instance, announced on Deputy Minister Oleksandr Bornyakov's Twitter account,Footnote 12 the Ministry of Culture has been providing media services and the museum has partnered with various entities in the crypto world.Footnote 13 Most of these companies provide solutions for the MHMW such as tech support, audits, smart contracts or security. When it comes to implementation and execution, the virtual museum was conceptually created and is led by Vasyl Kopanov, known as ‘VK’, and Oleksandr Pokhylenko.Footnote 14 On the museum's website, VK's position is listed as ‘Chaos’, while Pokhylenko is responsible for the technological domain. Several other people are also mentioned, including art coordinator Anna Feuerbach. In media appearances, VK refers to the museum as a ‘technological charity project’.Footnote 15 In this regard, the aim of the MHMW is threefold: first, it preserves the memory of the events in Ukraine; second, it indicates how the war should be remembered; and lastly, its activities are used to collect donations in support of Ukraine.Footnote 16 In doing so, the museum enacts war through NFTFootnote 17 artworks, meaning neither the artworks nor the museum have a physical mooring. The MHMW is thus considered a virtual museum. Virtual museums draw on ‘the characteristics of a museum’, to expand, augment and personalise the museum for visitors through the possibilities of digital space.Footnote 18 In this light, its application of the term ‘museum’ can be seen as a way to derive authority and to legitimise the interplay between the different functions, including museum, archival and fundraising, to pursue its goals embedded in a recognised framework.
As a virtual museum, the MHMW deploys recent technological modifications (Hoskins Reference Hoskins2011) which have widened possibilities to mediate, reenact and remember war. Digital omnipresence has led to other emotional engagements with war (Kuntsman Reference Kuntsman2010). A multitude of digital spaces have become sites of conflict and contestation (Ford and Hoskins Reference Ford and Hoskins2022; Kuntsman Reference Kuntsman2010; Merrin Reference Merrin2018). Multifaceted entanglements between humans, codes, algorithms and their permanent modifications have produced new conditions in how war is fought and perceived. Hence, today's war has to be treated as ‘radical war’ – that is, ‘the immediate and ongoing interaction between connected technologies, human participants, and the politics of violence’ (Ford and Hoskins Reference Ford and Hoskins2022, 11). ‘Radical war’ is fought in the so-called ‘new ecology of war’: ‘an information and battle environment in which mobile and connected devices such as the smartphone enable to share and create content that can produce lethal effects’ (ibid 2022, 49). Within this new ecology, ‘radical war’ is participative since everyone who has access to at least mobile internet has the potential to be involved.
Such a line of argument foregrounds the crucial connection between human and non-human elements. To this end, I argue – in line with Ford and Hoskins (Reference Ford and Hoskins2022) – for an ecological understanding of war which goes well beyond the actual battlefields and embraces the multiple engagements between human and non-human agents (Hörl Reference Hörl, Hörl and Burton2017, 3). Consequently, the entire MHMW and its renderings of war have to be considered as part of today's theatres of war in Ukraine and beyond. The museum is not merely processing the course of the war but actively seeking to engage in it.
On assemblages and instant memories
Since the MHMW is challenged by a double incompleteness – both the Russian invasion of Ukraine itself and the museum are constantly developing – I consider the virtual museum to be in a process of becoming. To grasp this aspect of becoming, the notion of assemblage is applied. Assemblages (Deleuze and Guattari Reference Deleuze and Guattari1988) describe the relations between different agential elements that are not stable but open-ended. Bennett (Reference Bennett2010, 23–24) uses the term ‘ad-hoc groupings’, where the agency of the assemblages and their ability to impact are more than the sum of their individual elements. Consequently, assemblages as a virtual ‘space of possibilities’ (DeLanda Reference DeLanda2016, 28–29), whose capacities might be actualised in the future, have an inherent potential for action (Nikolic Reference Nikolic2017, 127). Virtuality does not necessarily refer here to an interactive, digital or online entity taking advantage of today's connective environment, but to something that is opposed to the actual: ‘the world of real extended objects’ (Bluemink Reference Bluemink2020). The virtual is thus real, if not yet actualised (Deleuze Reference Deleuze1994, 272).Footnote 19 To actualise the capacities of its memory work, the MHMW is involved in the production of ‘instant memories’ (Ekelund Reference Ekelund, Glaser, Håkansson, Lund and Lundin2022) and ‘online crowds’ (Stage Reference Stage2013). At the core of both concepts lies the examination of digitality and the shaping of affective connections.
Instant memories ‘that are shared in the groups are produced for the very instant that the post is made’ and further ‘for an instantaneous response from other members when they encounter it within their personalised flow’ (Ekelund Reference Ekelund, Glaser, Håkansson, Lund and Lundin2022, 77). The author argues in his study on retrospective Facebook groups that the creation of memories is heavily influenced by the design of social media platforms. The underlying structures emphasise a sense of immediacy and constant moving on to the next post, which is then reflected in the ‘hurriedness’ and ‘fragmented’ aspects of the interactions. This relates to the fact that users in most cases are engaging with the latest content (Ekelund Reference Ekelund, Glaser, Håkansson, Lund and Lundin2022, 77). In the case of the MHMW, this sense of immediacy is further exemplified by the dimension of the unfolding war. In contrast to other mnemonic practices, it is not possible to put an end to the event, not even an arbitrary one, as the Russian invasion is constantly evolving and changing its course, shaping perceptions accordingly. The unfolding requires the MHMW to catch up with what is happening at any given moment.
This immediacy, where the act of production practically collapses with the act of remembering, coincides with the mechanisms in place within ‘the third memory boom’ (Hoskins and O'Loughlin Reference Hoskins and O'Loughlin2010, 117): the wish to prevent forgetting. However, when discussing the war feed of Russia's war against Ukraine, Hoskins and Shechlin (Reference Hoskins and Shchelin2023, 459) argue that an intensified immediacy leads to something new, namely a ‘memory of the present for the present’. In the case of the MHMW, the key factors in this reasoning – the structuring of mnemonic processes by algorithms, the unfolding of the event itself and the scale of data available – can certainly be observed. However, this involves restricting or enhancing certain modes of memory rather than taking over the processes of production itself. The MHMW has a clear intention to moor past events and thus impact the future. Yet, given the abundance of existing data, such intent is inevitably accompanied by a structuring and narrating of war memories. The narrative provided by the museum is therefore one of many. In this case, the MHMW relies on the capacity of visual platforms to generate memories and create visual narratives (Serafinelli Reference Serafinelli2020).
The reliance on visual practices is related to the second feature of instant memories: the aim to evoke emotional feedback. As Ekelund (Reference Ekelund, Glaser, Håkansson, Lund and Lundin2022, 80–81) states, the intentions of those users who create posts are inter alia to ‘produce affect’. Since the MHMW cannot rely on established online groups, the production of instant memories by the unfolding MHMW is considered an attempt to establish an ‘online crowd’. Stage (Reference Stage2013, 216) identifies three main features of online crowds: users assemble in a particular digital environment while being active within the same environment to achieve a common goal based on shared affective sensations. In other words, they converge on the digital infrastructure of the MHMW to fight and remember the Russian invasion through the use of NFTs, and they are connected by the affective reactions evoked by the emerging archive of war comprising artistic renderings of the horrors. Thus, both ‘instant memories’ and ‘online crowds’ are heavily influenced by the interplay of platform and content in its ability to affect and act.
Building on these theoretical frameworks, I present an analysis of the data assembled during the initial months of the full-scale invasion from March to August 2022Footnote 20 in order to discuss the memory practices of the MHMW. The first part of the analysis covers the MHMW's integration into the digital space; this includes domain and traffic analysis, search engine rankings and user engagement with both the website and the MHMW's social media channels. In the second part, I conduct an ethnographical online observation (Dawson Reference Dawson2019, 274–277) to analyze the visual layout and content of the MHMW and its main exhibition ‘Warline’ in more detail. To explore the exhibition, I rely on compositional analysis (Rose Reference Rose2016, 61–84) to critically approach and interpret the visual material. Since this approach focuses on the compositional modalities of the artworks, it is combined with visual ethnography (Pink Reference Pink2021) to situate the production of knowledge and modes of remembering by the MHMW in a broader context.
Analysis: MHWM – entranceFootnote 21
The departure point for the mapping is the museum website,Footnote 22 figurative entrance to the virtual museum. By entering the website, we are entering the exhibition. When I first came across the virtual museum in mid-March 2022, several features immediately caught my eye: the colours used, the title and the language. Even though it is a Ukrainian virtual museum, the site is predominantly in English – the headlines, menu and description. Admittedly, there are often Ukrainian translations, but they appear rather secondary and not at the centre of attention. For instance, they are placed on the right-hand side of the page. Since the direction of reading is from left to right, the English text is thus brought to the fore. In this regard, the deliberate choice of language sheds light on the target audience since the MHMW relies on English as the language of coding (McCulloch Reference McCulloch2019) and as the most used language on the internet. To highlight this point, in 2022, more than 63 per cent of websites were still written in English (Richter Reference Richter2022). The underlying intention is, I would argue, for the efforts of the virtual museum to go well beyond Ukraine and its population. They are addressed primarily to visitors who do not reside in Ukraine and/or are not fluent in Ukrainian. English is used to bridge the spatial distance.
Besides the use of language, my first perceptions were heavily affected by the design of the MHMW. Almost the whole virtual museum is kept in black and white, with only the exhibited artworks bringing splashes of colour. The applied contrasts certainly contribute to an enhanced impact of the artworks on the visitor. By bringing to the fore the visual part of the assemblage which constitutes the virtual museum, the colours heighten the significance of the artworks and act like a spotlight on a piece in a dimly lit art hall. The same can be said when it comes to the title; in large black letters displayed at the top of the website is written: ‘THE NFT-MUSEUM of the war of putin's russia against Ukraine’.Footnote 23 Besides the the statement's literal meaning, its style evokes two references that seem important. On the one hand, in opting to use lowercase for ‘russia’ and ‘putin’, the virtual museum denies both the state and President Putin parity with Ukraine and the rest of the world. Due to distortions and abuses of history where ‘denazification’ implies ‘deukrainisation’ – that is a call to commit crimes against humanity and mass violence – Russian fascist authorities (Snyder Reference Snyder2022) have forfeited their status.Footnote 24 On the other hand, the second reference, ‘NFT-MUSEUM’, spotlights the virtual museum's main technological feature. Overall, the NFT as a technological feature is very noticeable. When you navigate through the museum and its exhibitions, there are insistent reminders to buy NFTs, spread over the whole website. Since they partially distract from the contemplation of the works of art, I could not deny myself the perception that the main emphasis is put on the role of the museum as a fundraiser. This practice of fundraising could also be a way to overcome the fact that the act of liking and sharing in the digital space might be misconstrued as action (Hoskins Reference Hoskins2020); rather, donating money has the potential to build a connection and provide a sense of involvement. The MHMW does so rather effectively: nearly 1.3 million USD have been raisedFootnote 25 – hence, it might be this particular function that takes centre stage in comparison to the other functions. If this assumption is correct, the success of the MHMW relies on connective ways to effectively disseminate its messages and narratives.
MHMW – infrastructure
The following section takes a closer look at the structure of the museum – at the digital infrastructure which might give a hint of how successful the MHMW is when it comes to building an ‘online crowd’ (Stage Reference Stage2013). The point of departure for the endeavour is the museum domain. It was registered as ‘metahistory.gallery’ on 4 March 2022 and is hosted on a United States (US) server. However, this is not particularly significant as over 500 other sites are currently hosted on the same server.Footnote 26 In addition, the fact that the site registration happened quite recently means that less technical data are available. Yet what becomes evident is that the museum seems to be suffering a decline in visitors. The traffic decreased from 59,000 visits in May to 6,500 in July.Footnote 27 Perhaps the decline can be linked to the more general decrease of media publications about the war in Ukraine, drawing strong criticism from inter alia the MHMW itself.Footnote 28 To give an example, the number of interactions on social media dropped from 109 million in the first week to 4.8 million after 100 days of war.Footnote 29 While there is no definitive answer here, some other figures point in a slightly different direction. For instance, the number of backlinksFootnote 30 rose from 3,700 in May to 6,600 in August.Footnote 31 A cursory scroll through these links indicates that they originate from domains all over the world, with a large number of articles linked to cryptocurrency or NFT-related topics.Footnote 32 The value of backlinks – their quantity and quality, to be more precise – resides in the fact that they are a key factor when it comes to how domains are ranked by search engines like Google or Bing.Footnote 33 A quick Google query in English using the term ‘metahistory’, since we have already established its significance when it comes to the museum, confirms this assumption as the domain ranks third out of over 300,000 results.Footnote 34 Similarly, when searching on ‘Ukrainian war museum’, the MHMW appears on the first page.Footnote 35 The results delivered by Google PageRankFootnote 36 might be considered incidental. But the role of algorithms in shaping forms and orders of memories (Esposito Reference Esposito2017; Makhortykh Reference Makhortykh2021) should not be neglected given the importance of search engines in our online practices. What is crucial here is that the ways algorithms such as PageRank turn data into rankings are influenced by various parameters including user behaviour. Yet the loading of the individual parameters remains arcane. This reflects the partly hidden role that algorithms play in the formation of memories (Makhortykh Reference Makhortykh2021, 181–183). As a consequence, some of the results above have limitations and should be handled with caution. Nevertheless, this section has demonstrated the entanglement of the virtual museum in the connective environment on the structural level of links and within the Google universe. For a broader mapping, it is now necessary to consider the ways other users can engage with the museum.
To this end, the study seeks to take a closer look at the social media accounts managed by the virtual museum. It soon becomes evident that the museum uses different social media platforms for distinct purposes. The orientations of the chosen platforms differ between engagement, advertising and art (Twitter,Footnote 37 InstagramFootnote 38 and TelegramFootnote 39 respectively), technical details (Github,Footnote 40 DiscordFootnote 41), exchange and collecting new ideas (Discord), selling (OpenSea,Footnote 42 RaribleFootnote 43) and information and blogs (MediumFootnote 44). Looking at this list, it is noticeable that Facebook is absent. Ignoring the world's largest social media platform, the museum focuses rather on platforms where the NFT community is active such as DiscordFootnote 45 or Github.Footnote 46 For instance, the Meta History Discord serverFootnote 47 is managed by members of the virtual museum's core team, making it possible to engage with them directly. In addition, the server consists of different channels where you can share ideas, discuss the artworks or buy and sell NFTs. In September 2022, the server had nearly 1,000 members. Compared with other platforms used by the museum, the actual engagement on Discord is rather active: users engage in substantial discussions which go well beyond one-sided NFT promotion or showing support and encouragement. This kind of engagement is most prominent on Instagram or Twitter, although this does not necessarily mean that the museum's outreach is limited. As indicated by an analysis of its Twitter account,Footnote 48 5,000 followers is far from a huge number, but the level of influence is high. The account is regularly retweeted, cited by popular users and mentioned in several public lists, mostly related to NFT and/or Ukraine.Footnote 49 To better assess user engagement on social media, I deploy the tool buzzsumo.Footnote 50 This web analytics tool counts mentions and interactions such as shares, likes and comments on different platforms. Despite having limitations,Footnote 51 buzzsumo definitely does reveal indications regarding the content users are most engaged with. In the case of the MHMW, by far the most attention is given to the Warline.Footnote 52
MHMW – Warline
The Warline depicts the unfolding of the Russian war against Ukraine in chronological order. Its objective is to create a chronology of events that includes every day of the invasion, but the unfolding complicates things considerably. As described on the website,Footnote 53 the pieces of art exhibited in the Warline mostly consist of two parts: a tweet from an official Ukrainian or international source put together with a creation by an artist rendering a visual interpretation of the same tweet. This could be digital art in the form of a drawing, a short animation or a work generated by artificial intelligence. In the next step, the work of art is stored as an NFT on the Ethereum blockchain. The NFT artworks are later released in so-called drops, that is, several pieces of art issued simultaneously at a specific moment in time. As of August 2022, the MHMW had carried out three such drops while the fourth had been announced on Twitter.Footnote 54 An art director is responsible for compiling a drop,Footnote 55 but artists can also apply directly on the website. They subsequently receive a tweet to create an artwork around it.Footnote 56 What remains unclear, however, is the selection process for the tweets, and thus who gets to decide which events are displayed in the museum. The name of the relevant artist can be found at the lower end of the artwork's page, but generally artists do not feature prominently in the Warline. As soon as the drop is released, the artworks can be bought in cryptocurrency by anyone interested via the platform OpenSea.Footnote 57 In more detail, each artwork is sold for 0.15 Ethereum, which in August 2022 equated to roughly 270 USD. The entire proceeds, minus a commission fee, are transferred to the Ethereum wallet of the Ministry of Digital Transformation.Footnote 58 While it is not possible to track the exact project into which the money is eventually transmitted, the virtual museum grants access to their official wallets and the transaction history.Footnote 59 Thus, by connecting visual artistic renderings of war with the collection of donations, the MHMW's engagement with war present and past can be seen as an attempt to materialise a different future. Such activist imaginations of the future are part of the transformative capacity of memory (Gutman et al. Reference Gutman, Brown and Sodaro2010; Gutman and Wüstenberg Reference Gutman and Wüstenberg2023).
When entering the Warline, it is noticeable that the design of the exhibition hall is consistent with the overall design of other parts of the webpage. The background is kept in white with black font, whereas only the artworks add splashes of colour. Similarly, the use of languages further reinforces the aforementioned imbalance between English and Ukrainian. While the rationale of the Warline, ‘a chronology of events of the Ukrainian history of modern times, set in stone’,Footnote 60 is stated in both English and Ukrainian, the information for personal customisation of the museum is only written in English. This includes settings like the chronological order (newest or oldest first), arrangement of the artworks (daily or hourly) or whether all the artworks should be visible or only those on sale. Furthermore, all of the artworks consist of a tweet rendered as digital art. Most of the tweets that serve as the basis for the 459 artworks were posted in English.Footnote 61 If the tweet is written in Ukrainian, then the MHMW adds a translation; however, this does not happen in the reverse case. Besides the emphasis on English, the chosen tweets are a vehicle to increase the legitimacy of the MHMW itself and the exhibition. In this regard, the two scopes of the Warline – preservation and narration of war – mirror the main aspects of memorial museums.Footnote 62 Sodaro (Reference Sodaro2017, 162) divides them into the museum and the memorial functions of memorial museums.
The museum function serves as a way to present the historical understanding of a particular set of events, thereby claiming to be true and authentic (Sodaro Reference Sodaro2017, 163–165). To solidify the claims, memorial museums assemble material remains of the past. In the case of the MHMW, this material is symbolised by the collected tweets, which form the backbone of the exhibition. In addition, their significance is increased by the fact that in the vast majority of cases, the MHMW includes only tweets from verified accounts – namely, those possessing the verified ‘blue tick’. Such a sign denoted, prior to the takeover by Elon Musk, that Twitter had labelled the account in question as of ‘public interest’ and ‘authentic’.Footnote 63 Thus, the account is endowed with authority by the social media, which then transfers to the artworks. Since the artworks include the tweet in its entirety, the blue tick is visible.
The second primary function, which is called the memorial function, intends to remember the violent past, acknowledge the victims and be part of the healing. The commemoration and the victimisation are part of an effort to repair communities that have suffered; contained therein lies the promise of a better future, where the past remains past (Sodaro Reference Sodaro2017, 170–172). What tends to get hidden in this rhetoric is the fact that these museums are fundamentally political projects (Sodaro Reference Sodaro2017, 183). And it is precisely in this respect that the MHMW differs from other institutions, as it openly emphasises its political character. At its core, the virtual museum is deeply political, activist and future-oriented. This is, I argue, connected to the playing out of the war, meaning there is no clear-cut to ‘the past’, which is often implied in memorial museums. The violence is not over yet, and thus it cannot be musealised to show that the present is different and brighter (Sodaro Reference Sodaro2017, 172). The impossibility to disconnect present events from ‘the past’ leads in the case of the MHMW to a call to action, pointing towards a brighter and peaceful future.
Since the imagined future has not yet arrived, the work of the MHMW will carry on. At first – as of the end of August 2022, the Warline spans from day one of the war to day 66 – it was not entirely clear whether the museum aimed to cover all days. That has changed. The MHMW roadmap declares that the Warline will end only ‘after victory’ is achieved.Footnote 64 Until that day, the museum continues to narrate the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Inevitably, such an approach leads to the unfolding of the war being mirrored in the evolving character of the museum. The exhibition changes as the war goes on and cannot therefore be finalised. The uncertainty that surrounds it and the incompleteness of the MHMW is made more manifest by the apprehension of the war through art. The artworks do not only depict what happened or is happening but what will or might happen as well. Thus, the past, present and future are collapsed in a complex montage of war. The different temporalities affect the mediation of the invasion, while also depending on its actualisation. More precisely, while today certain pieces of art depict Ukrainian victory in a particular way, the actual course of war might alter its representation or perception.
Warline – artworks
To give due prominence to some key parts of the assemblage, I would like to highlight three topics that appear repeatedly within the Warline: suffering, politics and resilience. While the exhibition explores a range of other subjects, the three selected topics are displayed frequently. Furthermore, they illustrate the becoming of the Warline since the three selected artworks to discuss the aforementioned topics were published at the beginning, in the middle and at the end of the data assembling.
Suffering: the suffering of Ukraine appears in a multitude of shapes and forms, from material suffering encompassing houses, bridges, monuments, fields, nature, animals and bodies, to mental and emotional wounds of fear, grief, torture and occupation. It was in the early hours of 24 February when President Volodymyr Zelensky addressed Ukraine and its people in a video message to state that the country was under attack but that ‘we are Ukraine’, ‘we are strong’ and ‘we will win’.Footnote 65 While Zelensky's address was delivered in a rather official and dispassionate tone, the artworkFootnote 66 around the tweet depicts the emotional state of people sitting in their apartments. It does so in comic-book style, painting a completely grey world where only the flashes of explosions bring some occasional light into the apartments. The ashen-faced people sit together in their bedrooms and try to understand what is happening: the world is out of joint, chaotic and bloody as the loud flashes of the explosions leave a red stain trickling down into the streets. The flow in connection with the colour red represents the blood of people killed or severely wounded by Russian attacks in the first hours of the invasion.
Politics: the colour red and its association with blood is a recurrent motif. In a tweet,Footnote 67 the Ukrainian foreign minister Dmytro Kuleba cautions the European Union (EU) countries not to bow to the demands of the Russian Federation to pay for oil and gas in rubles since such a transaction would be equivalent to collaborating in the killing of Ukrainians. Similarly, the digital renderingFootnote 68 of the same tweet foregrounds a big hand in black and white close to grabbing a coin. The coin symbolises the possible profits of meeting Russian demands and the greedy ulterior motives. By contrast, the background runs in red and white stripes, thus reifying the death toll Ukraine would have to bear in the event of an unfavourable decision for them. Paying the energy resources in rubles will cost the lives of innocent Ukrainians and metaphorically red will become more dominant within the artwork. Hence, I attach to the red flow a double meaning: the gas pipeline which finances the invasion and the killings it causes.
Resilience: while Ukraine was being bombed, its people executed and its children traumatised, to paraphrase the tweetFootnote 69 by Secretary of Defence Lloyd J. Austin III, and partially obstructed by international politics, the country withstood and the armed forces repelled the brutal and illegal assault on its independence. Such shades of hope and confidence do illustrate the possibility or perhaps rather the imperative of a better future without war and occupation within the Warline. The piece of art,Footnote 70 which is generated by a neural network,Footnote 71 depicts a giant creature standing under what might be a steel plant. Wearing torn blue clothes and with a flag tied around its upper body, the head of the creature, resembling a cyborg or zombie, is lit up in yellow. In front of this character stands a blurred grey mass of people. There is only one person who sticks out, sitting elevated from all the others but still lower than the giant figure on something like a platform. Most probably a Russian soldier, he sits upright but seems mutilated as he wears an eye patch and has lost his legs. In front of him lies a removed black mask. It is not possible to recognise the soldier's facial expression but his gaze seems to be fixed on the giant cyborg, while the yellow-golden aura that surrounds him seems to be getting closer and closer. The figure of the cyborg,Footnote 72 ie the connection of organism and machine, has gained traction in Ukraine since 2014–2015 and the battle of Donetsk International Airport, one of the most brutal battles of attrition in Eastern Ukraine. While Ukrainian forces had long withstood, they were ultimately defeated and the airport reduced to rubble.Footnote 73 Emerging from the rubble was the notion of the Ukrainian defenders as cyborgs because they resisted the numerically superior occupiers in inhuman conditions and seemingly possessed the ability to fight around the clock. The expression was first mentioned by a soldier of the Russian army or its proxies, but the label and its surrounding events were later artistically and politically re-enacted in many ways,Footnote 74 ranging from remembrance daysFootnote 75 to stamps,Footnote 76 books and films – for instance, the popular Ukrainian war drama ‘Cyborgs: Heroes Never Die’ (ukr. Кiборги: Герої не вмирають).Footnote 77 In this regard, the notion of the cyborg represents the strength of Ukraine, its resistance, resilience and determination, which in the end will be superior to the occupiers – no matter what.
Ultimately, the three listed topics illustrate the artistic becoming of the Warline. It shows the transformation of topics as well as styles, reflecting the unfolding war along with the artistic exploration and meaning-making process. The points discussed also mirror the temporal aspects the MHMW aims to influence. The portrayal of sorrow represents the instant memorialisation of the victims, addressing both past and present. In contrast to this, artworks dealing with international politics aim rather at influencing the course of the war in real time, thus representing a present layer. Lastly, voices of resilience do instil hope for a better future.
In general, the illustrations bring to the fore the material traces of war and its abysmal grief. They tell a story of the war, oscillating between sorrow, hatred, resilience and confidence. But it feels at times like a double-faced diary: on the one hand, the official news sources are often delivered in a more dispassionate tone, where the horror hides behind the language; on the other, the screaming and touching graphic illustrations depict war-ridden Ukraine and its people. However, since digital art is more prominent within the composition of the artwork, the visual expression prevails over the written tweet, serving to shape reactions. What the Warline does, by drawing on artworks, is to bring the corporeal aspects of war closer in the digital space. It aims to make war felt within bodies, even though the visitors might be hundreds of kilometres away in front of their screens. Thus, the MHMW engagement resonates with what Agostinho et al. (Reference Agostinho, Gade, Bonde Thylstrup and Veel2020, XII–XIII) call the ‘new digital materiality of war’,Footnote 78 arguing that digital connectivity has fundamentally changed the materiality of war, insofar as it has partially stripped armed conflicts of their materiality. In line with this, the MHMW contributes to the extended materiality of war through the exhibition of NFT artworks. The exhibited pieces of art combine information, memories, imaginations and structures of feeling to process how today's war is experienced.
Discussion
The mapping of the MHMW highlights the becoming of the museum over the first months of its existence. It sheds light on the assemblages of human and non-human elements between which the agency of the museum as a site of persuasion (Morphy Reference Morphy, Karp, Kratz, Szwaja and Ybarra-Frausto2006) and as an active Ukrainian agent in the war is evoked. The mediation of instant affective memories of war in connection with the infrastructure illustrates the MHMW's attempts to bridge the spatial gap in order to establish an ‘online crowd’ (Stage Reference Stage2013) which promotes support for Ukraine on different levels. Against this backdrop, the next section leads a critical discussion to illustrate, clarify and extend the issues that the examination of the MHMW has raised in shaping flattened instant memories of the Russian invasion: abundance of digital data and the production of digital archives. The discussion further explores how the mnemonic practices employed by the MHMW to mediate and remember the war, along with its efforts to build an ‘online crowd’, rely on the openness, uncertainty and participative aspects of the connective environment, while simultaneously, aiming to establish a coherent ‘Warline’. Hence, this tension sheds light on the ways (virtual) museums are using the combination of different charateristics and functions (Olzacka Reference Olzacka2023; Walden Reference Walden and Walden2022). However, the design of the study has some limitations. Too little attention is placed on the visitors of the museum and their perception of the exhibitions. A closer look at the interactions between the museum and its visitors as well as how the digital artworks affect bodies would certainly complement and expand this research.
Connectivity and the omnipresence of data have turned today's war into ‘an experience that is continuously streamed’ (Ford and Hoskins Reference Ford and Hoskins2022, 118). Consequently, digital technologies have led to a war that is pervasive at all times (Merrin Reference Merrin2018, 294), making the mediation of violence through connected technologies inevitable. This entails at least two implications: an information overload that complicates making sense of events (ibid 2018, 293), and thus the necessity to draw on certain types of information sources. Such a multiplicity of data does have ramifications for the creation of narratives as well (Timcke Reference Timcke2022Footnote 79). Namely, it implies a fragmented audience and the content has to be considered ‘asynchronous’ – not necessarily following the realities or the timeline of the battlefield. In addition, it is often decontextualised (Ford and Hoskins Reference Ford and Hoskins2022, 15) and later on recontextualised in other forms. On this point, MHMW's Warline is one of the digitally available narratives that transform and modify our perception of the war. However, the aim extends beyond this: the chronology of war provided employing NFT artworks should form an ‘eternal archive’Footnote 80 for later generations so that they will never forget the horrors. Yet the storytelling requires a flattening of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, leading to an archive that excludes other voices. This is further reinforced by the tidiness of the museum; the exhibitions are well structured and designed, thus doing away with the messiness and multilayeredness of the invasion. Similarly, while the MHMW claims to preserve the ‘true history’,Footnote 81 which can be understood as implying the possibility of depicting the entire and closed past, the actual exhibition consists of traces of war (Winter Reference Winter and Muchitsch2013, 23–24). Thus, aspiration and reality inevitably have to diverge. Due to its claims, the MHMW neglects the selection methods which lead to the inclusion of particular tweets, inevitably reducing the complexity. Such a dismissal of absences creates an impression of the MHMW as a fixed and self-contained traditional archive instead of a fragmented emerging archive that acknowledges multiplicity and uncertainties.
The role of archives in the process of knowledge production, and therefore in simultaneously silencing other accounts of what has happened, has been debated and criticised widely in social sciences (Agostinho et al. Reference Agostinho, Gade, Bonde Thylstrup and Veel2020; Carter Reference Carter2006; Derrida Reference Derrida1996; Foucault Reference Foucault1972; Mbembe Reference Mbembe, Hamilton, Harris, Taylor, Pickover, Reid and Saleh2002; Trouillot Reference Trouillot1995). Based on this, the archive as a site where sources, ie ‘artifacts and bodies that turn an event into fact’, are classified, collected and stored represents ‘an active act of production’ (Trouillot Reference Trouillot1995, 48–52). Similarly, Derrida (Reference Derrida1996, 17) reminds us that the archive is not simply a place where things are stored, but rather a space of contestation regarding what can be collected and what not. Hence, it is crucial to bear in mind that the process of storing stuff ‘produces as much as it records the events’. Through methods of selection – which include, for instance, events, producers, guidelines and spaces – archives (re)produce historical narratives by shedding light on the chosen presences while silencing their inherent absences (Trouillot Reference Trouillot1995, 53). However, although these assumptions are still perfectly true, the changes brought by connectivity have altered the ways archives work and are perceived, doing away with the limitations of physical space and thus creating new opportunities to produce pastness. This development is epitomised by the MHMW and its exhibition of NFT artworks. Indeed, the connective archive, part of the datafication of the mundane and the everyday, is the first medium that has more space than there is stuff we can produce (Hoskins Reference Hoskins and Hoskins2018, 3). While connectivity was first seen as a means to a more inclusive archive, it has become evident by now that such a view is too sanguine. Today's connective archives are still permeated by authority and power (Agostinho et al. Reference Agostinho, Gade, Bonde Thylstrup and Veel2020, X). Yet what has altered is the mobility and malleability of the things recorded. In this regard, Ernst (Reference Ernst2018a) notes rightly that the internet is characterised by its dynamic and perpetual updating. Of course, archives do not make up the internet, and neither can the internet be considered an archive. But connective archives are contributing to the updating of the internet, insofar as they are accumulating data by ‘permanently archiving presence’ (Ernst Reference Ernst and Hoskins2018b, 144). Collecting and processing events that are becoming past is exactly the modus operandi of the Warline. It is thus ‘archiving presence’.
The production of instant memories and its sense of immediacy are linked to the structural design of today's connective platforms, which are often shaped by speed and newness. Hoskins and Shechlin (Reference Hoskins and Shchelin2023, 459) claim that these changes will eventually lead to a ‘memory of the present for the present’, thus doing away with memory that can potentially be actualised in the future. However, while the MHMW is involved in the broader struggle over how the Russian war against Ukraine is memorialised in the present, its emerging archive does still shape a future that could be actualised. This is linked to the selection methods which form a narrativisation of the war. In connection with the affective potential of the instant memories that rely on the chronological and visual composition of the Warline, the remembering of the unfolding Russian invasion aims at having an impact in the ‘new ecology of war’ (Ford and Hoskins Reference Ford and Hoskins2022), ultimately to support a country under attack.
Coda
This paper illustrates how the virtual museum becomes an active, engaged and provocative agent in the Russian war against Ukraine. The MHMW generates the agentic capacity by its embeddedness in human and non-human elements: the infrastructure, exhibitions and users, engaging with each other in multiple ways. By employing digital methods and digital ethnography, I trace the interplay of the different modes and how in their becoming they take part in repulsing the occupiers. This approach illustrates the double incompleteness of the virtual museum – the evolving nature of the exhibition and the unfolding of the war. Furthermore, it demonstrates that artistic renderings of the war are not only a visual representation and textual narrativisation of the past in the present but rather a way to wield influence on the events that will be exhibited in the future.
The virtual museum blurs online and offline distinctions. Within the new ecology of war (Ford and Hoskins Reference Ford and Hoskins2022), the MHMW deploys the various possibilities of our connective environment to collect donations for the Ukrainian armed forces, build an archive of the invasion for later generations and remember the atrocities committed by the occupying forces. These efforts are reflected in the affordances of the museum. All in all, the MHMW is shaping instant forms of memory (Ekelund Reference Ekelund, Glaser, Håkansson, Lund and Lundin2022) to convey on multiple levels – visual, emotional and technical – the physical and mental wounds the war is inflicting on Ukraine. The aim, I argue, is thereby to bridge the spatial dimension, to bring war closer. By doing so, the museum tries to create an ‘online crowd’ (Stage Reference Stage2013) as a way to further grow and multiply the impact of the museum in Ukraine and beyond. The kind of impact the MHMW seeks to achieve is mirrored in the exhibitions. In this regard, the MHMW's most engaging hall Warline does not simply sketch a Ukraine that is suffering and devastated, but rather transfuses through its actions and NFT artworks voices of hope and resilience. The different roles of the MHMW – museum, memorial museum, gallery and archive – are thus not closed but emerging. And there are, as Derrida (Reference Derrida1996, 36) reminds us regarding the archive, always questions of the future at stake. Thus, the unfolding MHMW assemblage and the instant memories point towards the openness of what is yet to come: towards becoming in virtuality and beyond, towards victory.
Data availability statement
Data supporting the findings of this study are accessible via the provided footnotes and via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine under the following link: https://web.archive.org/web/20220901000000*/metahistory.gallery. The Wayback Machine captures and saves the content of webpages at a certain point in time, thus the tool allows to track the modifications of the domain ‘metahistory.gallery’. In case certain data is not or no longer accessible, it can be made available upon request from the author ([email protected]).
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank three anonymous reviewers for their insightful and constructive feedback, which significantly enhanced the quality of this paper. I am grateful to my supervisors, Per Anders Rudling, Ulf Zander and Robin Ekelund, for their support and invaluable guidance throughout the writing process. Special thanks are due to Karl Vesterberg and Natalia Volvach for their insightful comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.
Funding statement
This research has been granted funds by Lund University and the National Graduate School of Historical Studies.
Competing interest
The author declares that he has no conflict of interest.
Disclosure statements
The author confirms that the manuscript is not currently under consideration or accepted elsewhere.
Sebastian Graf (Lund University) is a PhD student at the Department of History. In his PhD project, he explores digital memory politics and use of history in contemporary Ukraine. In particular, the focus lies on the ways the ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine is mediated and remembered in digital spaces by (semi-)institutionalised actors.
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