Unpatterned (_tell_me_what_war_is_)

performances by Yulia Makeyeva
photo documentation by Sergei Novikov

Unpatterned (tell_me_what_war_is) is a series of interventions in central London performed near monuments and memorials that commemorate war, conflict, and terror. The work steps into the space of the “anti-memorial”: a form that aims “not to console but to provoke, not to remain fixed but to change, not to be everlasting but to disappear, not to be ignored by passers-by but to demand interaction” (James E. Young).

These interventions created tension and disrupted assumed relations between the audience and the war monument or memorial, prompting questions about the very reasons for their erection and endurance. Inspired by Marina Abramović’s durational works—which profoundly slow time and complete the performance through the audience’s sustained attention to the performer’s vulnerability—the project adopted a slow process of knitting with eyes closed.

Beyond introducing a different temporality, knitting offers a distinct visual language, tactility, intimacy and an alternative to the conventional archive of testimonies. While the artist listens to passersby, knitting with her eyes closed, a material artefact, a knitted “record” prone to mistakes, emerges in real time.