The consequences of the current global situation are overwhelmingly uncertain. The devastation of war transcends eras; it is, however, defined by victims and ruin, by exile and destruction, by millions of people whose names will never be recorded in any book.

In a situation of such magnitude, where not only the future but the very present of society is being rewritten, we once again seek refuge in culture to try to answer countless questions. It is also in culture that we can find voices that help us in our reflections and in our attempt to understand the world around us.

Pending a future study conducted with the calmness we do not have now, we offer some audiovisual documents that can serve as a starting point, as an approach to a reality that we thought was very distant and improbable.

Documents about the war, with which we ask for PEACE. 

The European Alliance of Academies condemns the war against Ukraine  

The unthinkable has happened: war in Europe. This war is polarizing, particularly regarding how to treat Russian and Belarusian artists who publicly oppose the war. In this context, the European Alliance of Academies has overwhelmingly agreed on the following declaration:

The European Alliance of Academies condemns the war against Ukraine  
The transnational alliance invites Ukrainian art academies to join and calls for dialogue with artists from Russia and Belarus.

The European Alliance of Academies condemns Putin's war and declares its solidarity with the people of Ukraine. The European Alliance of Academies invites Ukrainian art academies and cultural institutions to join the pan-European alliance. Russian and Belarusian artists and academics who raise their voices against the war, at great personal risk, are also invited to join the European Alliance of Academies. They have our solidarity. Freedom of the press and freedom of expression are more important than ever, and the alliance expresses its gratitude and solidarity with all critical journalists. The political and economic sanctions that extend to the sphere of civil society and the artistic and academic spheres must be addressed instead through critical dialogue. This has always been the right path and must be maintained. The world's capacity for military power can easily destroy our civilizations.

Between Volga and apocalypse. Anastasiia Pestinova

“Letters from a Dead Man” is a dystopian philosophical parable by Konstantin Lopushansky, filmed in 1986, illustrating the theory of nuclear winter. It is curious how prescient Soviet fiction seems to be: the film's release coincidentally coincided with the Chernobyl disaster and, therefore, had a powerful impact on the public. The director's style is clearly inspired by Tarkovsky: poetically staged dialogues, archetypal characters, and that elusive spirit of the Russian intelligentsia, always oriented toward a sublime contemplation of everyday life. Furthermore, “Letters” was released the same year as “The Sacrifice,” also dedicated to nuclear catastrophe and the reevaluation of humanist ideals.

Russian art as a response to a war-rhetoric. Anastasiia Pestinova

Amidst the global wave of doubt surrounding the position of Russian art in relation to the discourse of militarism, it is worth emphasizing the difficulty of maintaining a clear line between the poetic and the political. If a poet of a certain era sings of war, does this mean that their work must be excluded from the cultural heritage? And conversely: is anti-war rhetoric truly capable of saving humanity from conflict and catastrophe?

The war as “unproductive waste”. Anastasiia Pestinova

The Soviet and Russian musician, poet, and artist Yegor Letov is a leading figure in the Siberian underground and a pioneer of the Russian industrial scene. Throughout his life, he created numerous artistic projects, including “Grazhdanskaya Oborona” (Civil Defense), “Instruktsiya po Vyzhivaniyu” (Instructions for Survival), “Communism,” and others. He is a prime example of Soviet dissent, having been repeatedly subjected to political persecution and repression, and even forced into mandatory treatment in a psychiatric hospital, during which he continued to write poetry to avoid a breakdown and the loss of his remaining sense of self.

On Mondays, at CírculoAlmudena Grandes: The Difficult Memory of a War

Under the heading The difficult memory of a war, in this quote from On Mondays, at Círculo –which was held online as part of the #El initiativeCírculoEnCasa–, the writer Almudena Grandes and the director del Círculo de Bellas ArtesValerio Rocco and Valerio Rocco discussed the health crisis and the CBA exhibition. Franco's lie and dream, by Antonio Saura, who brought to the table the need to confront the Historical Memory of the Civil War and Francoism in the face of the fracturing of Spain's present.

Albert Kahn. The War Archives. Journey to the End of the Night: Wars and Conflicts

From the beginning of its photographic and cinematographic campaigns in 1909 until the last of its image-gathering trips in 1931, the project's operators documented numerous armed conflicts. The most prominent example is the First World War, a conflict in which Albert Kahn placed his project at the service of the French nation. But these archives also illustrate conflicts between Russia and Japan, Italy and Turkey, and many other battles, revolts, and civil wars that took place during the first decades of the last century. War, after all, is a fact, a product of human activity. Its consequences were recorded by the archives for study, reflection, denunciation… or to exacerbate patriotic sentiment and propaganda. In this sense, one of the most interesting questions raised by archival analysis is the porous boundary between document and artifice. The existence of a colonial political situation, for example, calls into question any principled neutrality, to the point that the boundary between staging and propaganda, in some cases such as troop parades or similar events, has become nonexistent. This ambiguous position permeates the entire archive, especially when considered in the context of dissemination.

Figures of Failure

The Glossary of Failure is one of the results of the research project " Failure. Reversing the genealogies of unsuccess; 16th-19th Centuries , " funded by the European Union. Within the framework of such a complex and interdisciplinary research project, born from the convergence of diverse fields of knowledge such as history, philology, art history, and philosophy, the aim of this volume is to address, in a primarily conceptual manner, the polysemy of the very notion of failure. Below, we include some figures that we have deemed relevant:

Drop

Drop, derived from the Spanish verb. FALL and from Latin. HIP, already attested in the 10th century, from which emerge DROP, But also HAPPENwhich in turn derives from Vulgar Latin ACCADERE and from Classical Latin ACCIDERE (ad-cadere). From an etymological perspective, another fundamental derivative for our purposes is the word EVENT and, above all, the lexical family of the term DECADENCE; DECAY, from vulgar Latin DECADERE, from which come "to decline", "decadence", "relapse", "decline", but also CADENCE, from Italian CADENZA, a word itself derived from the verb HIP which is at the base of our DROP.

Slope

The word decline comes from Latin, specifically from the noun form of the adjective *declivis* , which literally means "that which is on a slope," applied to a physical terrain that is inclined downwards, or "that which is in decline" (see decline ). It is also used figuratively to describe anything or anyone that gradually loses strength, intensity, importance, or perfection. However, "to be in decline" is not usually said of individuals, but rather of groups, states, or societies that gradually lose the strength or values ​​that constitute them and weaken until they disintegrate.

Disaster

We readily find in modern languages ​​compound terms that combine the Latin prefix of negation, opposition, or privation ( dis- ) and the Greco-Latin root referring to celestial bodies ( aster/astron in Greek, astrum in Latin). Despite the ease with which modern languages ​​construct these compound forms from Greek and Latin, we do not find similar terms in these latter languages ​​in terms of their formation. We find nothing similar to désastre , disastro , desastre , disaster , or unstern , modern terms that share their form and meaning: misfortune, calamity, setback, disaster (and the damage resulting from such events).

Defeat

In Spanish, the word "defeat" has two fundamentally distinct meanings. One refers to the path, course, route, or direction, primarily that followed by a vessel or ship. The other, which is of greater interest to us here, refers to the loss of a battle, to failure in a war, a confrontation, or a dispute. Thus, the verb "to defeat" is equivalent to conquering, destroying, or, in the context of bullfighting or navigation, making a change of direction (abrupt in the case of the bull, when it turns its horns from one side to the other).

Exile

Exile refers to an "outside," a separation or distance from a place to which one feels a sense of belonging: city, country, territory, community. It comes from the Latin *exilium* and is usually associated with banishment and, therefore, can be linked to ostracism (from the Greek * ostrakismós *, ὀστρακισμός ), with the condemnation that banishment for political reasons related to dishonor or unvirtuous behavior entails. The antecedent of *exilium* is *exsilire* ("to jump out") and the Greek * phuge* (φυγή), which means "flight," "escape" (also from a battle), and finally "exile." The term is almost identical in other related languages; see * exile* (English), * exilé* (French), *esilio* (Italian), or *Exil* (German).

Poverty

The etymological origins of the word "poverty" can be traced back to the Proto-Indo-European term *peh-w* (little, small). In Ancient Greek, the term *παῦρος* also meant little or small. The etymology of the Germanic term *Arm* (poor, from which *Armut *, poverty, derives) is largely unknown, but it may be related to terms concerning loneliness or isolation from the community. These two words are complemented in modern German by a multitude of terms to define those without means, in need, or unfortunate ( besitzlos, mittellos, bedürftig, beklagenswert ).

Debate: How does political radicalization endanger artistic freedom in Europe?

How does political radicalization endanger artistic freedom in Europe? This was the title of the third debate on public programming at the 2nd European Summit #AllianceOfAcademies #ThePowerOfArt (European Alliance of Academies: The Power of Art: Defending a Transnational Concept of European Culture), which took place on December 3, 2021 in el Círculo de Bellas Artes and featured Aleš Šteger, Antonio Muñoz Molina, Wolfgang Kaleck and was moderated by Dominika Kasprowicz.

Photojournalist Yevgeny Khaldei and his iconic photographs in The Soviet Century from #PHE18

Yevgeny Khaldei was one of the main protagonists of the exhibition The Soviet Century. Russian photograph from the Lafuente Archive (1917-1972), one of the three that el Círculo de Bellas Artes It was featured in the official section of PHotoEspaña 2018, and not only for its iconic photographs, Raising a flag over the Reichstag or those of the Nuremberg trials with Göring, present in that exhibition, but for the projection that we included in it about his tragic life marked by anti-Semitism.