KALTBLUT presents. Photography by Galina Orlenko. Artistic idea and costume design by Blue Pencil. Model is Raffael Ciric. Make up and Hair by Sonia Montana. “I am a Russian photographer based in Cologne, Germany. In my work, I always try to raise social issues. Since the day when Russia thoughtlessly and mercilessly invaded Ukraine, I can’t stop thinking, talking and screaming about it. As a result, this is reflected in my art.”
“I was excited and inspired to find the @watch_blue_pencil work on the internet.
Prolonged and bloody repressions and loud propaganda keep people silent. In this silence very dangerous thing happens – people begin to think that they are alone in their beliefs. Man is a social being and often adapts himself to society. This is how the protest movement dies.
That is why the artwork of @watch_blue_pencil is so important. Leaving eloquent and witty remarks with a blue pencil on the infrastructures of Russian cities showes some people that they are not alone, there are many of us and we are against the war and makes others think about the correctness of this reality and the legitimacy of this regime.”
Blue Pencil about the «Inside Out» project:
The war started by the Russian Federation turned the world upside down. My personal and surrounding world – political, cultural and generally global – is the one in which we all live together.
Perhaps an analogy can be drawn.
With the start of the war, I felt like I was inside a car whose engine caught fire, the steering wheel and mechanics were out of order, but there was a full tank of gasoline. One passenger patriotically cheers and accelerates, another jumps out of the moving vehicle in hope of finding a better perspective, the third prefers to ignore the smoke and fire already engulfing the cabin and continues to live as usual, and one tries to realize what is happening and to find an opportunity to end this fire. And all of them together are vomiting – from intoxication, fear or neurosis. To each his own. But the car keeps rolling, despite attempts to put the remaining spokes of civic responsibility and solidarity into the wheels.
“Russian military machine” is radio-controlled – a dull man with a remote control stands far away (or rather sits in a bunker), increases the speed and power of destruction at his own discretion and with an unpleasantly strained smile on his face, he presses the “kill to save a life” button.
Even if you are expressing your protest, going out, writing or taking any actions against the conduct of the war, it is rather an experience of personal honour and at the same time powerlessness, an experience of the impossibility of changing the situation here and now. We find ourselves in the new reality of an actively totalitarian country.
This war overturned all our values. Intelligence, morality, dialogue, culture, economic benefits – all of it turned out to be powerless and defenceless against the violence and geopolitical madness. Russia has successfully completed the transformation into a totalitarian-suffocating regime inside and a dangerously aggressive outside. Putin’s Russia turned out to the world with black and wild insides.
But the worst part about this “special operation” (as the war is called by propaganda and government agencies in Russia) of course is the murders committed in Ukraine by Russian soldiers every day.
Killings expose the insides in the literal sense, pulling them out.
On the one hand, the costume “Inside Out” is the image of a killed participant in this war. The one who can’t be returned. And on the other hand, the image of the one who went through this war turned inside out but continues to live. Wishing to live.“
Artistic idea and costume design by Blue Pencil / Instagram: @watch_blue_pencil
Photography by Galina Orlenko / www.orlenphotography.com / Instagram: @orlen_photography
Model is Raffael Ciric / Instagram: @the_raffy
Make up and Hair by Sonia Montana / www.montana-makeup.de / Instagram: @sonia.s.montana
Brands used are: Gucci, Collusion
Instagram names: @gucci @collusionstudios
