During my studies at ZHdK I have been working on a campaign with two fellow students to draw attention to the crisis in Ukraine in an unconventional way.

When you walk through the streets of your hometown, that’s a familiar feeling. You know the area, you understand snatches of sentences from passers-by talking to each other, and you can find your way around. You can read the text that surrounds you, whether it’s a traffic sign or a bus stop panel. Language is part of our culture. By taping over passages of text in public spaces, we show how it feels to be confronted with something foreign and illegible in your own country. Although illegibility only imitates a fraction of what is suffered in war, it is a way to experience on a small scale what it is like to have one’s own culture and language suppressed. With this, we hope to reach people who are not actively involved in foreign policy.

Collaboration with Oleksandra Pshenychna and Yannick Meyer.