Open Mic

"For over a decade Open Group has been creating unrehearsed situations, performative films, and spatial experiments. One of its guiding values is porosity: Whatever is in the landscape-a bridge, a pole, a road-can become the frame for an artwork; the participants, including both colleagues and audience members, can become temporary members of the collective; any situation could be the incentive for an artwork; and the conceptual and political thinking undergirding the work are considered interchangeable."

"Pavlo Kovach sits at a desk wearing the Ukrainian military uniform. For many months he has been serving in the army in the east of the country, coordinating the burials or the returns of dead bodies; now he is back in his hometown of Lviv, where he has been put in charge of communication with the civilian population, dealing with people searching for missing relatives, displaced refugees inside the country, or urgent requests for new documents."

Pavlo Kovach serves in the Ukrainian army coordinating burials and returns of dead bodies in the east while handling civilian communications in Lviv, aiding searches for missing relatives, displaced refugees, and urgent document requests. He recently became a father and continues to make art, describing art as a means of surviving amid air raids. Kovach contributed to the two-part exhibition Different Places in Lublin and prepared a retrospective at the PinchukArtCentre as part of Open Group. Open Group has for over a decade created unrehearsed situations, performative films, and spatial experiments guided by porosity, turning landscape elements and participants into frames for artworks.

Read at Artforum