Seven Years of Pain & Love in Donbas: An Interview With Sebastian Tomasz Płocharski

plocharski_fot.akanarska.jpg, default, Sebastian Tomasz Płocharski and his symbolic ‘The Bench’, during the sixth UKRAЇNA! Film Festival. Photo: Anastasiia Kanarska, Seven Years of Pain & Love in Donbas: An Interview With Sebastian Tomasz Płocharski

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Last November, we spoke on the steps of Warsaw’s Kinoteka cinema, where ‘The Bench’ – his exhibition/installation of portraits of people from Donbas – was on display during the sixth UKRAЇNA! Film Festival. It was a cold evening, and Sebastian had been standing there all day. He was smoking yet another cigarette and considerately socialising with everyone who was interested. Back then, none of us wanted to believe that Russia’s war against Ukraine would become a full-scale, bloody war.

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Ruins in Vasylkiv, Kyiv Oblast, after shelling. Photo: Sebastian Tomasz Płocharski

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I’ve been travelling to Donbas to make reportages for seven years, and now I’m working on one long documentary and several shorter ones. A year ago, I decided to bike to the demarcation line to get a feel for the territory and see every centimetre I’d failed to see while driving around with journalists. I’m gradually reviewing my work and I will go back, but I want to complete this phase first. Most people get around on bicycles in those parts, and for me, it’s a kind of psychological stabiliser. It’s also pretty abstract to see someone riding along the front line in a pink helmet… The Pink Rider is an effect of this war. At first, the soldiers laughed, but then they shook my hand, and the civilians already accepted me like a local because I’d learned their patois. It’s unacceptable to use the local Donbas slang in Kyiv these days, so I try to avoid the word patsan (lad), for example.

‘Are these scenes from some film?’ asks a passer-by, assuming the exhibition is connected to the film festival. ‘Yes, these are stills from my upcoming documentary, but they’re also real-life scenes. I always say that you should go to the East to understand Ukraine’.

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From the Premortal Portraits series. Photo: Sebastian Tomasz Płocharski

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Anastasiia Kanarska: The concept of home takes on a different meaning during wartime. What does home mean to you and your subjects?

Sebastian Płocharski: My home is where my friends are. My portraits are mostly of elderly people, not because they’re all I photographed, but because they were the only ones who stayed behind when the young folks went off to Kyiv and Kharkiv. This is their land. They might never have been any further than Severodonetsk. It’s all they’ve ever known. They’re afraid of anything new. How can an old granddad start all over from scratch and go to Kyiv? What’s the point? He prefers to stay and live here despite all the shooting… In the end, it won’t cost him anything if he doesn’t move anywhere.

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From the Premortal Portraits series. Photo: Sebastian Tomasz Płocharski

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AK: Could you tell me how Ukraine first came into your life?

SP: I first went to Lviv in 2012. I was in Kraków when the war broke out in 2014, and it felt as if it was happening in my own home. Up to that point, I’d only been to Kyiv and Lviv, but I already managed to fall in love with Ukraine. So I started following all the news as well as reportages by Babylon’13 (an informal film collective making shorts and full-length Ukrainian documentaries, involving numerous well-known Ukrainian directors and camera operators – editor’s note). I had the idea to go to Ukraine to make a documentary about them. I didn’t want to go to war, but my original idea ceased being relevant. Due to the situation, my Russian-speaking friends from Podil, whose kitchen I slept in, started learning Ukrainian poems by heart to improve their language skills. It was fascinating to watch something like that. I stayed on, and my circles extended to include the organisers of the Science Picnics, which travelled out to teach children in Donbas. They had one seat free. I stayed there for three months, then I had to leave for three months, but went back again for another three. You might say that luck played a part, but I also had a kind of innate need to go. I don’t know if it would have arisen if I were Scots or English. They tend to be more self-absorbed and sometimes have no idea where Poland or Ukraine are, let alone that there’s a war going on somewhere in Europe. The media have already reduced their coverage – and everyone’s tired of it. It was important to show it, and then of course they took it to heart. I love new experiences, challenges, learning new things, and searching for places where I feel like I belong. Ukrainians and Scots are both very open people.

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Portrait of Volodia. Photo: Sebastian Tomasz Płocharski

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AK: Was anyone on ‘The Bench’ particularly close to you?

SP: Volodia, but he isn’t here. He was on a large colour picture that didn’t fit the overall composition of the exhibition. I first met him when he was 12 and living at a checkpoint with the soldiers. Now he’s 17 and studying to be a paramedic in Kramatorsk.

AK: If you asked him where his home was, what would he say?

SP: I don’t think he’s thought about that yet, but I guess he’ll leave. He only has his uncle and auntie there. His parents died in a car crash before the war. He’s always been very patriotic, but with time he’s matured a little, and some of his youthful, maximalist views on the war have changed. He’s a good example of how you can observe a young man growing up against the backdrop of a war.

On 3 April 2022, Sebastian Tomasz Płocharski posted on Facebook that he was heading to Donbas because:

If you know me a little, you’ll understand that I had to go and visit the heroes of my seven years of work. […] I won’t be in contact much from now on. Please don’t worry if I post less on FB or Insta Stories than I normally do. Where I’m going, there’s no electricity, water and, since yesterday, no gas. So I’m shifting into super-economy mode. But I’m prepared. This is a fully conscious decision. I’ve taken care of everything I can. I’m going there with a clear plan, and I also want to persuade several people who are too stubborn and reluctant to leave their land that they really ought to evacuate […]

It was followed by the postscript: ‘Today I’m turning 39. Maybe this is the time?’

Meanwhile, we now know that Volodia and his family did manage to evacuate.

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From the Premortal Portraits series. Photo: Sebastian Tomasz Płocharski

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In 2021, as Sebastian Tomasz Płocharski was preparing an exhibition of portraits taken in Donbas, he titled it (somewhat provocatively, he admits) ‘Premortal Portraits’. Even though he realised that time was short, he never expected his title to become a fact in 2022 – versus just being an artistic act.

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Sebastian Tomasz Płocharski was born in Toruń in 1983. He is an independent visual artist, director (mostly of documentaries), photographer, motion designer, editor, social activist, and cultural events organiser for the You Have It Foundation.

Originally written in Ukrainian, translated by Mark Bence, April 2022

Language English