video, 13'22" / 2016
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In her artistic practice, Uli Golub often refers to her personal experience and relies on the stories and memories of people she knows. The artist primarily works with video, 3D animation, and motion pictures, and creates narratives encouraging viewers to shape and dream of new realities. Her method is based on storytelling. The artist composes multi-stage plots in which the emotional component is prominent. Influenced by a familiar context and experience, her scenarios balance fiction and social reality and address daily problems and experiences for all humans. That's why her works, despite their geographical diversity, resonate with viewers so often.
Notes From The Underground is a story about an enigmatic character living in a cluttered apartment; the prototype is an actual apartment in Kharkiv, of which the artist made a 3D cast. The video seems to be a direct reference to the events of the Revolution of Dignity in 2013-2014, but Golub draws attention to emotions - the feelings, experiences, and fears of a particular person who suffers from a syndrome of pathological hoarding, which arises from the need to feel safe or at least the illusion of safety in conditions of instability. There are so many fears and suspicions of war in the man's actions and thoughts: the fear of hunger, power outages, etc. - all of which have become our reality today and resonate from the historical perspective through the Holodomor (the Ukrainian Famine) of 1932-1933 and the economic devastation of the 1990s.
Routine daily actions of accumulating food protect against starvation and help ensure survival during cataclysms. Despite the almost impossible living conditions in this cluttered house, it is the safe space that the man is afraid of losing. After all, the home space is the core that allows the main character to continue existing.