It was a real honour to be commissioned by Liverpool Cathedral to help deliver Izyum to Liverpool by artist Katya Buchatska as part of Eurofest in Liverpool. Filmed in real-time, the exhibit took the viewer on a poignant train journey, showing an extraordinary window into the journey of escape many Ukrainians have taken since the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022.
More than 20.9 million people have fled Ukraine, according to the latest UNHCR figures. But in March, Katya returned to her homeland and travelled to Izyum, the closest city to the Russian border still accessible by rail. It then took her two days to reach Mostyska, near the Polish border, via her home city of Kyiv, during which time she and her crew filmed their journey. The result is Izyum to Liverpool, a video installation displayed in Liverpool Anglican Cathedral across two rows of six screens, evoking the familiar experience of train travel. Among mundane landscapes, though, are small but poignant reminders of the conflict: ruined buildings; lone travellers; abandoned children’s toys.
ArtAV installed the twelve 1.5m x 1m p2.6 Unilumin LED video walls, encased in custom built window cabinets made by the talented team at Konstruct. Pixera media servers and Novastar H5 Wall Splicers were used to manage the video contact, with 12 x Fohhn LX-11 speakers and 4 x RCF Subwoofers providing the audio for the piece. We also installed a custom web control that was used daily by vergers to start, stop, blackout and mute the install via Pixera to allow sermons to proceed uninterrupted.
