2022
video
20:08 min
The video embodies and unfolds around the half-legendary events of Olga’s vengeance in Kyivan Rus’ time, described in the Tale of Bygone Years. It is noteworthy that the figure of Queen Olga and her deeds are perceived as significant in Ukrainian history and nowadays resonate with wartime folklore. Queen Olga started to appear in memes as a symbol of rage and mercilessness toward the enemy and re-emerged from that as Queen Olga 2.0. – a term now used by Ukrainians on Facebook to praise someone’s fighting back against the Russians. The video consists of three key elements: a woman’s body painted in the colours of Russia, narrations of fragments from the Bygone Years chronicle, and the voice of violence itself that every time interrupts the narration.
The choice of the female body in the video is a purposeful one, embodying fertility and the birth vessel. The entity in the video breastfeeds the violence, emphasising how people crave for violence, while the colours of the Russian flag are placed exactly on those parts where the marks of rape usually show.
text by Alina Oprelianska, PhD, Junior Research Fellow at the Department of Estonian and Comparative Folklore at the University of Tartu.