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The article examines the current state of the Ukrainian contemporary art market in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the occupation of a portion of the country’s territory. We look at how the war affects various agents of the art world in the short term and how they respond to the crisis. As the crisis is still ongoing, this is an interim study; the information was collected up until mid-April 2022. We believe that putting the data together now will be critical for a better understanding and analysis of what will transpire afterwards. As we can see, the war has turned into the most heinous embodiment of violence against Ukrainian culture. Employees of the Kyiv-based art gallery Portal 11 gathered the materials for this article. The majority of the materials were gathered during a written survey of artists with whom the gallery has worked since its foundation. We also included materials obtained privately from collectors. Many facts are covered for the first time in our article because they only just occurred during this specific period. The Ukrainian art market has actively sought to integrate itself into the global art market. Every year an increasing number of artists and galleries from Ukraine participate in various art events, exhibitions, and auctions. Digital technologies, social networks, and globalisation have opened up many opportunities for Ukrainian art. Many Ukrainian artists and art dealers have found success in foreign markets. The war is an unprecedented event, having a profound impact on the Ukrainian art community. It has no parallels in Ukrainian history and possibly in European history since World War II. The fates of most Ukrainian artists, collectors, galleries, and artworks were irrevocably altered on February 24, 2022, when the first Russian bombs exploded. We have unwittingly become participants and witnesses to a massive cultural disaster, as well as a shift in all processes related to the art market in Ukraine. Artists and the art industry as a whole are now actively working on various ways to help the country. One of the most essential messages in this article is that the Ukrainian art sector requires assistance as well. Fig 1. Artist Oleksii Koval in Ljubljana where he was on 24 February 2022. (Credit: Oleksii Koval). Artists A survey of artists, with whom we have collaborated since the gallery’s establishment, allowed us to record important facts, including their emotional states. First of all, we were interested in the places where our respondents were when the war started and where they are after 3–4 weeks. Other questions included the following: Where are your works now? What is happening with your workshop now? Can you continue to work and create art under these conditions? Do you already have ideas and plans for a creative future and what are they? Have you cancelled any projects because of the war and which ones? Do you know the fate of your works that are in private collections around the world, especially in Ukraine? Any forms of answers were accepted. Subsequently, they were organised according to their content. Under ideal conditions, we would wait for a response from the 67 artists with whom we have interacted since the opening of the gallery. But we are glad that more than half of them responded to us in these extreme conditions. We believe the findings from the sample of 34 artists can represent the situations of all Ukrainian artists and the entire country. The gender ratio of participants reflects the population of Ukraine. The respondents turned out to be artists from all parts of our country (from the west, east, and centre of Ukraine), including an artist from Crimea (who once experienced a similar situation of being attacked by the Russian Federation and forced to move), an artist from Mariupol (who miraculously escaped with her family from this city), and more from Poltava, Kyiv, Lviv, and other cities respectively. They got in touch, took the time, and shared their experience, for which we are very grateful. We also received a response from an artist-veteran of the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation on the territory of Donetsk and Lugansk regions since 2014), who is now at the forefront. Fig 2. Where the artists were at the time of the survey, about 1 month after 24 February 2022. (IBM SPSS Statistics 23 Output). Fig 3. Infographics of losses of exhibitions and other projects by artists. (IBM SPSS Statistics 23 Output). Statistics show that on February 24, 2022, all but one of the artists encountered the sounds of the first rocket strikes at home. Subsequently, 30% remained in the same place at the time of the survey, 48% became internally displaced, and 21% went abroad. Artists from western Ukraine, further from the borders with the Russian Federation, stayed at home, and most of the inhabitants of the eastern, northern, and southern parts became refugees. Egor and Nikita Zigura, two well-known sculptors working in tandem, are experiencing difficulties. They worked together before the war but were separated as a result of it. Egor is currently in Europe while Nikita is in Ukraine. We wonder what kind of dynamics their work will take on in the future. Artists of each gender were impacted differently by the war. Since the start of the war and the introduction of martial law, many female artists have left Ukraine. They lost access to their works and studios, but found themselves safe and supported in the West. Male artists do not have the opportunity to leave Ukraine before the end of martial law. Although some of them have retained access to their workshops and artworks, they do not have the opportunity to be safe and work at full capacity. Regarding the location of the artists’ works, results show that 84% of works remained on the territory of Ukraine, 54% of them at home and in studios. Only 15% had some work outside their homeland. They are preserved from being destroyed by war by international projects as well as by being in private foreign collections. Astian Rey, for example, was one of the artists whose work was stuck at exhibition sites: ‘It just so happened that a week before the conflict began, I presented a personal exhibition, Form. Symbol. Time , at Kyiv’s city gallery Lavra . In addition, I participated in an Italian project at the Institute of Contemporary Art on the subject of Dante Alighieri. The majority of my work remains in these institutions. However, a portion of them remained in the workshop’.[1] Artists cannot always track their paintings in private collections. It is possible that they were resold. While people run from war, leaving all of their belongings behind, it becomes even more difficult. Therefore, only 27% of artists knew that their works were safe, while 4.5% were only aware of the destiny of a portion of their work. Others surveyed did not have any information. Maxim Mazur offered perhaps the most emotional and humane answer to the question about his work’s location: ‘there is nothing more important than human lives. I didn’t think about the fate of my works in the collections’. His exhibition was to be mounted in our gallery on February 24, 2022, and an opening was planned for the next day.[2] Vsevolod Kovtun also told us: ‘the last purchased work was for a private collection, I do not know the fate of it and other works sold. And I will not try to find out about them, so as not to provoke an excessive sense of guilt in people who may not have been able to save art during hostilities. The main thing is that these people are saving their lives now—because human life is much more valuable than my work’. We have also learnt from other sources that the exhibition of the famous street artist Gamlet, 3652019 + 2/3 , is stuck in the Kyiv art platform M17 .[3] He presented the exhibition on February 18, 2022. During the war, he took a proactive stance and is raising funds on social networks to help the Armed Forces of Ukraine and civilians.[4] After the recent exhibition in the gallery Portal 11 of the artist Victoria Adkozalova,[5] one of the bought paintings, Pink Flamingo , remained in our framing workshop; the new owner will collect it after the war. For an artist, a gallery is a stage, and an exhibition is a performance. This is a crucial aspect of life for a successful artist, so we couldn’t ignore it. More than 87% suffered from the disruption of plans due to the war. Of these, a quarter needed to deal with both postponed and cancelled plans. As most of the galleries and museums in the country have paused their exhibitions, and the delivery of works abroad is problematic, only 12% of artists have not cancelled any projects. As far we are aware, some projects are still going as planned, and most of them are located abroad. Ivan Turetskyy’s paintings were stored in Europe after a museum project in Italy and an exhibition in Switzerland in 2021. In April, two exhibitions became possible: one in Fabrica del Vapore in Milan[6] and the other in Villa Longoni near Milan. One exhibition was planned ahead of time, while the other occurred as a result of a rising interest in Ukrainian art. Fig 4. ‘From the Italian Diary’ exhibition opening at Villa Longoni near Milan. (Credit: Valerio Lombardo). Fig 5. ‘HOW ARE YOU’ project in Kharkiv’s Yermilov art centre. (Credit: Natalia Ivanova) . The studios of 75% of respondents were intact at the time of our study. Most of the answers contained the hope that everything was fine with the workshop because it was difficult to find out about its condition. We hope that, even if it is impossible to find out about the state of the workshop at the moment, after the war they will be reunited with their owners unscathed. In fact, 20% of respondents remain unaware of the state of their workspaces. And 3% reformatted these premises out of necessity into, for example, a shelter for friends, acquaintances, relatives, and those who needed it. Olga Zaremba wrote: ‘the room where my workshop is located is used as a shelter and for other wartime needs’. Oleksandr Prytula shared his unique experience: ‘the workshop is in working condition, but since sculpting requires a lot of money (materials, moulding, 3D printing, casting, etc.), I spend little time there...My workshop is now entirely my computer’. As many artists do not have access to their workshops, their regular tools and materials have to change. Those who worked with large scale oil paintings are now switching to smaller sizes and watercolours or pencil and chalk. Sculptors cannot continue their work with stone, wood, and metal. Olga Zaremba, an artist from Kyiv, replied to our survey: ‘my notebooks, pencils and watercolours go with me. These materials take up as little space as possible’. Artists who are familiar with new technologies embraced digital art completely. Many artists have told us that they are now working with NFT art to support Ukraine with the funds raised from the token sales. Anna Moskaletz said: ‘I make digital works for sale at NFT auctions to transfer 100% of the profit to the needs of the Armed Forces’. Fig 6. What happened to the artists’ workshops, 1 month after 24 February 2022. (IBM SPSS Statistics 23 Output). Fig 7. Infographics about the readiness/ability of artists to create art, 1 month after 24 February 2022. (IBM SPSS Statistics 23 Output). Creativity Art is a social phenomenon; it is always affected by and reflects the state of the society. The experience of war transforms art; it gives rise to new styles, new techniques, and movements. Resentment, rage, despair, depression, and, on the other hand, unity and solidarity are all powerful emotions that artists experience and express in their work. Although a quarter of the respondents experienced difficulties in their creative processes, more than half of the survey participants were able to continue creative activities in one form or another. 22% cannot even hold a pencil in their hands and are waiting for victory, peacetime, and a sufficient sense of security. Mariko Gelman admitted that it is extremely difficult for her to work: ‘I am creating a graphic series # summer2050 about the sanctions and the turn of Russia to the Paleolithic. I can’t paint. Maybe, because right now everything is ruined in my homeland—people, connections, adequacy. That is why it is very hard for me to live and create vividly’. She still tries to do something useful, ‘donating my artworks for the needs of the Ukrainian army, volunteering, and not falling into despair, now I take part in exhibitions and events in support of Ukraine. For example, we worked together with Urban Sketchers Prague on a painting session on the island of Kampa in Prague, and then sold our work, transferring all the money to the Člověk v tísni Foundation, which cares for displaced Ukrainians in the Czech Republic. A similar event is currently being held by the Czech gallery Holešovická Šachta , where I have donated three of my works’.[7] A lot of artists have retained the ability to create. They record events and create supportive patriotic art. Those who have adjusted take part in humanitarian missions and assist in battle on their front lines. They are also in a difficult situation, but they help to collect money and even deliver food under siege. In terms of plans and ideas for the future, only 77% of the artists are thinking about creative projects and their implementation. Because of a substantial emotional shock as well as an inability to meet fundamental human needs, such as security, 23% confessed they are unable to think about their artistic career. What are these plans about? Everyone in the survey, without exception, mentions the war and the reflection on personal experiences during this challenging time. Nataliia Antypina, a ceramic artist, responded: ‘Ideas for art are very difficult to produce because constant stress keeps you from concentrating. There are ideas to help rebuild Ukraine, I think I can take part, and fill it with art and important meanings. So that future generations will never forget this tragedy and the heroic struggle of the Ukrainians’. Artists are now focused on helping the country in whatever manner they can, with the great majority of concepts centred on promoting Ukraine’s brand. In the post-war period, a boom in patriotic motives is foreseen. Artists always show the most acute problems, raise the most daring questions, experiment with the most contradictory forms, and discover the most unexpected facts. Collective shock trauma is afflicting our people. Independent artists and other creative organisations have already begun to respond. Current events undoubtedly drive artists to create patriotic art, with the most visible trend being a widespread fascination with national Ukrainian symbolism. The yellow and blue colours of the Ukrainian flag, the national flower, the sunflower, the Ukrainian Coat of Arms in the shape of a trident, the characteristics of national clothing, and so on, are frequently used to encourage the national spirit. Anna Moskaletz wrote in an answer to our survey: ‘since my art was imbued with Ukrainian motives before the war, I will continue to work in the same direction. Now my series with national scarves is more relevant than ever. Although, I think that after my experience the narratives will still change a bit and become even deeper because through the prism of acquired emotions and atrophy of fears it is quite natural’. We must, however, emphasise that before the war we noticed that demand for contemporary art pieces with traditional national symbols was lower than the desire for modern art pieces with a more global style in the art market. We expect this to change in Ukraine as a result of the current surge of patriotism, although the pieces in the current trend may be less popular in the international art market. It is appropriate at this point to quote Oleksandr Prytula, one of the artists who replied to our questionnaire: ‘every day, new ideas emerge. Politics and topics concerning global issues only appeared on rare occasions in my work. That’s why it’s important for me to keep it balanced now, so that everything said through creativity is first and foremost honest, not because Ukrainian symbols are hyping now. Obviously, soon, I plan to create sculptures and graphics inspired by events that take place literally outside the window. I will try to keep everything in the style that was inherent in my work before. It’s critical, in my opinion!’ Fig 8. Oleksandr Prytula ‘Blinded madman’, 3D graphics, sculpting. . Because art images have the undeniable force and potential to convey a powerful message in a concise form, art has become increasingly effective for ideological purposes. People are brought together by artistic imagery. A lot of art images serving this purpose can be found on the streets, on billboards, and on social media. Contemporary Ukrainian patriotic art images are actively used now as illustrations for news reports. There are partnerships between the top magazines in the world and Ukrainian artists. Visual artists working in the field of documentary photography are highly significant, because they chronicle the horrific moments of this conflict for the rest of the world to see. Documentary photography exhibitions from Ukraine are being held all over the world. On March 28th, renowned American magazine Time published two covers, one titled ‘The Resilience of Ukraine’ and the other ‘The Agony of Ukraine’. A photograph by Ukrainian artist Maxim Dondyuk depicts the country’s suffering in the face of the Russian invasion on one of the covers. In the photograph, a Ukrainian soldier is seen assisting a mother and her child in evacuating the Kyiv suburb of Irpin, which Russian forces were attempting to occupy as part of their besiegement of the capital.[8] War-inspired street art is already emerging. In Odesa, the artist Igor Matroskin draws cats. These cats represent the Ukrainian Army and ordinary people with patriotic symbols.[9] Fig 9. Igor Matroskin’s street art in Odesa. The inscription means: ‘I believe in the Armed Forces of Ukraine’. . Text art is also actively used as words become a symbol of support; they empower people. Graffiti and posters where the text appropriates symbolic value and is turned into popular art can be seen all over Ukraine. This type of art can also be attributed to propaganda art. The phrase ‘Russian warship go fuck yourself’ was communicated by a Ukrainian soldier, defender of the Zmiinyi (Snake) Island of Ukraine, Marine Roman Grybov, and became one of the most important slogans of this war.[10] Artists are actively using the phrase, as do companies for marketing purposes. It is used now as a symbol, written on the streets, in tabloids, on t-shirts, on cars, and even in the official design of bank cards. The popularity of these words inevitably led to the rise of the problem of copyright protection and royalty. When the soldier returned to Ukraine from captivity, he filed for an EU trademark application as the phrase had become viral and its value had grown to be of national importance.[11] The Ukrainian national postal operator Ukrposhta has announced a competition for artists to design a collectable postage stamp for the slogan discussed above.[12] The winning image became the sketch by the artist from Crimea, Boris Grokh. As soon as the sale began, there was a queue kilometres long in front of the central branch of Ukrposhta in Kyiv. People stood in it for five hours for the brand, which has already become a legend. On April 22, Ukrainian postage stamps, on which a Russian warship sets off in a direction known to all, signed by the author of the legendary phrase and General Director of Ukrposhta, were sold at the Prozorro charity online auction for 5 million UAH (≈165 thousand USD). This is 200 times more than the starting price.[13] This is an example of how artists are being used for ideological and marketing purposes. Fig 10. ‘HOW ARE YOU’ project in Kharkiv’s Yermilov art centre. (Credit: Roman Pyatkovka) . We can see how art performances around the world bring attention to the conflict in Ukraine. On the 25 March in Warsaw, approximately four thousand people laid down on the ground and covered themselves with bags and coats in solidarity with Ukraine, to show how Ukrainian cities look now with the dead bodies of Ukrainian civilians who cannot be buried under fire.[14] This action, under the title ‘Stop promising, start acting!’, was organised to force the US president to provide everything to close the sky above Ukraine.[15] Later these actions were reproduced in many cities all over the world. An art installation was created by the French artist JR in Lviv. A 45-metre-long photograph of a 5-year-old Ukrainian refugee Valeriia was held up by more than 100 people on March 14. This performance draws attention to the terrifying number of Ukrainian children who have been slain since Russia’s invasion began, and the thousands who have fled in search of safety. The ‘Resilience’ cover of Time magazine features an aerial view of this performance.[16] As a contemporary art gallery in Kyiv, we are fascinated by artists’ ideas. We are prepared to organise exhibitions of front-line photographs, heroic sculptures, paintings, and other installations that depict the experience. Although art with a political agenda is frequently seen as inferior, we are aware of numerous instances in art history where artwork was used first as propaganda and afterwards acclaimed as a masterpiece. In wartime, the significance of symbols cannot be overstated. Art galleries Kyiv Kyiv, Ukraine’s undeniable cultural capital, is home to a plethora of museums and art galleries of remarkable cultural and historical significance. Treasuries of national art saved here represent Ukraine’s rich culture from antiquity to the present day. In the early days of the war in Kyiv, citizens were actively evacuated. Many employees of galleries and museums were forced to flee the city or were trapped in the outskirts. According to our conversations with colleagues from other galleries, practically all Kyiv galleries are now focusing their efforts on assisting in the evacuation of contemporary art pieces, as well as various humanitarian missions in Ukraine and abroad. Art galleries in Ukraine are often located in semi-basement converted premises with a separate entrance. Since the galleries are equipped with heating and other amenities, some gallery owners in Kyiv and other cities have turned their premises into shelters. Gallerists are planning several exhibition projects abroad but cannot hold exhibitions in their galleries in Kyiv until the ongoing hostilities have ended. Fig 11. The temporary storage of artworks by Portal 11 gallery. (Credit: Igor Globa). On the day war broke out, an exhibition by the artist Maxim Mazur was scheduled to be mounted in the Kyiv-based gallery Portal 11 . The catalogue was ready, there were big plans for the opening the next day. With the first rocket blasts in Kyiv, it was obvious that our gallery’s exhibiting activity would be interrupted. Shock was the initial reaction. Then came the time to reflect on the situation and make decisions. All gallery employees were notified that all projects were being stopped until the situation was clear. Our gallery had plenty of plans for the coming months, several projects in our space, participation in the Luxembourg Art Fair, and an exhibition of our artists in Italy in April 2022. We always plan projects for at least a year ahead in the schedule of our gallery. Since the gallery is located in the historical centre of Kyiv and is close to the government quarter, we found ourselves in a place of a potential attack by Russian troops. Access to the Gallery has been blocked for security reasons. There was the question of the safety of the works that were brought to the gallery the day before for the installation of the exhibition. Also, there was the question of the safety of the gallery’s collection and works commissioned by the gallery, but not completed by the artists. On the day the war began, we had to organise the conservation and preservation of an unfinished large-scale tapestry that we were preparing for the autumn exhibition. After two months of the war, we were able to organise the continuation of the tapestry work. We, as a gallery, have also organised temporary storage of the works of the artist Alexei Koval. In addition, a private collection of contemporary art from Kharkiv was brought to us for safe storage. During the war, we managed to complete the creation of an audio guide in the Ukrainian language for the Pantheon in Rome. The audio guide is already published on the museum’s website, and now the Pantheon is speaking Ukrainian. War crimes in Bucha, near Kyiv, were broadcast all over the world. A huge gallery space was opened there half a year before the conflict. Fortunately, it was out of the way of the battle, and the gallery building was unharmed. The gallery’s future is unknown, as the city was severely devastated and will take a long time to recover. Some gallery owners fled to other countries during the war. Some gallerists were already abroad, where they held exhibition projects. For example, the Voloshin Gallery owners were in the USA with an exhibition project of the gallery and the run of their pop-up exhibition there was extended.[17] East Kharkiv is a region located in the East of the country on the border with the Russian Federation. Kharkiv itself is known as a clean, beautiful, cultural city, full of students and youth, with many educational opportunities. The creative artistic life of the city is as highly developed as in the capital. According to our calculations, before the war, about 22 exhibition spaces were operating in this area, including state museums with unique collections, as well as about 20 art schools, 3 specialised colleges, and an art academy. Fig 12. Kharkiv Municipal Gallery during the war. (Credit: Maryna Koneva) . The Kharkiv Art Museum announced on its social networks that the team managed to evacuate the permanent exhibition at the beginning of the war. They also shared photos of empty walls.[18] Tatyana Rud, an employee of the Kharkiv Literary Museum, spoke on Hromadske radio about the movement and evacuation of art objects: ‘The topic of evacuating the museum collection has been discussed since 2014. At the same time, we compiled lists of the most valuable museum items in the collection... In the summer of 2021, the museums of Ukraine received a questionnaire from the Ministry of Culture about readiness for the evacuation of cultural property in the event of an armed conflict...The Ministry of Culture has an idea of ​​how ready museums are for the evacuation of what they need’.[19] The Kharkiv Municipal Gallery, which actively promoted artists, including participation in foreign art fairs, showed their premises during the war on their social media. The gallery was hit by a shell; there is damage but the building survived. Friends of the gallery helped to close the broken windows and protect the premises from possible further destruction. The gallery team now works remotely. Kharkiv’s Yermilov art centre has become a safe place for local artists, as it is located in the basement of the university. Hiding from shelling in this makeshift shelter, the activists created the ‘HOW ARE YOU’ project. Konstantin Zorkin writes: ‘the project ‘HOW ARE YOU’ is a total installation consisting of various constructions for sleeping, cooking, washing and entertainment. This is a performance where artists constantly work in the environment which they created and in the company of other artists. This is an adaptation of the exhibition space with the remnants of the last exhibition for life and creative needs. This project shows a new form of relationship between the space and the artist, the art institution and the art community, which may be the final for the great historical cycle of Kharkiv art. We were there together, we built a house out of what we could find, we worked and rested, we were synchronously scared of explosions and calmed each other down. And everything we did was real art’.[20] Fig 13. ‘HOW ARE YOU’ project in Kharkiv’s Yermilov art centre. (Credit: Margarita Rubanenko) . The city also contains the art studio Aza Nizi Maza . They have a very recognizable style of art, but it is nonetheless clear that the students are given maximum freedom of expression. Now the studio conducts classes in the Kharkiv metro where people are hiding from airstrikes. For everyone, this is akin to art therapy. Their work reflects the reality and experiences of every Ukrainian.[21] Fig 14. The artwork from Aza Nizi Maza’s poster diary — ‘WHAT I SEE’. The inscription means: ‘Heart beats — Ukraine beats’. . Mariupol is the city that probably has suffered most from the war. According to reports, there was not a single intact building remaining in the area.[22] One of the destroyed buildings was the Academic Drama Theatre, which was hit by an air bomb. According to inaccurate data, 300 people died in the basement of the theatre.[23] At the time of writing, the Azovstal plant, where about a thousand residents have been hiding for 2 months, is being attacked by the Russian army. The plant is held as the last fortress. Local residents who escaped along the green corridors are an exception. Most were forcibly deported to Russia. We were very lucky to contact an artist who managed to escape from Mariupol and is in a relatively safe city now. About the past cultural life of the city, Violetta Terlyha recalls: ‘the galleries that I know are the popular Kuindzhi Gallery and the Tu! platform, but I don’t know the fate of either of them, since it was completely impossible to move from area to area in the city and track the situation’. In total, according to our calculations, there were about 10 spaces dedicated to contemporary art in Mariupol. The Kuindzhi Gallery was destroyed. It kept the originals of works by Ivan Aivazovsky, Tatiana Yablonskaya, Mykhailo Deregus, and other world-famous Ukrainian artists. The fate of these paintings is still unknown. But according to the head of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine, at the time of the shelling, there were no original paintings by Arkhip Kuindzhi. There were only copies by A. Yalansky and O. Olkhov.[24] The Tu! platform is an urban space created in 2015 to fight against the war. Their motto has been relevant to our country ever since. They took a quote from the correspondence of Freud and Einstein: ‘everything that works for culture works against war’. In the period up to 2022, they held lectures, creative performances, and exhibitions. In the new setting, the Tu! platform promotes its Emergency Assistance Fund. They raised about $30,000 and transferred that money to help families in Mariupol. Thanks to the activities of the platform, more than 200 residents of Mariupol received assistance. The Foundation helps not only financially, but also with evacuation and volunteer support.[25] We have received news not only about everyday looting by the Russian army of the Ukrainian population but also of exhibition spaces. Russian troops are robbing the archival and cultural funds of museums that did not have time to evacuate. They take the exhibits to Donetsk for evaluation and will take the most valuable exhibits to Russia.[26] West Since the war started, one of the authors of this article has moved to Lutsk. Life in the city is as normal as it could be in these circumstances. It is a beautiful historical city and is home to The Korsaks' Museum of Contemporary Ukrainian Art. The cultural and entertainment centre where the museum is located was transformed into a temporary shelter for up to 500 refugees and organises a one-day course ‘Tactical Medicine and Combat Training’.[27] The museum created the Art Battalion, an art marathon that will last until Ukraine’s victory. They invite musicians, artists, poets, philosophers, and writers and organise daily concerts, literary meetings, performances, and classes, which are free of charge for anyone who wants a distraction and to enjoy the therapeutic properties of art.[28] The Lutsk gallery of the National Union of Artists of Ukraine stopped its exhibition activity but stayed open. Volunteers are making camouflage nets for the Ukrainian army. There is also an art therapy class and the paintings of those who attend are hung on the walls of the gallery. In Ivano-Frankivsk, the art space Assortment Room has stepped up its efforts to preserve Ukrainian art. In times of peace, they planned to hold many residencies. Now they are evacuating private collections and helping artists. The up-to-date information is that they have received 30 requests, implemented 10 of those and could move works by 17 artists to bunkers. These total around 400 artworks.[29] Lviv galleries did not stop their exhibition activities after the outbreak of the war, and further adjusted their efforts to humanitarian projects. With the beginning of the war, only one gallery stopped working in Lviv (the Veles gallery, since its owner temporarily went abroad). Art collectors Information about private collections was gathered through collectors with whom the gallery collaborated, as well as from open publications on social networks. The majority of the collectors requested anonymity. The situation with private collections is currently in flux and is solely dependent on the success of the Ukrainian armed forces. Fig 15. Evacuation of the collection of Boris Grinev from Kharkiv. . The unexpectedness of the Russian invasion of Ukraine predetermined the fate of many private collections. Most of the collections of contemporary art at the time of the beginning of the war were in Ukraine in their places of permanent storage. None of the collectors we interviewed believed in the possibility of a full-scale Russian invasion. The only exceptions, where the art objects were moved in advance, were those in the collections of the diplomats. Following the announcement of the US citizens’ evacuation, the procedure of exporting the valuable property of all foreign citizens began. Some foreign citizens evacuated their private collections partially, they tried to quickly sell some items by offering them to Ukrainian auctions and other private collectors. To our knowledge, these attempts were not successful. The majority of contemporary art collections are located in the largest Ukrainian cities including Lviv, Kharkiv, Odesa, and Dnipro, with Kyiv taking the lead. Private houses are typically clustered around large cities in the suburbs where collectors frequently reside and store their collections. The general situation at the moment is that there is no mass departure of collectors from their homes in the western region of Ukraine, and they do not see at this stage the need to evacuate collections. We should note that in conditions when hostilities are rapidly approaching and evacuation is not planned, art objects are usually not taken along as first priority. Human instincts are triggered to take what is necessary for survival in the coming hours and days. These are clothes, food, medicines, and fuel. It is only possible to bring small works of art with you in such circumstances. For collectors who lived in the suburbs of Kyiv and Kharkiv, the time to get ready for evacuation was sometimes calculated in several minutes. In the Kyiv region, most of the collections have not been evacuated, since Russian troops already reached the northern suburbs of the city on 24 February 2022, the first day of the invasion. In the first days, there were individual manifestations of panic among the population, and leaving the city was hampered by huge traffic jams. One of the clients of the gallery, who lives in the suburbs of Kyiv, said that the workers of his estate put his collection in the basement. For some time, they were monitoring the house, but as soon as the battle broke out in the village, they abandoned the house. After the liberation of the suburbs of Kyiv, it was possible to find out the fate of his collection. Most of the items survived; only a few paintings were damaged. The Russian soldiers who settled in the house were not interested in art, since the house also kept a large collection of wines, which they completely drank and plundered. Another collector left his home near Kyiv and now has a Russian tank in his yard; he has yet to return and has no knowledge of what has been going on inside the house. We only know of a handful of cases when collections of contemporary art were partially evacuated from Kyiv when the war broke out. The collection of a private museum belonging to Igor Ponamarchuk’s family was partially evacuated. He has both antique and contemporary paintings in his collection. When the war started, he was able to transport a portion of the collection from Kyiv to Lviv in the west of Ukraine. The situation is especially difficult in Kharkiv and its environs, as the city was subjected to massive shelling by heavy artillery and airstrikes. Collections were not taken out of this city and the situation will be clear only after the end of the war. At the moment, we know that several collections of contemporary art are intact. One of them contains a painting by Ivan Turetskyy, purchased from the gallery Portal 11 at the exhibition. We discovered its fate through the research for this article. According to a publication by Boris Grinev, a well-known Kharkiv collector, his collection of contemporary art was evacuated with the help of volunteers and territorial defence. One of the volunteers, Anton Khrustalov, later died because he was shot by the Russian occupants. Given the intensity of hostilities, the Kharkiv, Kyiv, Sumy, and Chernihiv collections are in the greatest danger. Border areas are suffering the most at this time. Regarding Odesa and Dnipro collections, we can say that they were in relative safety up to this moment, but the situation changed as, after 2 months of the war, rocket attacks on Odesa and Dnipro intensified. All art objects located in Mariupol shared the fate of the city. Part destroyed, part looted and taken to Russia. Regarding Western Ukrainian collections, we can say that they are in relative safety at the moment, but the situation may change. Art objects located in the suburbs of Kyiv and Kharkiv may have been lost or significantly damaged since these territories were occupied for a long period and were a zone of active hostilities. The widespread looting and vandalism by Russian forces is a major issue. Hundreds of instances of looting and cruelty committed by the occupying troops have been documented on social media. It can even be assumed that some of the art stolen by Russian soldiers in Ukraine will later appear on sale in Russia. Therefore, it is critical to compile a list of stolen works of art from private collections in order to track them down in Russia. It is already clear that after the war, many pieces of contemporary art will require restoration. It will be possible to assess the total damage to private and museum collections of contemporary art only after the end of the war. Auction Houses Ukrainian art is sold through both international auction houses and several Ukrainian-based auction houses. Goldens auction house (in the past Golden Section ) is one of the leading auction houses in Ukraine. It has not held any auctions in Ukraine after the full-scale Russian invasion. In collaboration with the Swiss international auction house Koller they have organised a charity auction of Ukrainian modern art titled ‘Have a heart’, taking place on the platform of the Swiss partner. Koller claims that all of the proceeds will go to the artists who created the works.[30] Goldens has also organised an NFT project to support artists, illustrators, and designers, as well as get money for donations to support the Armed Forces and purchase humanitarian aid. The auction team has announced an open call for everyone to create designs for beads that are transformed into tokens. A collection of NFTs called Namysto (which refers to a piece of traditional necklace jewellery) is published and promoted by the Goldens on the NFT marketplace OpenSea . Percentages of the proceeds go to artists and charities.[31] The Kyiv-based auction house Dukat specialises in Ukrainian books, Ukrainian art of the first half of the 20th century, national unofficial art of the 1950s–1990s, and contemporary art. Their plans had to be postponed because of the war. Recently Dukat has announced a charity auction of a painting called Flowers Grew around the Fourth Block from a series of works by artist Maria Primachenko, dedicated to the Chernobyl tragedy. The painting was presented by the art collector Igor Ponamarchuk, from his family collection. All proceeds will be given to the Serhiy Prytula Charitable Foundation.[32] From 5 to 17 April, the auction house Arsani was planning to hold a pre-auction exhibition ‘Classical and Modern Art’ within the walls of the National Museum of Taras Shevchenko in Kyiv. The auction was supposed to take place online on 16 April.[33] Although the situation in Kyiv was becoming more stable in April, the war was not over yet and these plans were postponed or cancelled. As Arsani is based both in Kyiv and in Kharkiv, we do not have information about the condition of the auction house exhibition space in Kharkiv, where fighting is going on at the moment. During the pandemic and lockdown, an initiative to support artists by the gallerists and collectors Marat Gelman and Yevhen Karas became very popular. This is a group on Facebook named Сіль-Соль (Salt-Salt) , an accessible marketplace of contemporary visual art directly from artists in the low-price range. It attracts many young artists and a large audience of buyers due to its affordability and low barriers to entry. This initiative continues working now, and although there might be some delivery delays, artists continue posting their works and receiving demand for them. Salt-Salt has also successfully organised a charity sale of 82 artworks and transferred 200 000 UAH (≈7000 USD) to the fund helping the arm ‘Come Back Alive’.[34] The painting My Hut, My Truth by Maria Primachenko was sold for €110,000 at the Benefit for Ukraine’s People & Culture charity auction in Italy. The starting price was €1000. Among other lots, there was a work by Ukrainian artist Alina Zamanova and works by foreign artists. All proceeds will be sent to help Ukrainian culture; to the Museum Fund of Ukraine, the Maria Primachenko Family Fund, ‘100% of Life’ and others.[35] The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art (UIMA), located in Chicago, together with the online marketplace Artsy has organised an online auction, ‘Impact: Artists in Support of Refugees from Ukraine’, on April 14, featuring submissions from Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian artists. It aims to raise cultural awareness, fund Ukrainian artists, and provide support relief for refugees fleeing Ukraine. Artsy is donating a portion of the Buyer’s Premium to the organisation in the USA, which provides aid to people affected by the war in Ukraine and gives support to displaced families. Donations collected by UIMA will be distributed to non-profit organisations among which is the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund.[36] Export Ukraine had a reasonably liberal system for exporting contemporary art objects before the war. Ukraine has no tariffs on the export of works of art less than 50 years old. Special export permits are not required, although the customs authorities require a document confirming that the item is not older than 50 years. This document is issued by art museums in each regional centre and is not difficult to obtain. The delivery of art objects was carried out by many world postal services, as well as local organisations and private contractors. Since the beginning of the war, major global companies have suspended delivery of art objects on the territory of Ukraine. Many purchased items will not be delivered outside of Ukraine for an indefinite period. Victoria Adkozalova, one of the artists who responded to our survey wrote: ‘I gave one of the works bought by a collector from the USA on February 23 to the DHL branch, and, unfortunately, it could not leave the country and stayed in Kyiv’. The problem also arose from the rapid evacuation of private collections that were under the threat of destruction in regions with active hostilities and bordering them. Under these conditions, local companies and private contractors were the fastest to adapt and were able to establish new land routes for the export of art to Europe. Since airmail is not working during the war and sea transportation is blocked, only land routes along government-controlled highways are used. But not everyone can use the services of such logistics structures, as this requires personal contacts and a history of relationships. It also retained the ability to send works of art abroad with the help of the national operator Ukrposhta . But this service has significant restrictions on the dimensions of the sent items. Naturally, in such conditions, there is practically no possibility of full-fledged insurance of art objects. Any sending of items from the occupied territories is not possible. The removal of art objects from the zone of occupation is associated with a great risk for life. Although we are aware of several examples of the private evacuation of work from besieged or occupied cities, those are exceptions. Preservation and destruction of street art The war destroys Ukrainian cities, streets, and houses with shells. Among the affected buildings are universities, theatres, museums, and even residential buildings and hospitals. Our cultural heritage and art are at risk of being destroyed. Street art suffers first because it decorates the exterior and is not protected from vandalism. The murals were not ready for mines, bullets, and aerial bombs. Just like civilians. Some of the works of famous Kharkiv street artist Gamlet Zinkivskyi will no longer be seen. Since 2014, he has completed at least four projects in Mariupol but this city has now been reduced to rubble.[37] Fortunately, most of the artist’s works have survived in his hometown of Kharkiv and we hope they will not be destroyed in future battles in the east of Ukraine.[38] Sculptures located in open spaces are at an increased risk of destruction since they cannot even be moved to the basements of houses. There are many cases of the production of reinforcing structures for outdoor sculptures that could be at greatest risk. These were mostly made by activists who understand the importance of saving cultural heritage. The cultural and educational project ‘Ukrainian Modernism’, dedicated to researching, preserving, and promoting modern architecture and monumental art in Ukraine created an initiative to protect the stained-glass windows of the pearl of Kyiv modernism at the funicular. They raised funds to strengthen all 12 stained glass windows from enemy shelling as they are very vulnerable to shock waves and debris.[39] At the beginning of the war, a portal was created where volunteers leave photographs of cultural objects damaged by shelling. This is called the cultural loss map.[40] It is important because in the future, according to the initiator’s plan, it will be a single reference book for invoicing the Russian Federation for reparations at the end of the war. NFT art The art industry is actively helping Ukraine; it organises projects where all proceeds go to the charities. Several of these projects are based on the sale of NFT art. A project by the Holy Water tech company united 500 Ukrainian artists who created artworks for their charity NFT collection, presented in a virtual exhibition. On 1 April 2022, they donated to Ukraine’s official crypto wallet more than 61 thousand US dollars.[41] A project named ‘Museum of War’ by the Ukrainian blockchain community and the Ministry of Digital Transformation of Ukraine also partnered with Ukrainian artists. This project’s goal is to preserve memories of current events, provide information to the digital community, and collect funds to help Ukraine. It is selling NFTs where each token is a combination of news information and an illustration by Ukrainian artists. The money raised will be used to support the Ukrainian army and civilians.[42] The Ukrainian team FFFACE.ME has created a collection of three non-fungible tokens in support of Ukraine. ‘At a time like this, there is a very strong creative impulse. We are aware that today the task of the creative class is not only to support Ukraine financially but also to form a cultural image of the country, which will not only be remembered but will become fashionable. This is how the concept of the Ukrainian Power Artifacts NFT collection came about. In it, each of the lots is literally the object of force in which we put our strength, formed during the bombing, evacuation and psychological tests. Buyers of each of these artefacts will receive this momentum and become stronger, just as the buyer of the original art object receives a part of the author’s soul’, says the team FFFACE.ME .[43] All proceeds from the sale of this collection will be sent to support the Armed Forces. The Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund The non-governmental organisation Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA), in partnership with independent Kyiv-based media agency Zaborona , The Naked Room art gallery, and the National Art and Culture Museum Complex Mystetskyi Arsenal established the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund. It is a very important initiative in dealing with the consequences of the Russian invasion and helping the Ukrainian art community. The fund facilitates support and administers donations offered by international artistic and charity organisations, as well as from private donors. First, it provides vital financial aid for artists and cultural workers who remain in Ukraine and urgently need support to ensure a basic standard of living and security. They intend to support the continuity of research of curators, theoreticians, researchers, and other cultural workers. Then it aims to globally promote contemporary Ukrainian culture as a powerful instrument for the protection of the values of democracy and freedom in the world.[44] Conclusions As our study makes clear, the art industry in Ukraine is now focused on ways to support the country. At this moment there is no emphasis on the economy of the art industry while all agents in the Ukrainian art market have to also think about their future. There are initiatives to help individual Ukrainian artists. Many galleries abroad have organised open calls for Ukrainian artists, they relocate them and exhibit their works in their spaces and at Art Fairs. This benefits artists and foreign galleries, while there is an increasing interest in Ukrainian art and culture. For some artists, during the war, there was an opportunity to express themselves outside of Ukraine, because there has been more interest in the topic of Ukraine in particular and our country in general. This creates new opportunities after the war. Most projects happening now are created in collaboration with international partners. As the Ukrainian art industry consists of a fairly closed society, social ties and trust are required for international projects. In our own experience, such projects are more likely to happen when the parties have already been personally acquainted with each other. Since the two years before the war were overshadowed by the pandemic crisis, participation in international projects such as the art fairs was almost impossible, and therefore international connections between galleries and other art agents became weaker. Because strong connections are essential now, many projects cannot be implemented quickly and efficiently. Domestic primary agents of the art market, the private galleries, struggle now. Most galleries had to stop their exhibitions. When people are worried about their future, customers’ ability to buy art shrinks and the domestic demand for art is predicted to decrease. At the same time, the ability to participate in international events is limited because of travel restrictions. The initiative of the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund is very important at this moment, but we expect that private galleries will be one of the most affected parties as a result of the war, and some of them will cease to exist. In some cities, they are simply destroyed and their collections are destroyed. Many galleries will also lose their sources of income from sales at exhibitions and art fairs. The situation with regard to the collection of Ukrainian art is likely to change. Ukrainian art will become more interesting and accessible to Western collectors. At the same time, the economic situation will narrow the ability of the domestic collector to buy art and this will negatively affect the domestic art market. There is a problem that Ukrainian art is often sold under the title of Russian art, i.e., in Russian art departments in auction houses. This needs to be changed now, and Ukrainian art has to be identified as a separate segment. Ukrainian art cannot be sold in the auctions under the name or in the section ‘Russian art’, as this violates the definition of an independent and sovereign country. Ukrainian artists are often mislabelled as Russian, especially Ukrainian born artists during the time of the USSR, for example Kazimir Malevich. Malevich called himself a Ukrainian in his diaries.[45] But, as part of the imperial policy, Russia has always tried to appropriate the Ukrainian cultural heritage. During the war, we see another example of Russia’s barbaric attitude towards Ukrainian art and its institutions. We expect that one of the consequences of the war will be the complete emergence of Ukrainian art from the shadow of Russian art and its recognition as national and original. There will also be a process of revision of Ukrainian art and its complete rethinking as an important part of contemporary European art. The war is a powerful cultural phenomenon that will radically change the direction of the art market and contemporary Ukrainian art in general. Depending on the results of the war, the art market can expect either a long stagnation or a rapid renaissance and the emergence of new works and art projects. We believe in victory. The authors of the article are Igor Globa, Maria Sivachenko, and Anastasiia Yatsyna , members of the team of the gallery Portal 11. Portal 11 is an art gallery in the centre of Kyiv, Ukraine and a space for true connoisseurs of fine arts. The mission of the gallery is to exhibit contemporary Ukrainian artworks that will eventually become classics. Gallery projects attract a broad audience and are highlighted in the press. [1] Mariana Chikalo, ‘Opening of a new project by artist and sculptor Astian Rey’ (Lucky Ukraine, 17 February 2022) < https://www.luckyukraine.in.ua/vidkruttya-vustavku-astian-rey > accessed 15 March 2022. [2] ‘Exhibition by Maksym Mazur “Transliteracija”‘ ( Portal 11 Gallery , 21 February 2022) < https://portal11.com.ua/en/exhibition-by-maksym-mazur-transliteracija/ > accessed 16 March 2022. [3] A Gavrilyuk, ‘From February 18 to March 17 in the Center for Contemporary Art M17 is an exhibition of Gamlet Zinkivskyi "3652019 +’ ( M17 Contemporary Art Center , 2022) < https://m17.kiev.ua/exhibition/3652019-gamlet-zinkivskyj/ > accessed 1 April 2022. [4] Gamlet Zinkivskyi, ‘Gamlet remains in Kharkiv. In the spring he will paint new street works in the European city of Kharkiv. The good will win’ ( Instagram , 1 March 2022) < https://www.instagram.com/gamletzinkivskyi/ > accessed 1 April 2022. [5] ‘Exhibition by Viktoriia Adkozalova “Shadows of unforgotten ancestors”‘ ( Portal 11 Gallery , 24 January 2022) < https://portal11.com.ua/en/exhibition-by-viktoriia-adkozalova-shadows-of-unforgotten-ancestors/ > accessed 16 March 2022. [6] ‘The museum exhibition “From the Italian diary” of Ivan Turetskyy’s paintings is open till the 15 of April in Milan’ ( Portal 11 Gallery , 6 April 2022) < https://portal11.com.ua/en/the-museum-exhibition-from-the-italian-diary-of-ivan-turetskyy-s-paintings-is-open-till-the-15-of-april-in-milan/ > accessed 15 April 2022. [7] ‘Benefit exhibition in support of Ukraine’. ( Holešovická Šachta Digital Gallery , 15 March 2022) < https://www.holesovickasachta.cz/beneficni-vystava-na-pomoc-ukrajine-%f0%9f%87%ba%f0%9f%87%a6/ > accessed 16 March 2022. [8] Simon Schuster, ‘A Ukrainian Photographer Documents the Invasion of His Country’ Time (New York, 17 March 2022) < https://time.com/6158001/ukraine-invasion-in-photos-kyiv-russia/ > accessed 14 April 2022. [9] ‘Patriotic graffiti with cats appeared in Odesa (photo)’ ( Ukrainian Information Service , 17 March 2022) < https://usionline.com/v-odesse-pojavilis-patrioticheskie-graffiti-s-kotami-foto/ > accessed 20 April 2022. [10] Katie Campione, ‘‘Go Fuck Yourself’: Ukrainian Soldiers Celebrated as Viral Heroes for Last Words to Russian Warship’ ( TheWrap , 25 February 2022) < https://www.thewrap.com/go-fuck-yourself-ukrainian-soldiers-memes-tributes/ > accessed 18 April 2022. [11] Tim Lince, ‘Ukrainian Snake Island soldier seeks trademark for the iconic phrase, as major brand challenges grow in Russia’ ( WTR , 17 March 2022) < https://www.worldtrademarkreview.com/ukrainian-snake-island-soldier-seeks-trademark-iconic-phrase-major-brand-dilemma-grows-in-russia > accessed 13 April 2022. [12] Dmitri Ponomarenko, ‘Ukrposhta has started the national selection of illustrations for a postage stamp on the theme "Russian warship, go to x@y", ( Ukrainian News , 1 March 2022) < https://ukranews.com/news/837981-ukrpochta-nachala-natsionalnyj-otbor-illyustratsij-dlya-pochtovoj-marki-na-temu-russkij-voennye > accessed 20 April 2022. [13] Tatiana Nechet, ‘Postage stamps «Russian warship, go ...!» and envelopes with special cancellation signed by the author of the legendary phrase were sold at auction for UAH 5 million. – 200 times more expensive than the starting price’ ( ITC UA , 22 April 2022) < https://itc.ua/news/pochtovye-marki-russkij-voennyj-korabl-idi-i-konverty-so-speczpogasheniem-s-podpisyami-avtora-legendarnoj-frazy-prodali-na-aukczione-za-5-mln-grn-v-200-raz-dorozhe-startovoj-cze/ > accessed 25 April 2022. [14] ‘A four-thousand-strong demonstration in Warsaw – thousands of bodies on the ground’ ( Fundacja im. Kazimierza Pułaskiego , 2022) < https://pulaski.pl/en/a-four-thousand-strong-demonstration-in-warsaw-thousands-of-bodies-on-the-ground/ > accessed 15 April 2022. [15] Emmanuel Wanjala, ‘Stop promising, start acting! Ukrainians to protest for NATO to act on Russia’ ( The STAR , 2022) < https://www.the-star.co.ke/news/2022-03-25-stop-promising-start-acting-ukrainians-to-protest-for-nato-to-act-on-russia/ > accessed 15 April 2022. [16] Tara Law, ‘The Story Behind Time ’s 'Resilience of Ukraine' Cover’ Time (New York, 17 March 2022) < https://time.com/6158007/ukraine-resilience-time-cover/ > accessed 10 April 2022. [17] Brett Sokol, ‘In Miami, a Ukrainian Art Show Becomes Unintentionally Timely’ The New York Times (New York, 28 February 2022) < https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/28/arts/design/miami-ukrainian-art-show.html > accessed 18 March 2022. [18] Anna Chernenko, ‘We save paintings by Russian artists from their own people - a representative of the Kharkiv Art Museum’ ( Hromadske radio , 12 March 2022) < https://hromadske.radio/publications/my-riatuiemo-kartyny-rosiys-kykh-khudozhnykiv-vid-ikhn-oho-zh-narodu-predstavnytsia-kharkivs-koho-khudozhn-oho-muzeiu > accessed 20 April 2022. [19] ‘The Ministry of Culture has not given any orders to Ukrainian museums to act in emergencies or evacuate the collection’ ( Hromadske radio , 22 February 2022) < https://hromadske.radio/news/2022/02/22/minkul-t-ne-dav-ukrains-kym-muzeiam-niiakykh-rozporiadzhen-shchodo-diy-u-ekstrenykh-sytuatsiiakh-chy-evakuatsii-kolektsii > accessed 20 March 2022. [20] Kostyantyn Zorkin, ‘HOW ARE YOU’ ( Yermilov Centre , 2022) < https://yermilovcentre.org/announcements/256/ > accessed 10 April 2022. [21] ‘In the Kharkiv metro, the art studio has started classes with children who live there because of the war’ ( Suspilne Media , 29 March 2022) < https://suspilne.media/223005-u-metro-harkova-hudozna-studia-rozpocala-zanatta-z-ditmi-aki-tam-zivut-cerez-vijnu/ > accessed 10 April 2022. [22] Oksana Kovalenko and Yevhen Spirin, ‘“The Russians are destroying everything. There are no intact houses”. Mykola Khanatov the head of the Popasna Military Administration about life in the almost completely destroyed city’ ( Babel , 21 April 2022) < https://babel.ua/en/texts/77898-the-russians-are-destroying-everything-there-are-no-intact-houses-mykola-khanatov-the-head-of-the-popasna-military-administration-about-life-in-the-almost-completely-destroyed-city > accessed 11 April 2022. [23] Hugo Bachega and Orysia Khimiak, ‘Mariupol theatre: ‘We knew something terrible would happen’’ ( BBC News , 17 March 2022) < https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-60776929 > accessed 11 April 2022. [24] Sarah Cascone, ‘A Mariupol Museum Dedicated to One of Ukraine’s Most Important Realist Painters Has Reportedly Been Destroyed by Russian Airstrikes’ ( Artnet News , 23 March 2022) < https://news.artnet.com/art-world/russian-airstrike-destroys-mariupols-kuindzhi-art-museum-2088890 > accessed 16 April 2022. [25] ‘Emergency Fund’ ( Tu! , 28 March 2022) < https://tu.org.ua/news/fond-ekstrenoi-dopomohy/ > accessed 16 April 2022. [26] Vera Perun, ‘In Mariupol Russians rob museums, exhibits taken to Donetsk for an assessment’, - Andryushchenko’ ( LB , 26 April 2022) < https://lb.ua/culture/2022/04/26/514762_mariupoli_rosiyani_grabuyut_muzei.html > accessed 29 March 2022. [27] ‘Refugee Assistance Center in Adrenaline City’ ( MSUMK , 2022) < https://msumk.com/en/tsentr-dopomogy-bizhentsyam-pratsyuye-v-adrenalin-siti/ > accessed 20 March 2022. [28] ‘‘Art Battalion’ in MSUMK!’ ( MSUMK , 2022) < https://msumk.com/en/art-bataljon-u-msumk/ > accessed 25 March 2022. [29] Olga Klim and Ilona Zakharuk, ‘‘Assortment Room’ helps to evacuate works of art from different cities of Ukraine’ ( Suspilne Media , 2 March 2022) < https://suspilne.media/213108-asortimentna-kimnata-dopomagae-evakuuvati-tvori-mistectva-z-riznih-mist-ukraini/ > accessed 29 April 2022. [30] ‘HAVE A HEART’ ( Koller International Auctions , 19 April 2022) < https://www.kollerauktionen.ch/en/ibid-archive.htm > accessed 22 May 2022. [31] ‘Namysto’ ( OpenSea ) < https://opensea.io/collection/namysto > accessed 22 May 2022. [32] ‘Charity auction ‘Primachenko flowers for ZSU’’ ( Dukat , 2022) < http://www.dukat-art.com/en > accessed 29 April 2022. [33] ‘Arsani Auction House’ < https://arsani.art/en.html > accessed 30 March 2022. [34] ‘Saltandpepper’ ( Facebook , 2022) < https://www.facebook.com/groups/saltandpepper.art > accessed 10 April 2022. [35] Victoria Alekseenko, ‘A painting by Maria Primachenko was sold at a charity auction in Italy for €110,000’ ( D1 , 23 April 2022) < https://d1.ua/na-blagotvoritelnom-auktsione-v-italii-za-e110-tysyach-prodali-kartinu-marii-primachenko > accessed 28 April 2022. [36] ‘Impact: Artists in Support of Refugees from Ukraine’ ( Artsy , 2022) < https://www.artsy.net/auction/impact-artists-in-support-of-refugees-from-ukraine?sort=sale_position > accessed 14 April 2022. [37] ‘Gamlet Zinkovsky's new work in Mariupol’ ( Izolyatsia , 16 December 2015). < https://izolyatsia.org/ru/project/zmina/new-work-hamlet-zinkovsky/ > accessed 14 March 2022. [38] Gamlet Zinkovsky, ‘Map of Murals’ ( Kharkiv ) < https://find-way.com.ua/ru/oblasti/kharkovskaya/kharkov/gamlet-zin-kovskij-karta-muralov-khar-kov > accessed 14 April 2022. [39] Ukrainian modernism, ‘Let's protect the stained-glass windows of the Kyiv funicular from enemy shelling!’ ( Instagram , 22 March 2022) < https://www.instagram.com/p/Cbaq-0SNLVI/ > accessed 22 March 2022. [40] ‘Map of cultural loss’ ( Ukraine Cultural Fund , 2022) < https://uaculture.org/culture-loss/ > accessed 27 April 2022. [41] ‘Buy NFTs to Save Ukraine and Stop War’ ( Holy Water Tech , 2022) < https://holywater.tech/ > accessed 27 March 2022. [42] ‘THE NFT-MUSEUM of the war of Putin's Russia against Ukraine’ ( META History Museum of War , 2022) < https://metahistory.gallery > accessed 27 March 2022. [43] ‘FFFACE.ME has created a collection of three NFTs in support of Ukraine’ ( Vogue UA , 15 March 2022) < https://vogue.ua/article/culture/art/ffface-me-stvorili-kolekciyu-iz-troh-nft-na-pidtrimku-ukrajini.html > accessed 27 March 2022. [44] ‘Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund’ < https://ueaf.moca.org.ua/ > accessed 25 March 2022. [45] Tetyana Filevska, Kazymyr Malevych: The Kyiv Period, 1928–1930 (Rodovid Press/kmbs 2016).

Three Stories of Art and War I коли гуркочуть гармати- музи замовкають The Russian invasion catapulted the Ukrainian art world into crisis, and desperate measures were undertaken to secure staff, collections, and artists. Dreams are deferred but stubborn resilience manifests as a desire to not only protect cultural heritage, but also somehow provide opportunities for continued creativity. Three institutions from all regions of Ukraine—Central, East, and West—reflect on their current challenges, on how they are coping, and what might be in store for the future. When cannons roar, the muses will not fall silent. Olesya Ostrovska-Liuta is the Director General of the National Art and Cultural Museum Complex ‘Mystetskyi Arsenal’. Located in a magnificent eighteenth-century structure once devoted to the production and storage of artillery and ammunition in Kyiv’s historic Pechersk district, the Mystetskyi Arsenal (Art Arsenal) is Ukraine’s leading cultural institution, notable for its multidisciplinary programme in the visual and performing arts, as well as for its annual book fair. Before her tenure at Mystetskyi Arsenal, Ms. Ostrovska-Liuta served in several leading roles in the development of Ukraine’s national strategy for culture and creative industries. She has been the First Deputy Minister of Culture of Ukraine, the First Deputy of the National Committee for UNESCO, and was on the board of the International Renaissance Foundation, the Ukrainian Institute, and numerous other professional bodies. She is also a freelance curator and writes on culture and cultural policy. This interview was conducted on 21 April 2022. Olesya Ostrovska-Liuta : I am at Arsenal right now, the air sirens are blaring, and I am in a corridor sitting between two walls. Fig 1. The National Art and Cultural Museum Complex ‘Mystetski Arsenal’ 2012 © Barnbrook. Fig 2. Futuromarenia Exhibition (15.10.2021—30.01.2022 Mystetskyi Arsenal) © Oleksandr Popenko. Constance Uzwyshyn, for CJLPA : How are you able to work at the moment? OOL : We have a very different set of challenges. Our team is scattered all across Ukraine and Europe and this is the challenge for all organisations. People are everywhere. We have to rebuild the processes and understand what the organisations are about now, what the cultural centre should do, and what is the most important task. Yesterday, I had a meeting with a German writer from a Western European publication. It is very difficult to think about the idea of war, that this is possible, and it is very, very strange for Ukrainians to imagine as well. In 2014, we could not imagine the war. Even this summer, Constance, when you were here, you could not imagine it. Consider Putin’s text of 12 July 2021, On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians .[1] It is very explicit in what he thinks and what he is going to do. It seemed like a theory, like mythology, not an action as it turned out to be. CU: What kind of programming can you have now that there is war? OOL : We have multidisciplinary lines of approach. Apologies, I have another call from security and must answer it. When you get a call from security you want to answer it. We are a museum which holds a collection and the most important job for all museums in Ukraine is to protect the collection. This is very difficult because we were not prepared. There are no safe and prepared places in Ukraine to receive the collection. Museums are doing a lot and it cannot be discussed publicly where these collections are being safeguarded. Peter Bejger, for CJLPA : There is lots of information about this in the press; some people think that collections are safer abroad in other countries.[2] It is a delicate question. What are your thoughts about this? OOL : It is safer for certain objects, and it needs to be decided at the governmental level and not by separate organisations. You cannot move objects easily out of Ukraine, you need governmental decisions and permissions. Most museums cannot move their collections because there simply has been no time to prepare. We have a very tragic and bad situation in Mariupol,[3] and also in Kharkiv and Chernihiv. Many cultural institutions have been purposefully destroyed (fig. 3) and collections have been looted (for example, Arkhip Kuindzhi artworks were stolen) (fig. 4).[4] However, in Chernihiv, Russian troops have retreated. Furthermore, both Lviv and Chernivtsi are under threat but there are no Russian troops on the ground (they are targeted by long-range missiles), so it makes things different. Therefore, these institutions and their requirements need to be addressed differently. In some situations, it is wise to move a limited number of objects abroad. Fig 3. Shah Basit. Maria Prymachenko Museum in Ivankiv, Kyiv Oblast. Twitter post. 28 Feb 2022. Fig 4. Sunset on the Steppes (Arkhip Kuindzhi 1900, oil on canvas, 39.5 x 57.5cm). Fig 5. May that Nuclear War be Cursed! (Maria Prymachenko 1978, gouache on paper). Then you have the teams and the issues with people moving abroad. We need our people; we are being de-staffed. At the moment, we have connections with our staff, but the longer they stay abroad, the more they get immersed. It is very important to support programmes in Ukraine and it is difficult when the staff are not in Ukraine. However, there are exceptions. For example, our digital team is located outside of Ukraine and works well. An example of this is with the international book fairs. Our design team produces the designs for all the stands. CU: Do you think the COVID experience in some way prepared for this remote work? OOL : Yes, it has helped us cope with the situation right now because we learned how to work remotely and how to use technology to keep on working. We also learned that communication is key, and that we cannot rely on spontaneous communication as one does in an office. Also, Ukraine is a country with very good internet connections, and the Internet has not been down since the invasion, except for the occupied areas like Bucha, Irpin, and Mariupol. That is also why the press knows so much about what is going on in Ukraine. This also supports us! CU: When war began, as the director of the Arsenal, what was the first thing you did? OOL : On 24 February, our first action was to inform our partners abroad. I woke up at 5:30 a.m. My husband first told my daughter the war had started. When you hear these words, you don’t believe it. You think this must be a mistake. It is macabre. At 8:00 a.m. I met with my team, and we drafted an appeal to explain the situation to our partners, especially addressing book and literature circles which are a main component of our programme, in particular the International Book Arsenal Festival ,[5] a large literature and book festival. This was our first step. This festival was scheduled for May. Of course, we had to redirect our work to let people know, to explain what is happening in Ukraine, and to explain our point of view, especially why Ukraine does not want to be part of Russia, and why Ukrainians are not Russian (as Putin put it). Therefore, we focused on our presence at international book festivals…we started with Bologna, Tbilisi, London, and Paris.[6] Fig 6. International Book Arsenal Festival 2021. © Oleksandr Popenko. Fig 7. President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky with First Lady of Ukraine Olena Zelenska and Olesya Ostrovska-Liuta at the International Book Arsenal Festival 2021. © Oleksandr Popenko. In addition to the book fairs, the team is working with contemporary art and putting together art exhibitions outside of Ukraine. At the moment, the head of exhibitions fled to Paris with her teenage son. We have put together an exhibition which is at the Ukrainian Cultural Centre in Paris and another exhibition will be in Treviso.[7] In addition to the book fairs and art exhibitions, we are also creating an archive of artworks being produced in Ukraine during war. It is called ‘Ukraine Ablaze’.[8] This has a special meaning because it refers to [Oleksandr] Dovzhenko’s film Ukraine in Flames (1943).[9] We have also co-founded an art fund which deals with the consequences of the Russian invasion. It is the Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund and raises funds to purchase Ukrainian art and support curators, art writers, art research, and much more through fundraising activities.[10] As I said, Mystetskyi Arsenal has several programmes, but our programme has had to drastically change because of the war. We even have a legal department to assist us. CU: Who funds Mystetskyi Arsenal now? OOL : We still receive basic funding but have just had severe financial cuts and we do not know how we will succeed. CU: Due to the war, what are your thoughts on decolonisation and art and how has this been addressed by you as Director of the Mystetskyi Arsenal? OOL : First of all, Russian imperialism is something that is not unknown to Ukrainians. But there is a blind spot by other countries. Russian politics and policies here are seen as neo-colonial. Ukrainians are very sensitive to these narratives via Russian media and culture. PB: Do you feel perhaps it is difficult to explain to Westerners, that is, to those who live in a post-modern society, decolonisation in Ukraine or Russian imperialism? They come from a different historical and cultural experience. How can you address these blind spots to western audiences? OOL : It depends. When you look from Ukraine, especially from Kyiv, and see for example statements and declarations made from the German political arena, it is shocking. It is like there is no amount of reality that can convince a German politician. There is a discussion in Ukraine, which I think is a good argument, but you might find this controversial. What is the reason why Western, especially European countries (it is different in America), refuse to notice the imperial nature of the Russian discourse? Also, why do they often not notice other cultures apart from Russia in these regions? Why is that? A hypothesis arose that this has something to do with all the imperialisms in the world as well. Empires speaking to empires, important capitals speaking to other important capitals. Even at these meetings those other important capitals, for example the Russian capital, have legitimate spheres of interest. What are legitimate spheres of interest? It means that another capital has the right to define other nations’ invasion choices. Why is it possible that a Western capital or nation is even capable of accepting this idea of legitimate spheres of interests? How could people accept that Russia has the right to define Ukraine’s future? One of the explanations is connected to the parallel imperialism still present in other countries. PB: Do you think this is a hangover nostalgia (among the Left) for the USSR? Perhaps it is a modernisation project and has been affected by this view, which is present in Soviet art and transposed in current discourses? O: The Soviet Union was definitely a modernisation project, which means modernisation is not always a good thing and can be a means of tolerating oppression. How do you measure good and evil? Was the Soviet Union good only because it opposed an evil side in the capitalist world? Is it enough to challenge the capitalist world to be good, no matter how many atrocities you bring with yourself? In our part of the world the answer is no. It is not enough. It can bring a greater evil. When your life is threatened, you might become melodramatic. Fig 8. Andriy Sahaidovsky. Scenery. Welcome! Exhibition (18.09.2020—24.01.2021 Mystetskyi Arsenal) © Oleksandr Popenko. PB: Germany has a huge role in contemporary art, with their museums, fairs, and curators, but what do you think about the French, Italians, and other Europeans? OOL : Regarding Germany, there is a gap, luckily, between politicians and professionals. Professionals are much more supportive and there is a feeling that the understanding is deeper, and the public is much more sympathetic to Ukraine. I am not saying Germany is bad. We also have to state we are very grateful for the reception to Ukrainian refugees. We could not have imagined Ukrainians crossing borders in huge numbers without passports or COVID restrictions, and with free transportation. This is great and should not be underestimated. This is very important to point out. We should not underestimate these efforts. Regarding the political discourse, what is most striking to Ukrainians are the Germans and the French. Consider when [French president] Macron stated that events in Bucha might not qualify as genocide and in the end Ukrainians and Russians are brotherly nations.[11] This sounds very alarming in Ukraine. First of all, this ‘brotherly nation’ is of course an imperial trope. This trope tells you that no one should interfere with those relations because they are a kind of family relations so let them decide by themselves because they are a ‘brotherly’ family. There is this family lexis, and this form of speaking camouflages international aggression and deprives Ukrainians of agency. If they are ‘brothers’, then they have no political agency to make their own political choices. Therefore, when a Ukrainian hears a French president state this, it sounds quite colonial as well. Then the question arises, why would a French president take such a colonial position? That is really alarming in Ukraine. We heard nothing like this from the British. I have the feeling the British and American are the most realistic. They understand what is going on. When it comes to southern Europe, there is a different history of relationships. The latest story with the Vatican and Rome [Pope Francis arranged a Ukrainian and Russian woman to carry the cross together during a Good Friday procession] was received very poorly.[12] All the international steps towards reconciliation are perceived as harming the victim and inflicting more suffering on Ukrainians. The time for reconciliation between Ukrainians and Russians has not yet come. Russians have to first analyse their own political reality and their actions towards Ukrainians. CU: Do you have any professional relations with Russian artists or Russian Institutes? OOL : No one has reached out to us as an institution. CU: With the war going on, the spotlight is now on Ukrainian art. Please comment on how Ukrainian art has changed during these last two months. First of all, what is Ukrainian Art? OOL : Anything produced in Ukraine now or anything where an artist defines himself/herself as a Ukrainian artist. That would probably be my explanation of Ukrainian art. CU: Do we need to re-examine and critically discuss the way art history defines and establishes Ukrainian-born or artists of Ukrainian descent as Russian? Let us consider, for example, Kazimir Malevich, Ivan Aivazovsky, Ilya Repin, Volodymyr Borovykovsky, David Burliuk, Aleksandra Ekster, or even Andy Warhol (a Carpatho-Rusyn). What does this say about art history and its practice? OOL : This is a huge question, and a complex discussion is ahead of us. How do you define a Polish or even Russian artist today? At the moment, here is my own definition today, and it might change over time: a Ukrainian artist is any artist that made an impact on the Ukrainian art scene or was either produced in Ukraine or by individuals who identify themselves as Ukrainian artists. In this way, Malevich would also be Ukrainian because he was teaching in the Kyiv Academy. He was one of the founders of the Academy and he was an important cultural figure in Kyiv life. Therefore, he is a Ukrainian artist but also belongs to other communities and societies. Fig 9. Red Figure (Kazimir Malevich 1928, oil on canvas, 30 x 23.5cm). Kazimir Malevich taught at the Kyiv Art Institute (1928 – 1930) when this painting was created. We are discussing this because Putin and the Russians put forward this question, not only whether Ukraine is a political entity, but do Ukrainians exist? Since Putin put this question forward—by the way, Ukrainians thought this question was long resolved—he made it into a huge issue, and therefore we speak about it. Thus, his text is genocidal in nature because what he is saying is Ukrainians do not exist. There is no such thing as Ukraine. Although I exist as a physical reality, his answers are Bucha, Irpin, and Borodianka.[13] Those people, for him, should not exist physically. This is unexpected to anyone who knows about Ukrainian culture and history. As for the question, are Ukrainians different from Russians? There are two different issues, in my opinion. Are Ukrainians different from Russians? The answer is yes, yes, and yes. Secondly, this question in itself is disgraceful. However, if you speak about Kyivan Rus', it is a medieval period that is neither Russian nor Ukrainian. It is like equating the Holy Roman Empire to being German. PB: What is going to happen with the Arsenal Book Fair going forward? OOL : It will not happen in May. It all depends on the war, and it is too early to say anything. We will have to do other things. We are developing a programme to connect Ukrainians and international publishers because the international scene is very interested in connecting with Ukrainian writers. We are working with the Frankfurt Book Fair, which is the most important global book fair. We are not able to do any cultural activities in Ukraine because this is not possible for security reasons. We cannot have a mass public event, even in Lviv. It’s too dangerous. It is difficult to have a steady workflow because of sirens and you have to change your work schedule because of that. Kyiv is waking up at the moment, even hairdressers are starting to work…which is very exotic these days. The shops and markets are starting to function as well as the cafes…but there are no cultural or conference-related types of activities. We would love it, but it is just not possible. CU: You are speaking at the Venice Biennale, can you tell us a bit about it? OOL : There are two separate Ukrainian projects at the Biennale, the Ukrainian Pavilion[14] and the Pinchuk project.[15] It is a parallel programme, and Pinchuk’s projects are always well known. The Ukrainian Pavilion is organised by three curators and the artist Pavlo Makov. Makov stayed in Kharkiv, even under the shelling. Regarding the curators, one of them is a young man (he was originally not allowed to travel due to the war but was given special permission) and one of the females just gave birth in a bomb shelter in Western Ukraine. Their work routine was extremely complicated. It will be a miracle that it is even there. Fig 10. Fountain of Exhaustion (Pavlo Makov 2022). Image and description courtesy of @ukrainianpavillioninvenice on Instagram. CU: Why is Ukrainian art significant to other cultures? OOL : One thing, but it is so reactive, is because Ukrainian culture understands the nuances of Russian culture and Russian imperialism and can translate it to others. But isn’t this a minor role, to be a translator? It is still part of colonialism…I feel uneasy about this. CU: Perhaps Ukrainian artists represent values, integrity, and a morality which many in the West have lost. What do you stand for? Ukrainians are posing tough questions such as the purpose of NATO, the meaning of the United Nations, and so forth. OOL : I agree, Ukraine is forcing people and societies to change their views. Artists such as Alevtina Kakhidze[16] especially at the moment makes things uncomfortable for Westerners, with their previous views. They make people re-examine fundamentals, what people were there in Kyivan Rus' for example. In a sense Ukrainian art is a game changer, it challenges us. Here is some small, good news. The sirens have stopped. CU: Do you contemplate leaving Ukraine? OOL : No. First of all, I am the director of Arsenal which means I am in charge, and I cannot leave. Legally I can, but morally no. PB: How many staff are you? OOL : We had eighty people in our pre-war regular staff. We are a large institution by square metres but are compact by the number of people. In Ukraine, there are around sixty. All the museum directors are still in Kyiv, but some people have moved to other cities, and a few are outside Ukraine, but not many. PB: Do you have any concluding thoughts on what is to be done during this period? What is the moral imperative of artists right now in Ukraine? OOL : It is important to pose questions, to try to be uncomfortable, to try to reflect on what is going on, to try to describe your experience…it is an extreme experience. How can you describe this other than through art? We will only see what the strategies are sometime later when we view it retrospectively. Some artists are trying to cope with reality through their art. Art is also about providing a voice, so many of them are voicing things, or example Alevtina. She says I am an artist, and I can ask unpleasant and uneasy questions to anyone. She challenges assumptions even for her western interlocutor, who does not want to change his/her lens. Alevtina has a house in Kyiv, was very close to the front line, and spends most of the time in her basement with her dogs. The dogs were anxious and afraid; she spent most of her time in the basement because this was a space where her dogs were their calmest. In her art, she draws all her impressions, thoughts, feelings…she writes questions and thoughts on her drawings in English. She said there are so many mistakes (in the grammar), but they are authentic, but I don’t think about correct expression. I just want to say something despite the ability to operate the language. It is not the translation made by a good translator, it is what I do, what I think, and she thinks about certain interlocutors, and she speaks to outsiders…Alevtina is powerful, her art is honest, and it is blunt. Fig 11. The Degree of Fault of Every Citizen of the Russian Federation (Alevtina Kakhidze 24.02.2022, ink and coloured marker on paper) © Alevtina Kakhidze. This interview was conducted by Constance Uzwyshyn and Peter Bejger. Constance Uzwyshyn is an expert on Ukrainian contemporary art. She founded Ukraine’s first foreign-owned professional art gallery, the ARTEast Gallery, in Kyiv. Having written a masters dissertation entitled The Emergence of the Ukrainian Contemporary Art Market , she is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge researching Ukrainian contemporary art. She is also CJLPA 2’s Executive Editor and the Ukrainian Institute of London’s Creative Industries Advisor. Peter Bejger is an editor, filmmaker, and writer based in San Francisco. He was a Fulbright Research Scholar in Ukraine, where he wrote and produced a documentary film on Secession-era architecture of the city of Lviv. Previously, he lived in Kyiv for several years, where he worked as a journalist, media consultant, and cultural critic. [1] Vladimir Putin, ‘On the Historical Unity of Russians and Ukrainians’ ( President of Russian Federation , 12 July 2021) < http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/66181 > accessed 12 March 2022. [2] Hannah McGivern, ‘French Museums Rally to Protect Art Collections in Ukraine with Truckload of Emergency Supplies’ ( The Art Newspaper , 25 March 2022) < https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/03/25/french-museums-ukraine-emergency-supplies > accessed 26 March 2022. [3] Pjotr Sauer, ‘Ukraine Accuses Russian Forces of Seizing 2,000 Artworks in Mariupol’ The Guardian (London, 29 April 2022) < https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/apr/29/ukraine-accuses-russian-forces-of-seizing-2000-artworks-in-mariupol > accessed 29 April 2022. [4]Sophia Kishkovsky, ‘Mariupol Museum Dedicated to 19th Century Artist Arkhip Kuindzhi Destroyed by Airstrike, According to Local Media’ ( The Art Newspaper , 23 March 2022) < https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2022/03/23/mariupol-museum-dedicated-to-19th-century-artist-arkhip-kuindzhi-destroyed-by-airstrike-according-to-local-media > accessed 24 March 2022; Alex Greenberger, ‘Paintings by Maria Prymachenko Burn as Ukrainian History Museum Weathers Destruction’ ( ARTnews , 28 February 2022) < https://www.artnews.com/art-news/news/maria-prymachenko-paintings-ivankiv-museum-destroyed-1234620348/ > accessed 12 March 2022; Jeffrey Gettleman and Oleksandr Chubko, ‘Ukraine says Russia Looted Ancient Gold Artifacts from a Museum’ The New York Times (New York, 30 April 2022) < https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/30/world/europe/ukraine-scythia-gold-museum-russia.html accessed > 1 May 2022. [5] For more information on the International Book Arsenal Festival see < https://artarsenal.in.ua/en/book-arsenal/ > accessed 16 May 2022. [6] ‘Book Arsenal Will not Take Place in May 2022’ < https://artarsenal.in.ua/en/povidomlennya/book-arsenal-will-not-take-place-in-may-2022/ > accessed 4 May 2022. [7] ‘Ukraine: Short Stories. Contemporary Artists from Ukraine. Works from the Imago Mundi Collection’ ( Fondazione Imago Mundi ) < https://fondazioneimagomundi.org/en/progetti/exhibitions/ukraine-short-stories-2/ > accessed 9 May 2022. [8] ‘Ukraine Ablaze; Project by the Laboratory of Contemporary Art’ < https://artarsenal.in.ua/en/povidomlennya/the-ukraine-ablaze-project-by-the-laboratory-of-contemporary-art/ > accessed 7 May 2022. [9] Alexander Dovzhenko and Yuliya Solntseva. ‘ Ukraine in Flames (1943)’ ( YouTube , 24 June 2015) < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vmkpOqoNZSY > accessed 4 May 2022. [10] ‘Ukrainian Emergency Art Fund’ < https://artarsenal.in.ua/en/povidomlennya/ukrainian-emergency-art-fund-report-on-the-month-of-work/ > accessed 27 March 2022. [11] Reuters, ‘French President Macron says Killings in Bucha were ‘very probably’ War Crimes’ ( Euronews , 7 April 2022). < https://www.euronews.com/2022/04/07/uk-ukraine-crisis-france-macron > accessed 2 May 2022; Shweta Sharma, ‘Poland hits out at Macron after Massacre in Bucha: ‘Nobody Negotiated with Hitler’’ Independent (5 April 2022). < https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/poland-macron-hitler-bucha-killings-b2051006.html > 2 May 2022. [12] Cindy Wooden, ‘A Ukrainian and a Russian were Invited to Lead the Vatican’s Via Crucis. Ukraine wants Pope Francis to Reconsider’ America (New York, 12 April 2022) < https://www.americamagazine.org/politics-society/2022/04/12/ukraine-russia-crucis-242811 > accessed 12 April 2022. [13] ‘Bucha Massacre, Nightmares of Irpin and Hostomel’ (6 April 2022) < https://war.ukraine.ua/crimes/the-timeline-of-tragedy-bucha-massacre-nightmares-of-irpin-and-hostomel/ > accessed 7 April 2022. [14] ‘Ukrainian Pavilion at the 59th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia’ < https://ukrainianpavilion.org/ > accessed 24 April 2022. [15] ‘This is Ukraine: Defending Freedom @Venice 2022’ < https://new.pinchukartcentre.org/thisisukraine-en > accessed 24 April 2022. [16] See < http://www.alevtinakakhidze.com/ > accessed 9 May 2022.

Modern-day Singapore prides itself as a ‘global city’ with a commendable level of economic stability as a result of its sustained cosmopolitanism. Having rapidly developed over a time when the differences between nations are increasingly valued, the city-state’s cosmopolitan disposition has led many to question the existence of a nation-specific identity. The government’s—more specifically, the People’s Action Party (PAP) that has led a supermajority government since Singapore’s independence—forceful hand in crafting the nation’s ‘global city’ identity has led many to perceive said identity to be artificial if not ill-defined. In this article, I delineate the steps undertaken by the PAP (concerning race and language) that lead to the existing global impression of Singapore before examining the approaches taken by state institutions to musically portray the cosmopolis. Race in the ‘Global City’ Singapore’s experience of numerous periods of economic and cultural reinvention precedes the proclamation of its statehood on August 9, 1965. These reinventions were mandated by its obsession ‘to become and remain a successful city-state and global city’.[1] Singapore today continues to be described as a ‘Global City’ or ‘International City’. In fact, the terms were ‘used regularly throughout the development plans of the State of Singapore, and in numerous planning documents produced for it’.[2] Singapore’s association with the ‘global’ and ‘international’ leaves many to ponder about what is to be considered its ‘local’ or ‘national’. Due to its central location in Southeast Asia, Singapore has served perennially as a hub for trade and commerce; it thrived as a cosmopolitan seaport that facilitated trade between Europe and East Asia as a British colony and is today a common midpoint for travel between Europe or Africa to Asia-Pacific as evidenced by its international passenger traffic. The settlement in Singapore of international travellers over time has engendered a multicultural and multiracial population on the island. This multiculturalism—and the determination to maintain it—has proven to be advantageous in ensuring Singapore’s economic success and plays a significant role in the genesis of Singapore’s cultural identity. It is important to note that Singapore’s ‘state creation preceded the process of nation building’ as a result of its unanticipated separation from Malaysia.[3] Contrasting with the common narrative of state independence succeeding an intensifying nationalist sentiment amongst its people, Singapore’s independence was not founded on such convictions. There was therefore an absence of a well-defined national identity at the onset of statehood. As a small island that lacks a resource-rich hinterland, Singapore’s state-creation process fixated on discovering the ways in which the state could generate and assure itself of an economic capital. The concern for its economy was characteristic of the inhabitants of the island, whom Sir Stamford Raffles—a British statesman often regarded as the founder of modern Singapore—described as having embodied a ‘“spirit of enterprise and freedom” which distinguished it from the rest of Asia’.[4] Singapore’s state-creation process was prioritised over nation-building, thus delaying the creation of a cultural capital. That is not to say, however, that the developments of the two capitals are distinct from one another. In recent years, the conception of Singapore’s cultural products has reflected a consideration for economic gains (as we shall see below). Apart from its people’s enterprising spirit, more pertinent to this study of identity is Singaporeans’ seemingly intrinsic belief in multiracialism. Raffles argued that the people of Singapore were ‘characterised by [their] diversity, but also the absence of prejudice’.[5] This statement highlights the past people’s cosmopolitan outlook of Singapore. Prior to its independence, Singapore was part of the Straits Settlements, themselves a part of the wider British Malaya. In a bid to maintain their rule over British Malaya, the British instigated a form of colonial nationalism in the region that raised the status of Malay culture, recognising the significance of the Malay population and providing them with a slight sense of autonomy.[6] Schools that instructed in the Malay language were favoured and received more support and funding from the British government than schools that instructed in other languages (such as English or Mandarin Chinese). This privileging of the Malay language and culture—according the Malay population with a sense of superiority over those of other races—displeased the Chinese-majority population in Singapore.[7] The resultant racial tension persisted within the region even after Malaysia gained its independence from the British in 1963, eventually triggering the race riots of 1964 in Singapore. Singapore’s intolerance of the existing cultural and racial hierarchy and Malaysia’s fear that a ‘merger with Singapore would lead to an overall Chinese majority that would threaten the privileges of indigenous Malays’ led to Singapore’s secession from Malaysia in 1965.[8] Negotiating Singapore’s multicultural and multiracial population proved to be a matter of great importance upon the nascency of the State as then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew ‘asked rhetorically, “How were we to create a nation out of a polyglot collection of migrants from China, India, Indonesia, and several other parts of Asia?”’.[9] To establish social connections between such disparate communities that was crucial to citizenship (and the forming of a coherent nation) was the primary concern of Lee and his government (led by the PAP). They dealt first with the fundamental issue of the nation’s lingua franca (or ‘working language’) by seeking a linguistic middle ground between its various racial communities. Its previous disputes with Malaysia had dismissed the Malay language as a contender, and while the Chinese now formed the racial majority in Singapore, their native language was not favoured as Lee had also aimed to ‘disassociate Singapore’s largely ethnic Chinese population from communist China’.[10] The decision was made to refer to the British, whose vernacular was already familiar to the population in Singapore as a result of its colonisation. The English language served as a racially neutral communicative tool upon the departure of the British as it was not inherently associated to a racial majority in Singapore. A proficient level of English is continually stressed in Singapore, especially since it holds the status today as the world’s lingua franca. In a speech given at the launch of a book series titled Grammar Matters (2000) produced to aid English-learning, then Minister for Education Teo Chee Hean highlighted the accessibility that English is able to provide to its citizens: Singapore has four official languages: Malay, Tamil, Chinese and English, reflecting our ethnic diversity and our history. Our mother tongues give us access to our diverse cultures, values and roots, while English is our working language. Using English as the common language for administration and education has helped Singaporeans from all walks of life understand one another and live together harmoniously. Equally importantly, proficiency in the English language has also provided Singaporeans with a medium to communicate with others around the world—for business and trade, in academia, in international fora, for travel and leisure, over the Internet. It has given Singaporeans a key advantage—global literacy—so that we can directly communicate and convey our views to others in many settings around the world.[11] Teo noted that English was not only able to facilitate communication within Singapore’s borders but also beyond on an international level. Alluding to Singapore’s economy-centred disposition, Teo also argued that mastery of English would enable Singaporeans to achieve the ‘global literacy’ essential to the nation’s economic development. With the understanding that one’s language is a strong signifier of one’s racial identity, the explication of language-learning in Singapore above highlights the government’s aspirations for racial equality. English remains today as the state’s de facto official language and language of business and administration. By proclaiming Malay, Tamil, and Chinese as the other official languages (despite the disparity in numbers of the racial communities who speak them), the Singapore government grants ‘equal status to the cultures and ethnic identities of the various “races”’, and prompts a racially unbiased society in Singapore.[12] This belief is instilled in citizens through the daily recitation of the National Pledge—that includes the lines, ‘pledge ourselves as one united people, regardless of race, language, or religion’—during their years in school.[13] Singapore’s penchant for racial equality stems from the issues encountered as a state of Malaysia (as highlighted above), and its societal structure as a British colony which senior diplomat Tommy Koh highlights to be ‘both racist and hierarchical’.[14] To inhibit the development of a racial hierarchy within a society, Koh explains that one needs to ‘treat [their] minorities as equals’, as demonstrated in Singapore.[15] Singapore’s racial demographics are managed by the state through the Chinese-Malay-Indian-Other (CMIO) model. This four-race model obligates Singaporeans to identify themselves as part of one category in relation to the others. Through administering this model, the government homogenises each category and erects racial boundaries ‘in an attempt to erase hybridity’.[16] To be categorised into one of the four racial groups is a significant part of forming one’s own Singaporean identity, as Eve Hoon explains: The coexistence of race and national identity was represented in the hyphenated identity model of ‘nation–race’, where Singaporeans were asked to identify as Singaporean–Chinese, or Singaporean–Indian, Singaporean–Malay or Singaporean–Other. Race was therefore foundational to the national identity of a Singaporean, almost serving as a prerequisite.[17] The ascriptive nature of the CMIO model is exploited in many areas of management in Singapore, ranging from housing where there was ‘a quota for each racial group in every block of flats’;[18] to education where students were taught Mandarin, Malay, or Tamil as their ‘mother tongue’ if they were Chinese, Malay, or Indian respectively while a choice is given to those categorised as ‘Other’; and to Singapore’s racialised public holidays, shown in the table below.[19] (Note that two days are associated with each race to ensure an equal distribution.)[20] As a result of these patent racial demarcations in the lives of Singaporeans, a notion of ethnic absolutism is passively developed within Singaporeans who become acutely perceptive of the nuances of the different racial factions.[21] In opposition to encouraging cultural integration often anticipated within the population of cosmopolises like Singapore, the government has instead made more distinct the racial boundaries between its people.[22] To further strengthen Singapore’s fundamental pillar of multiracialism, a curriculum known as ‘National Education’ is embedded within its education system. Students are taught of the racial conflicts in Singapore’s history—which include the race-related Maria Hertogh riots of 1950 and the racial riots of 1964—in order to comprehend the fragility of inter-racial relationships and to deter racial tensions and its lamentable consequences. Additionally, public discourse concerning racial differences is sanctioned as taboo by the government, thus further mitigating the recurrence of the disabling events in Singapore’s history.[23] Clash of Identities: Singaporeans vs Singapore Government In comparison with its achievements in other areas of Singaporean society, the government’s work as ‘architect of nationalism and national identity’ has been more contentious.[24] The national identity defined by the government centres around the state’s obsession with economic success, rather than the more problematic promotion of an ethnic identity.[25] Policies are constantly changing to encourage economic growth, which results in a continual construction and reconstruction of the Singaporean identity.[26] When Singapore experienced a labour shortage in the 1990s, the government acted upon this deficiency by attempting through several means to make Singapore a favourable place for foreigners to settle and work. First, Singapore’s foreign policy was amended, simplifying the immigration process.[27] Second, the government flagged the CMIO model in order to dismiss potential race-related concerns arising from integration into Singaporean society. Singaporeans are reminded of the all-encompassing ‘O’ of the CMIO model ‘to encourage Singaporeans to welcome immigrants of all ethnic backgrounds into Singapore’. Likewise, foreigners are led to view Singapore as an accommodating and cosmopolitan country with the ability to ‘incorporate all immigrants into [its] existing [CMIO] model’.[28] Some have termed the ‘O’ a ‘catch-all residual category’ due to the convenience it has provided to immigration.[29] The cosmopolitanism offered by the CMIO model and its connection to economic progress therefore constitutes the government’s notion of ‘Singaporean’. These efforts proved to be successful as the ‘O’ category saw an increase of approximately 100,000 individuals between 1990 and 2013.[30] The influx of immigrants led Singaporeans to question the relationship between their national identity and the race-managing CMIO model. Does the cosmopolitanism propagated by the government characterise what the people view as ‘Singaporean’? To the government, the ‘Singaporean’ is a cosmopolite who is inducted to the CMIO model and seeks economic progress. Singaporeans, on the other hand, regard the Singaporean identity as one that accounts for more than a racial identity represented by the CMIO model. The rejection of the convenient incorporation of new citizens into the CMIO model has shown that, to Singaporeans, the Singaporean identity is not simply defined by one’s race (or even language or religion) but by one’s experience of growing up and living in a society shaped by the CMIO model which has attuned individuals to the practices and tendencies of those in a racial category that is different to their own. To Singaporeans, falling into one category of the CMIO model—as immigrants do—may allow one to attain Singapore citizenship but is insufficient to allow one to claim oneself as ‘Singaporean’. Thus, a dispute between the government and the people’s notion of ‘Singaporean’ is established. While the government regards all citizens as Singaporeans, Singaporeans perceive themselves more exclusively as members of an imagined community—to use Benedict Anderson’s term—bound together by the experience of the Singaporean way of life.[31] The discord between the government and the people’s notion of ‘Singaporean’ is highlighted in the arts, which were employed to attract capable foreigners—Westerners, in particular—to join Singapore’s workforce. State-funded arts companies (or those with aspirations of state-funding) tend not to be overtly culture-specific in order to cater to what is anticipated to be a cosmopolitan audience. Melissa Wong cites the Singapore Repertory Theatre (SRT) as an example; the SRT’s tagline in 2010 was ‘World Theatre with an Asian Spirit’, which demonstrated that a distinct idea of ‘Singaporean-ness’ in the arts needs to be substituted for one that is less specific in order to create a cosmopolitan image of Singapore. This falls in line with the government’s view of ‘Singaporean’ and of Singapore as a cosmopolis. While the tagline is no longer in use by the company today, its inclination for global connections is hinted at still by the company’s mission, which states that the SRT seeks to collaborate ‘with the best talent in the world’.[32] A Linguistic Analogy Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong has noted that ‘Singapore is not a melting pot but a society where each race is encouraged to preserve its unique culture and traditions, and appreciate and respect those of others’.[33] The Singapore government’s attempts to keep the categories of the CMIO model distinct and prevent a coalescence of said categories is illustrated by their management of languages in the nation. A bilingualism policy put in place in 1959 mandates that all Singaporeans have knowledge of two languages—English and a ‘mother tongue’.[34] Aside from being a key marker of one’s racial identity, the ability to read, write, and converse in one’s mother tongue arguably strengthens one’s allegiance with their CMIO category. In 1979, the Speak Mandarin Campaign was initiated by the government to organise the linguistically heterogeneous Chinese population in Singapore. The goal of the campaign was to encourage ‘all Singaporean Chinese to embrace the use of Mandarin and enjoy an appreciation of the Chinese language and culture’ and to discourage the use of Chinese dialects.[35] The government recognised that an absolute Mandarin-speaking Chinese population would eradicate the need for the teaching of dialects in addition to the bilingual education system. In a speech marking a re-launch of the campaign in 1986, then Deputy Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong dissuaded the use of dialects by branding them as a ‘learning burden’.[36] By encouraging the use of Standard Mandarin as the sole Chinese language amongst Singapore’s ethnic Chinese population, the government has further defined the Singaporean Chinese identity. While there have not been extensive campaigns for the Malay or Tamil languages, the Malay Language Council and Tamil Language Council (established in 1981 and 2000 respectively) organise events to encourage the continual use of Standard Malay and Standard Tamil amongst the respective racial communities.[37] In spite of the government’s attempts to keep the racial identities distinct and separate, a coalescence of these identity markers has proven to be inevitable—especially considering the close quarters in which people of different races inhabit. This coalescence manifests itself through an English-based creole language known as ‘Singlish’ which is widely spoken and understood by Singaporeans today. Singlish, while English-based, is characterised by words originating in Hokkien, Cantonese, Teochew, Malay, Tamil, and other common languages used in Singapore. Also part of its features are words created from a blend of languages; for example, ‘agaration’—which means an estimation—is an anglicised form of the Malay ‘agak-agak’ which refers to the act of estimating. Teo attributes the emergence of Singlish to the first-generation English speakers who are more in touch with their mother tongues: ‘The syntax, grammar, expressions, pronunciation and rhythms of their own mother tongues come more naturally to them. These creep into the English they use’.[38] As Singlish is unintelligible to non-Singaporeans (and is thus nation-specific) and is believed to reduce Singaporeans’ competence in Standard English, it was viewed by the government as detrimental to Singapore’s cosmopolitan image and economic wellbeing.[39] In light of these potentially threatening outcomes, the government initiated the Speak Good English Movement in 2000 to discourage the use of Singlish and stress the importance of English to inhabitants of a ‘global city’. As part of the campaign, the Ministry of Education revised the English Language syllabus used in schools with a stronger focus on grammar and presentation skills; more debates and essay competitions were organised; and new English-learning aids were published.[40] Similar to the treatment of Chinese dialects, Singlish was viewed askance by former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew who termed it a ‘handicap’ that ‘[the government] must not wish on Singaporeans’.[41] Whilst some Singaporeans believe that Singlish is integral to the Singaporean identity—arguing that ‘it is a true reflection of Singapore’s multiculturalism’[42]—it is seen by the government as a peril to its cosmopolitan vision of Singapore. The government’s pushback on Singlish evidenced their resistance towards Singaporeans’ ideal of a culturally homogenous national identity. Music in Singapore Similar to many aspects of Singaporean life, art in Singapore is subjected to the authoritative though pragmatic governance of the People’s Action Party. The government frequently argued in the early years of independence that the economically focused people of Singapore lacked ‘social graces and refinement’, qualities that could be inculcated with art.[43] The civilising ability of the arts was also recently highlighted by Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, who cautioned against building a Singapore with ‘a first-world economy but a third-rate society, with a people who are well off but uncouth’.[44] The state’s intention to induct the arts into its nation-building process is evidenced in the early years of the state’s independence as then Minister of State for Culture Lee Khoon Choy proclaimed at the opening of an art exhibition at the National Theatre in 1966 that ‘The days of Art for Art’s sake are over. Artists should play an integral part in our effort to build a multi-racial, multi-lingual, and multi-religious society where every citizen has a place under the sun’.[45] More than a decade later, the relationship between the arts and the state is highlighted again in former Finance Minister Hon Sui Sen’s speech at the opening of the Third Singapore Arts Festival on December 10, 1980: While it may sound romantic for artists to starve and work in their garrets, the output of such artists without patronage must be abysmally low. A Michelangelo could not have given of his best without the beneficence of a Pope Sixtus with a Sistine Chapel to be decorated: Neither could other artists of the Renaissance have done their work without the patronage of princes whose vanity must be flattered or wealth displayed.[46] Hon emphasised the working relationship between artists and patrons in Renaissance Europe and likened the state and its government to the latter. It was expected that artists would consider the patron’s (i.e., the state’s) interests when creating art. The arts were to serve a civilising role in the building of a society that is desirable to the government. This role involved instilling a unique sense of identity and belonging in Singapore citizens, which was crucial to retaining the state’s human resources following the economic crisis in the 1980s (which led to the emigration of many). In music, ethnic community songs and National Day Parade theme songs (NDP songs) were created to aid the imposition of the government’s sociological ideologies. Ethnic Community Songs Along with their enterprising spirit, the settlers of pre-independence Singapore brought to the island the songs of their diverse cultures, which are categorised into the definitive ‘C’, ‘M’, and ‘I’ of the CMIO model. In an attempt to create a shared entity amongst its people post-independence, the government appropriated these songs by changing its lyrics to suit a Singaporean context. In the early 1980s, these songs were recorded by celebrities and promoted widely to the nation as ‘national folk songs’ through television and radio and were made even more accessible with musical scores and records sold at a low price.[47] A disregard for the act of appropriation is blatantly expressed by former Senior Minister of State Lee Khoon Choy: Every tune is international. Melody is international. There is nothing wrong in putting new words to suit it to local conditions. You can choose any tune in the world, from any nation, but if you put new words to it, then you can sing it as your own.[48] Aside from the abovementioned efforts to popularise these ‘national folk songs’, a ‘quiet campaign’ known as Operation Singalong was introduced to foster a habit of communal singing amongst the population, which the government saw ‘as an important way for Singaporeans to develop a sense of belonging to the nation and solidarity’.[49] These songs are incorporated into a mass singing segment in the National Day Parade which is broadcasted nationwide every year. Lee’s statement proved to be unconvincing as the campaign was received poorly, with the population lamenting the disingenuity of the songs in reflecting Singaporean culture. Operation Singalong was eventually ‘quietly shelved and forgotten’.[50] While the songs were not well-received, the campaign was successful in popularising communal singing, a practice to be exploited later with the NDP songs. In response to the inauthenticity of the pre-existing ethnic community songs, numerous songs of a similar style were composed and added to the repertoire by local composers since the 1980s. Together with NDP songs, ethnic community songs are taught in schools every year in the build-up to the celebration of National Day on August 9. National Day Parade and Theme Songs The poor reception of the early ethnic community songs prompted the government to develop an alternative medium with which the population could better identify. The government employed advertising agency McCann-Erickson to produce National Day Parade theme songs in the hope of inculcating a sense of belonging to a unified community striving towards achieving prosperity and progress for the nation. The first of such songs was ‘Stand Up for Singapore’ composed in 1984 by Hugh Harrison. In contrast with ethnic community songs, the style of ‘Stand Up for Singapore’ was more akin to that of modern pop songs and appealed particularly to the younger generation. The production of the song (and its accompanying music video that was broadcasted on state media) was of a higher quality, thus augmenting its attractiveness.[51] The song’s success was perpetuated with further commissions from Harrison in 1986 (‘Count on Me, Singapore’) and 1987 (‘We Are Singapore’). Aloysius Ho notes that cassette tape sales of NDP songs saw a significant increase in those two years, reaching 73,000 in 1986 and 105,000 in 1987.[52] The popularity of these early NDP songs developed the medium into ‘fertile ideological sites for the PAP government’s many fantasies’.[53] The purpose of the early NDP songs was to strengthen the people’s community consciousness by evoking a sense of pride and joy in past achievements. This is illustrated in the opening lines of ‘We are Singapore’, which goes: ‘There was a time when people said that Singapore won’t make it / But we did / There was a time when troubles seemed too much for us to take / But we did’;[54] and in ‘One People’: ‘We’ve built a nation with our hands / The toil of people from a dozen lands / Strangers when we first began now we’re Singaporean’.[55] In addition to encouraging a unified community in Singapore, the songs often implore Singaporeans to ensure the state’s continued success, as evinced in the lyrics for ‘Stand Up for Singapore’: ‘Believe in yourself, you’ve got something to share / So show us all you really care / Be prepared to give a little more’.[56] In the late 1990s, the NDP songs were reinvented; an alternative narrative that connoted place identity emerged. Contrary to the chest thumping quality of the earlier style, the reinvented songs adopted ‘a softer and more sentimental musical style’.[57] This change in musical style catered to the refined taste of the population in the new millennium as the newspapers described: ‘the recent repertoire…is ostensibly more melodic, sophisticated and attuned to popular culture than the previous decades’ “Count on Me, Singapore” and “We Are Singapore”’.[58] The modified goal of establishing communal identity to a personal place identity warranted the recording of these songs by solo local artists in place of choruses (as before). Similarly, these songs were widely broadcasted through state media in the build-up to National Day.[59] Apart from the explicit titles, the lyrics of the songs reveal the objective of fostering place identity as demonstrated in ‘Home’: ‘Whenever I am feeling low / I look around me and I know / There’s a place that will stay within me / Wherever I may choose to go’;[60] and ‘My Island Home’: ‘My island home / Wherever I may be / I never will forget her / Nor will she forget me’.[61] The sentimental style of the music (with its moderate tempo and lush orchestration), through which these texts are delivered, effectively instigates nostalgia and tugs at the heartstrings of singers and listeners. The invented tradition of singing a repertoire of NDP songs en masse at National Day Parades—a result of Operation Singalong —is still observed today. The song composed for a specific year is featured ‘as the centrepiece of the parade’s grand finale, effectuating the climax of a “secular and ritual landscape spectacle”’.[62] In addition to their function within the nation, NDP songs were created to improve the cultural image of Singapore as perceived by other countries and contribute to a hitherto scant musical heritage. The embarrassing state of Singapore’s culture was alluded to by former Senior Minister of State Lee Khoon Choy who expressed that ‘very often, Singapore delegates abroad are hard put to present a song’, and that at such events when it comes Singapore’s turn—there’s no song. It is a disgrace to Singapore’s cultural prestige and image. They say Singaporeans cannot sing—Singaporeans only know how to make money. They don’t care for culture, they’re only materialistic. And that’s bad![63] Despite a reinforced legitimacy of NDP songs as a symbol of national identity (with local composers and artists assuming the responsibility of composition and production), the production of numerous parodies in recent years reveal the apprehension and criticism with which Singaporeans today consume NDP songs.[64] Case Study One: Singapore Armed Forces Band Military Tattoo The Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) Band is the musical arm of the Singapore military that provides musical support for state and military events. Besides its engagements with internal events, the SAF Band participates in international events organised overseas. Past participants include the Sweden International Tattoo 2013, the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2014, and the 2017 Virginia International Tattoo. These tattoo performances are aural and visual spectacles incorporating music, dance, and rifle drills by the SAF Band, SAF Music and Drama Company, and the Silent Precision Drill Squad (SPDS) respectively. As a representative of Singapore on the international stage, the SAF Band is responsible for presenting the Singaporean identity through its performances. To do so, the SAF Band consistently adopts a performance format which has been applied to their performances at the events listed above. Due to this consistency, this study will take the performance at the Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2014 as an exemplar of the SAF’s approach to performing ‘Singapore’. The performance can be divided into six parts with a short pause marking the end of each part. While there is no pause between the first and second parts, a transition is made with a distinct change in artistic material.[65] The parts are distinguished with musical and visual markers which are clearly inspired by Singapore’s racial CMIO model. The ‘O’ of CMIO is assumed by the music and culture of the event’s host country—in this case, Scotland. Below is a table plotted with timestamps of the performance and parts defined by its associated race and percentage in length in relation to the entire performance. [66] The performance begins with an introduction constructed with themes and motifs from several NDP songs (including ‘We Are Singapore’, ‘Count on Me, Singapore’, and ‘Where I Belong’) and marches of the SAF (‘Tentera Singapura’ and ‘Bandstand’). A brief transition—in the form of a key change—is made before the part marked ‘Indian’. This part is characterised by its compound metre and offbeat accents—rhythmic devices typical of Indian music. The Malay part begins with ‘Di Tanjong Katong’, an ethnic-Malay community song, performed by a saxophone quintet. A jovial section follows with ‘Bengawan Solo’, another ethnic-Malay community song of Indonesian origins, before the section returns to and closes with ‘Di Tanjong Katong’. A solo on the Chinese flute begins the Chinese part. It is joined first by Chinese drums then by the full band. This part is also characterised by a pentatonic melody, an accompanying ribbon dance, and the band members’ drill display executed with handheld fans. In a similar fashion, a tin whistle playing the melody of ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ marks the start of the Scottish part. This follows with band members singing the song in two-part harmony and with minimal chordal accompaniment. The finale begins with the ascending motif of ‘Wild Mountain Thyme’ in the melodic instruments which then morphs into the melodic lines preceding the chorus of ‘Count on Me, Singapore’. The song continues with interjections of the iconic fanfares from the Singapore national anthem ‘Majulah Singapura’ before the performance concludes with a mace throw by the drum major and a pyrotechnic display by the SPDS. The well-defined parts of this performance correlate to Singapore’s profoundly distinct racial communities that resulted from the government’s efforts (as previously explored). By displaying all the different parts in one performance, the SAF Band aims to illustrate Singapore as a country where different racial communities coexist and form a part of the Singaporean identity. The rather insignificant differences between the durations of each part of the performance is intentionally contrasted with Singapore’s racial demographics (shown in the graph below), manifesting the nation’s constant concern with equal representation of its majority races.[67] More interesting yet is the substitution of ‘Other’ with ‘Scottish’ in the performance. The ill-defined ‘O’ of CMIO has provided the convenience of adapting it to the culture of the host country. Apart from garnering cheers from the audience—potentially due to their familiarity with the musical content of the ‘Other’ part—the SAF Band’s incorporation of artistic symbols of an external culture into their performance demonstrates the adaptability and accommodating quality of the Singaporean identity and society. With the Scottish part incorporated, the performance communicates a message of inclusivity to its audience (who are presumably of the majority race in the host country) and paints a cosmopolitan image of Singapore. Additionally, it may be observed from an abstraction of the grand scheme that neither the ensemble of a military band nor the tradition of tattoo performance is an artistic attribute of the main cultures in Singapore; thus, the SAF Band’s engagement with the medium itself highlights a considerable level of cosmopolitanism. Aside from the music, Singapore’s generic Asian flavour is evoked through the dancers’ oriental costumes and dance while the SPDS characterised Singapore’s orderliness through its performance of discipline and skill.[68] As this was an overseas performance presumably intended for a foreign audience, the SAF Band was granted liberty to illustrate a more idealised image of Singapore than an authentic one. Case Study Two: Truly, SSO (2019) by Singapore Symphony Orchestra Formed in 1978, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra (SSO) is Singapore’s civic orchestra. In addition to providing public audiences with the experience of classical music performances, the SSO has recorded several albums and premiered the works of local composers over the years.[69] In 2018 and 2019, the SSO performed concerts of Singaporean music as part of the nation’s celebration of National Day. In the latter year, an album of Singaporean music titled Truly, SSO was produced as part of the National Day celebrations. Several tracks on Truly, SSO can be characterised by the melange of musical styles and influences—in contrast with the performance of the SAF Band, these pieces do not overtly illustrate the compartmentalised racial factions of Singapore. This is prevalent in ‘Symphonic Suite on a Set of Local Tunes’ (2004) and ‘Kampong Overture’ (2019) by Singaporean composers Kelly Tang and Lee Jinjun respectively. Unlike its stance on the mixing of languages (that resulted in Singlish), the Singapore government assumed a less belligerent position towards the fusion of musical styles. While the reason for this remains unclear, a strong case could be made with the justification that music, compared to language and its immediacy in interpersonal communication, has a weaker influence on the state’s economic development; thus, there is no obligation for a universally recognisable style. Moreover, Truly, SSO was targeted at Singaporeans experiencing a period of reflection through national celebrations. Cultural Medallion recipient Kelly Tang is a composer known for incorporating Singaporean folk songs into his work.[70] In addition to folk songs, Tang’s compositions are influenced by jazz and classical music amongst other styles. Several works that testify to Tang’s penchant for such fusions include ‘Tian Mi Mi’ (which combines the melody of Indonesian folk song ‘Dayung Sampan’ and the theme music of The Simpsons ) and an arrangement of Michael Jackson’s ‘She’s Out of My Life’ in the style of a mediaeval motet.[71] ‘Symphonic Suite on a Set of Local Tunes’ is a symphonic medley of two NDP songs and two Malay community songs. The work’s brief introduction is clearly inspired by that of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, with instruments playing only the interval of a perfect fifth. After a sentimental statement of the melodies of ‘Bunga Sayang’ and ‘Home’, the work assumes the style of a concert march with the melodic content of ‘Chan Mali Chan’. The sentimental tone returns with a luscious rendition of ‘Bunga Sayang’ which is then followed by an orchestral fanfare. The piece concludes with a grand and martial delivery of ‘Together’. Apart from the work’s symphonic character, reviewer Chang Tou Liang also notes ‘clever cameos’ of Elmer Bernstein’s music for The Magnificent Seven (1960).[72] While the songs incorporated were executed in isolation, the mixing of musical styles was pervasive throughout the work. This piece’s integration of styles is comparable to Singaporeans’ national identity with its integration of cultures. An allusion to the symphonic idiom is apparent from the title of ‘Kampong Overture’ which utilises the melody of three Malay community songs. It is safe to conclude that Lee’s use of folk songs is intended to typically produce a work that is nation specific as he cites the compositional ethics of nationalist composer Antonín Dvořák in his notes for ‘Kampong Overture’: Czech composer Dvořák was famous for melding folk elements into the symphonic form, creating music that sounds nostalgic and genuine, qualities that made him one of the most popular folk-inspired composers of the 19th century. Kampong Overture takes a page from Dvorák by using three Malay folk tunes, Geylang Sipaku Geylang , Lengkang Kangkung [sic] and Suriram , and weaving them into a Romantic-styled symphonic overture.[73] In addition to the work’s character (that is reminiscent of Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances ), its melody quotes the ‘Largo’ of Dvořák’s New World Symphony.[74] Another piece recorded on Truly, SSO worth highlighting is Tang’s ‘Montage: Concerto for Jazz Piano & Orchestra’ which was commissioned and originally performed by the Singapore Chinese Orchestra in 2010. Besides a melodic resemblance to the theme music of Japanese animation, Tang claims ‘Chinese tonal elements’, ‘Baroque and Jazz harmonies’, ‘Jamaican Calypso music’, and George Gershwin as inspirations for ‘Montage’.[75] This outcome of composing with such a myriad of influences can be likened to the linguistic amalgamation that is Singlish. The two works from Truly, SSO examined highlight the diversity of cultures and musical styles that exists in Singapore from which local composers take inspiration. Singapore’s cosmopolitan setting has resulted in the conflation of musical styles that can truly be described as unique to the nation. The existence of this musical identity is underscored by Chang who writes in his review of the National Day Concert in 2018 (where Tang’s work was performed along with others of a similar style) that the concert ‘merely scratched the surface of Singaporean music’.[76] Conclusion In today’s globalised world, some embrace the emergence of global citizenship and identity while others fear the loss of their heritage-claiming national identity.[77] Much like its architectural landscape, Singapore’s cultural identity is one that has been inorganically constructed. At the crux of this identity is an observance of racial equality by levelling the dominance of the racial groups despite the differences in population numbers. To do this, the government meticulously defined the characteristics of the nation’s ethnic Chinese, Malay, and Indian communities, which include the most common language, religion, and holidays observed by each racial community. A nebulous ‘Other’ category was added to account for the remaining population which proved more difficult to define. The resulting CMIO racial model is implemented to all areas of livelihood regulated by the government. In times of labour shortage, the CMIO model was flagged to portray Singapore as an accommodating nation ready to welcome all of any race to join its workforce and provide for its economic development. This is facilitated conveniently by the inclusive yet ambiguous ‘O’ category into which most immigrants fall. The influx of immigrants led Singaporeans to question their communal identity and conclude it to be different from that conceived by the government. This polarity is observed from the people’s embrace of the nation-specific vernacular of ‘Singlish’ and the government’s argument that it corrupts Singapore’s cosmopolitan image. Upon realising that Singapore had no music to call its own, the Singapore government took several actions to address this deficiency. Folk songs of external origins were appropriated and promoted through Operation Singalong . Due to its limited success, these folk songs were replaced with commissioned National Day Parade theme songs that varied in style from the anthemic to the sentimental. The NDP songs aimed to foster a sense of community and motivate citizens to contribute to the State’s economic growth in the early years of its inception but changed to that of establishing place identity in recent decades. On the international stage, the Singapore Armed Forces Band assumes the responsibility of projecting Singapore’s CMIO model by incorporating ethnic community songs into the racially marked parts (and NDP songs into the frame) of its performances. The ‘Other’ part incorporates material from the music of the performance’s host country, demonstrating Singapore’s cosmopolitanism and illustrating Ulrich Beck’s statement that ‘cosmopolitans are people who can “internalise the otherness of others”’.[78] Locally, the Singapore Symphony Orchestra performs the work of local composers that take inspiration from a myriad of sources (ranging from ethnic community songs and NDP songs to the canonical works of jazz and classical music) as part of national celebrations. Referring to the polarity between the government and the people’s notion of the Singaporean identity, I have shown through the case studies that the SAF Band abides by the government’s idealised cosmopolitan image of Singapore while the works in Truly, SSO reflect an integration of styles and cultures which is an attribute of the people’s definition of ‘Singaporean’. Nicholas Ong Nicholas Ong is a music graduate of the Universities of Nottingham and Oxford where he undertook research projects on the topics of nationalism, Singapore, music criticism, and nineteenth-century Russia. In October 2022, Nicholas will commence doctoral work on Russian critic-composer Valentina Serova at the University of Cambridge. Prior to his studies, Nicholas completed national service as a military musician in the Singapore Armed Forces Band. [1] Derek Heng, ‘Chapter 3—Casting Singapore’s History in the Longue Durée’ in Karl Hack and Jean-Louis Margolin, with Karine Delaye (eds), Singapore from Temasek to the 21st Century: Reinventing the Global City (NUS Press 2010) 76. [2] Nathalie Fau, ‘Chapter 4—Singapore’s Strategy of Regionalisation’ in Hack and Margolin (n 1) 55. [3] Quoted in Eve Hoon, ‘The (In)Significant Foreign Other: A case study on the limits and conditions of Singapore-style cosmopolitanism’ (BA Archaeology and Anthropology diss., University College London 2014) 6. [4] Christina Skott, ‘Chapter 7—Imagined Centrality: Sir Stamford Raffles and the Birth of Modern Singapore’ in Hack and Margolin (n 1) 161–62. [5] ibid. [6] Siew-Min Sai, ‘Educating multicultural citizens: Colonial nationalism, imperial citizenship and education in late colonial Singapore’ (2013) 44 Journal of Southeast Asian Studies 49. [7] ibid 55. [8] Hoon (n 3) 10. [9] Anthony Reid, ‘Chapter 2—Singapore between Cosmopolis and Nation’ in Hack and Margolin (n 1) 50. [10] Melissa Wan-Sin Wong, ‘Negotiating Class, Taste, and Culture via the Arts Scene in Singapore: Postcolonial or Cosmopolitan Global?’ (2012) 29 Asian Theatre Journal 233, 247. [11] Ministry of Information and the Arts, ‘Speech by RAdm Teo Chee Hean, Minister for Education and Second Minister for Defence at the launch of Grammar Matters , at Nanyang Girls’ High School Auditorium on 31 Mar 2000 @ 2.30 PM’, press release, 31 March 2000 < https://www.nas.gov.sg/archivesonline/data/pdfdoc/2000033101/tch20000331b.pdf >. [12] Quoted in Selvaraj Velayutham, ‘Everyday Racism in Singapore’ in Selvaraj Velayutham and Amanda Wise (eds), Proceedings of the Everyday Multiculturalism Conference of the CRSI (Centre for Research on Social Inclusion 2007) 3. [13] ‘National Pledge’, National Heritage Board accessed 11 April 2020. [14] Neil MacGregor, ‘Singapore’ ( As Others See Us , 2 September 2019) at 41:35. [15] ibid. [16] Chua Beng-Huat, ‘Culture, Multiracialism, and National Identity in Singapore’ in Kuan-Hsing Chen (ed), Trajectories: Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (Routledge 1998) 186. [17] Hoon (n 3) 11. [18] ibid. [19] Chua (n 16) 190. [20] Public holidays listed are ones observed in 2020. See ‘Public holidays’, Ministry of Manpower accessed 11 April 2020. [21] Ien Ang and Jon Stratton, ‘The Singapore Way of Multiculturalism: Western Concepts/Asian Cultures’ (2018) 33 Sojourn: Journal of Social Issues in Southeast Asia, S61, S78; Vicente Chua Reyes, ‘Issues of Citizenship, National Identity and Political Socialization in Singapore: Implications to the Singapore Education System’ (2013) 1 Studies of Changing Societies 37, 39. [22] Hoon (n 3) 12. [23] Velayutham (n 12) 2–4; Chua (n 16) 192. [24] Kirsten Han, ‘One Singapore?: Nationalism and identity in Singapore’s mainstream and alternative media’ (MA Journalism, Media, and Communication diss., Cardiff University 2013) 1. [25] Quoted in Hoon (n 3) 9. [26] Han (n 24) 1. [27] Hoon (n 3) 17–18. [28] ibid. [29] Quoted in ibid. [30] ibid. [31] Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (Verso 2016). [32] ‘About Us’, Singapore Repertory Theatre, accessed 14 April 2020. [33] Nur Asyikin Mohamad Salleh, ‘Singaporean identity is unique: PM’, Straits Times (Singapore, 20 May 2017) . [34] Leonard Lim and Mathew Mathews, ‘Emerging sense of S’porean identity independent of ethnic heritage’, Straits Times (Singapore, 15 November 2017) . [35] ‘National Language Campaigns’, National Heritage Board, accessed 16 April 2020. [36] Lionel Wee, ‘“Burdens” and “handicaps” in Singapore's language policy: on the limits of language management’ (2010) 9 Language Policy 97, 99. [37] ‘National Language Campaigns’, National Heritage Board. [38] Ministry of Information and the Arts (n 11). [39] Wee (n 36) 102. [40] Ministry of Information and the Arts (n 11). [41] Wee (n 36) 99. [42] ‘Searching for the Singaporean Identity’(2019) The Alum NUS 116 accessed 16 April 2020. [43] Terence Chong, ‘The State and the New Society: The Role of the Arts in Singapore Nation-building’ (2010) 34 Asian Studies Review 131, 134. [44] Quoted in ‘Singapore’s approach to diversity has created a distinctive identity across ethnic groups: PM Lee Hsien Loong’, Straits Times (Singapore, 20 May 2017) . [45] Quoted in Chong (n 43) 132. [46] Quoted in ibid 139. [47] Aloysius Ho, ‘The Invention of Tradition: Nationalist Songs and Nation-Building in Singapore’ (BA History thesis, National University of Singapore 2016) 14. [48] Quoted in ibid 13. [49] Stephanie Ho, ‘National Day songs’ < https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_2015-03-11_165927.html > accessed 26 April 2020. [50] Ho (n 47) 16. [51] ibid 30. [52] ibid 32. [53] Chong (n 43) 136–137. [54] ‘We Are Singapore’, National Library Board, Singapore accessed 27 April 2020. [55] ‘One People, One Nation, One Singapore’, National Library Board, Singapore accessed 27 April 2020. [56] ‘Stand Up for Singapore’, National Library Board, Singapore accessed 27 April 2020. [57] Ho (n 47) 43. [58] Quoted in ibid. [59] Examples of such songs include ‘Home’ (1998), ‘Where I Belong’ (2001), and ‘There’s No Place I’d Rather Be’ (2007). [60] ‘Home’, National Library Board, Singapore accessed 27 April 2020. [61] ‘Kaira Gong: My Island Home Lyrics’ accessed 27 April 2020. [62] Ho (n 47) 24. [63] Quoted in Edna Lim, ‘One People, One Nation, One Singapore’ in Edna Lim, Celluloid Singapore: Cinema, Performance and the National (Edinburgh University Press 2018) 132. [64] For an example, see SGAG, NDP 2018 Theme Song Parody [Unofficial Music Video] | SGAG (8 August 2018) . [65] This analysis is based on the performance dated August 24, 2017, uploaded online (performance starts at 00:35). See Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, Singapore Armed Forces Central Band @ Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo 2014 (12 September 2014) . [66] As pauses are filled with applause, timestamps are not definitive but close estimates. Percentages are rounded to the closest whole number. [67] ‘What are the racial proportions among Singapore citizens?’, Gov.sg accessed 29 April 2020. [68] The SPDS is regarded as an embodiment of Singaporean efficiency and conscientiousness, having been described once in an NDP souvenir program that it emphasised ‘skill, precision and alertness’, and the ‘qualities for a nation of excellence’. See Lim (n 63) 131. [69] Jan Yap, ‘Singapore Symphony Orchestra’ accessed 28 April 2020. [70] The Cultural Medallion is regarded as the most prestigious award in the arts in Singapore and is conferred to those distinguished by their achievement of artistic excellence. [71] Venessa Lee, ‘Karung guni composer’, Straits Times (Singapore, 17 August 2015) . [72] Chang Tou Liang, ‘Something for everyone in concert of Singaporean music’, Straits Times (Singapore, 14 August 2018) . [73] Lee Jinjun, ‘SSO National Day Concert’, programme notes for Kampong Overture , Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Joshua Tan (Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore, 10 August 2019) 40. [74] Chang Tou Liang, ‘SSO National Day Concert examines what is Singaporean music’ Straits Times (Singapore, 11 August 2019) . [75] Kelly Tang, ‘SSO National Day Concert’, programme notes for MONTAGE: Concerto for Jazz Piano & Orchestra , Singapore Symphony Orchestra, Joshua Tan (Esplanade Concert Hall, Singapore, 10 August 2019) 36. [76] Emphasis added; Chang (n 74). [77] Jayson Beaster-Jones, ‘Globalization’ ( Grove Music Online ) accessed 29 February 2020. [78] Quoted in Luke Lu, ‘Singapore and the cosmopolitan ideal’, TODAY (18 March 2014) .

I: Introduction Armed conflict changes everything.[1] It is the ultimate human-induced crisis that has devastating consequences for the environment.[2] A report by the Conflict and Environment Observatory has identified how armed conflict affects the environment before, during, and after its conclusion.[3] For example, ‘the environmental impacts of wars start long before they do’, given that building and sustaining military forces requires vast quantities of resources.[4] A study done by Lancaster University shows that the United States’ military is one of the largest polluters in history emitting more carbon dioxide than most countries.[5] Indeed, as war commences, the means and methods of armed conflict, such as the targeting of industrial, oil, and energy facilities and other scorched earth tactics, cause many different forms of environmental harm that can scar a landscape and damage ecosystems for years after a conflict has ended.[6] The toll taken on the environment fuels a vicious cycle of conflict. A report by the International Committee of the Red Cross (‘ICRC’) has identified the interconnectedness of climate change and armed conflict, in that the effects of armed conflict contribute to climate change, with climate change, in turn, fuelling further conflict.[7] This is particularly problematic given that the latest instalment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report sets out in clear terms that humanity is at a crossroads in that the decisions made now affect whether or not a liveable future can be secured.[8] As such, it is of critical importance that a concrete set of rules are imposed at the international level to prohibit environmental damage above a certain threshold and hold those responsible for such damage accountable. This can be achieved through a review of the body of law known as International Humanitarian Law (‘IHL’). IHL seeks to restrict the means and methods of armed conflict through ‘treaties and customs that limit the use of violence in armed conflict and protect civilians and persons who are no longer participating in hostilities’.[9] However, IHL’s anthropocentric focus has stunted the development of thorough and coherent laws for the protection of the environment during armed conflict, and what has been achieved has been criticised as ineffective.[10] This article aims to highlight the ways in which IHL fails to protect the environment during armed conflict adequately. Firstly, this article shall look at how the means and methods of armed conflict affect the environment, both directly and indirectly. Secondly, it will provide a detailed analysis of current IHL provisions for the protection of the environment. Thirdly, the article shall look at potential future developments in the law, such as the creation of a new treaty on environmental protection during armed conflict, as well as the wider use of demilitarised zones. Before these themes are discussed, this article shall look at historical attitudes towards environmental damage during armed conflict. Historical Attitudes When you besiege a city for a long time, making war against it in order to take it, you shall not destroy its trees by wielding an axe against them. You may eat from them, but you shall not cut them down.[11] Wartime damage to the environment has a history as long as humankind itself, dating back to when homo sapiens first began to organise into groups.[12] From the Peloponnesian Wars, when the Spartans laid waste to Athenian fields, to modern-era conflicts, such as the burning of Romanian oil fields by the Allies during World War II, the environment has been a ‘silent victim’ of armed conflict.[13] The origin of the protection of the environment during armed conflict arguably has its roots in the religion-based morals of Judeo-Christian and Islamic traditions.[14] The above quotation, taken from the book of Deuteronomy, is often cited as an early source for restrictions on environmental damage during wartime and may even be an early iteration of the prohibition of the ‘wanton’ destruction principle,[15] as laid out in the recent Customary International Humanitarian Law Study published by the ICRC.[16] Indeed, in Islam, the First Caliph, Abu Bakr al-Saddiq, is recorded as having instructed his military commander on the rules of war: ‘stop, O people, that I may give you the rules on the battlefield…do not cut down fruitful trees; do not slaughter the enemy’s sheep, cows or camels…do not burn date palms, or inundate them’.[17] However, attempts to reduce environmental harm during armed conflict based on religious, moral, and philosophical grounds, such as the view that the environment should be protected during the war due to its inherent worth, have been pushed aside in favour of an anthropocentric approach. [18] This approach enables us to do with plants as we ‘please’ and with animals as we ‘desire’, given that the natural environment is viewed simply as a raw material to be manipulated at will for the satisfaction of human beings.[19] This is reflected in the Judeo-Christian tradition, which states, ‘go out and subdue the earth’.[20] The latter view is one propounded by the founder of the Just War principles, Saint Thomas Aquinas, and has proven to be the ‘philosophical justification for the human-centred orientation of the international statutes currently offering protection to the environment in times of armed conflict’.[21] This explains why war-waging parties turn a blind eye to the harm done to the environment during armed conflict. However, it was not until the morally reproachable tactics of the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War that the history of the relationship between warfare and the environment took a turn, and concrete legal, environmental protections were introduced. II: How the Means and Methods of Armed Conflict affect the Environment Public awareness of the effects of armed conflict on the environment first became manifest during the Vietnam War,[22] which is notorious for the disastrous environmental impact of the United States’ counterinsurgency warfare.[23] This can be seen in the U.S. army’s bombing campaign that left ‘moonlike craters’ in the landscape and the bulldozing of 325,000 hectares of forest, decimating the country’s rich flora and fauna.[24] However, the most disastrous environmental impact of the Vietnam War was the use of herbicides as part of Operation Ranch Hand. This was an ‘aggressive’ programme of chemical warfare, which involved the U.S army spraying approximately 4.5 million hectares of Vietnamese land with herbicides containing the deadly chemical dioxin.[25] The environmental warfare tactics deployed by the U.S. ‘spawned condemnation across civil society’[26] and prompted the international community to address environmental protection during armed conflict. The results were twofold: the Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Uses of Environmental Modification Techniques (‘ENMOD’)[27] and the inclusion of environmental protections, namely Articles 35(3) and 55, in the Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I) 1977 (‘API’).[28] However, ENMOD and API were far less ambitious results than what the legal and scientific communities advocated for, and it was not long after their creation that the adequacy and usefulness of the two conventions were called into question following the Gulf War 1990-1991.[29] Even though there has not been a return to the scale of the environmental warfare tactics seen during the Vietnam War, modern conflicts continue to have far-reaching effects extending beyond that of human suffering, often causing serious damage to the environment. Unfortunately, the environment is always a victim of armed conflict due to the basic nature of the means and methods of warfare.[30] Indeed, one study indicates that over 90% of the major armed conflicts between 1950 and 2000 took place in countries containing biodiversity hotspots.[31] Environmental damage during wartime occurs both directly and indirectly and may have transboundary and long-lasting effects, persisting for decades after the conflict has ended.[32] The UNGA recognised the ‘dire effects’ that certain means and methods of warfare have had on the environment in the wake of recent conflicts causing environmental damage and depletion, reinforcing the urgency of these issues at the highest level.[33] Direct Effects Environmental damage and degradation occurs as a direct consequence of military operations, not only intentionally but also as unintended ‘collateral’ damage.[34] Take, for example, the Gulf War 1990-1991, which was an armed campaign waged by a US-led coalition of states in response to Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait.[35] It was during this conflict, only fourteen years after the creation of API and ENMOD, that the world once again witnessed the use of ecological warfare as Saddam Hussein weaponised oil.[36] This conflict clearly illustrated how the ‘intentional use of the environment as a means of warfare…may cause severe damage in the form of marine, terrestrial and aerial contamination’.[37] The Gulf War was the first conflict after the 1970s that brought international attention to the effects that armed conflict has on the environment.[38] During this conflict, the retreating Iraqi army set aflame 613 out of Kuwait’s 810 oil wells, burning an estimated one billion gallons of oil.[39] This generated a Florida-sized plume of toxic smoke that hung over Kuwait, drifting into neighbouring countries. It is estimated that these fumes contributed 2% of global carbon emissions in 1991.[40] On top of this, the wells that did not ignite instead gushed oil into the vulnerable desert landscape creating vast ‘oil lakes’ up to 10km wide and 13cm deep.[41] It is estimated that 5% of Kuwaiti territory became covered in a thick ‘tarcrete’ as the oil dried, killing flora and fauna, as well as permanently degrading the soil.[42] The smoke and oil spills had a catastrophic impact on wildlife: 22-50% of the bird population in Kuwait was killed, the habitat of a population of endangered sea turtles was destroyed, causing unknown numbers to die, and acid rain significantly raised the pH levels in freshwater inlets killing vast numbers of fish, and further threatened the endangered dugong species.[43] However, the environmental damage inflicted by the Iraqi army did not end there. At the conclusion of the first Gulf War, with Iraq’s defeat, a number of minority Shia groups rebelled against the Baathist regime. One such group was the Ma’dan people. The Ma’dan have a rich and ancient culture associated with the Mesopotamian Marshland, which was also used as a safe haven for groups opposed to the government due to its inaccessible and isolated canals and islands.[44] As part of the Iraqi army’s counterinsurgency campaign against groups such as the Ma’dan, the Mesopotamian Marshes were drained in what the UN has called an ‘ecological catastrophe’ on a par with deforestation in the Amazon.[45] In addition to placing the 5000-year-old culture of these ancient people in ‘serious jeopardy of coming to an abrupt end’, the impact on the area’s wildlife has been devastating.[46] A key site for migratory birds travelling from Siberia, the marshlands’ disappearance placed 40 species of waterfowl at risk and caused serious reductions in their numbers.[47] Further, species of fish and mammals unique to the marshes are believed to be extinct, including the smooth-coated otter and the babel fish, with endangered birds, such as the Purple Heron, suffering a 50% mortality rate.[48] The environmental modification by the Baathist regime to achieve near-total erasure of this marshland also impacted the weather and climate of the country. With the marshland no longer there to act as a buffer zone against desert winds, they now blow ‘unhindered’ at temperatures over 40 degrees Celsius, damaging and eroding arable land on a permanent basis.[49] At the conclusion of the Gulf War, Iraq formally accepted its state responsibility for ‘any direct loss, damage, including environmental damage and the depletion of natural resources, or injury to foreign Governments, nationals and corporations, as a result of Iraq’s unlawful invasion and occupation of Kuwait’.[50] The United Nations Compensation Commission was charged with monitoring and assessing the impacts of the Gulf War on the environment and public health in ‘victim countries’.[51] Consequently, a total of $243 million was awarded to the governments of Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, and Syria in 2001.[52] A further $8.3 million was issued to six other governments for costs incurred assisting the Gulf countries in the abatement and prevention of environmental damage resulting from the conflict.[53] Despite the fact that environmental damage arising as a direct result of armed conflict can be severe, far-reaching, and long-lasting, such damage only represents the tip of the iceberg, with the vast majority of instances arising indirectly. Indirect Effects The indirect consequences of armed conflict on the natural environment can be as severe, if not more severe, than those directly resulting from a conflict.[54] Indeed, their more hidden nature makes them more subversive and difficult to tackle as they often arise from the complex circumstances of non-international armed conflicts (‘NIACs’). A key case study is that of the Democratic Republic of Congo (‘DRC’). In June 1960, the DRC gained its independence from Belgium;however, in its transition to independence, the country witnessed a period of political turmoil, which eventually erupted into brutal violence.[55] In 1965, a coup d’état led by Mobutu Sese Seko, which was supported by Belgium and the USA, saw three decades of ‘oppression, kleptocracy, and collapse of state institutions’.[56] This laid the groundwork for the two wars that followed in 1996 and 1998. The Second Congo War officially ended in 2003; however, the continued fragility of the state has allowed for continued violence in parts of the country, exacerbating the DRC’s effort to build a lasting peace.[57] The DRC’s almost chronic state of armed conflict, from 1996 onwards, has fuelled a melting pot of intersecting issues that contribute to severe environmental damage across the region. The DRC ranks fifth in the world for animal and plant biodiversity and has the highest levels of biodiversity on the continent of Africa.[58] However, the continuing conflict has resulted in three main areas of environmental damage: deforestation, harm to National Parks, and the exploitation of natural resources. Each shall be considered in turn: Deforestation Deforestation carried out by refugees in the DCR is an indirect effect of armed conflict, causing severe environmental damage. It is estimated that 2.4 million people have been made refugees by the conflict.[59] Fleeing from danger, refugees set up informal settlements that sprawl over the landscape, with 90% of these being unregulated, which means that they often spread uncontrollably over areas of rich biodiversity.[60] The consequence of human displacement on the environment is that the refugees cut down swathes of forest for fuel and housing at an unstoppable rate. For example, in just three days in 1994, Mount Goma was completely deforested by refugees who sought out wood to create shelter.[61] Needless to say, deforestation on this scale causes widespread habitat destruction and loss of biodiversity, as well as contributes to global warming, given the fact that the DRC’s rainforest is the largest in Africa.[62] National Parks The ongoing conflict in the DRC has had severe impacts on the country’s National Parks, particularly the heavily protected Virunga National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage site. Home to countless unique species of wildlife, the Park’s integrity is under threat by armed groups that use the dense cover of the forest for shelter and to stay hidden. Its threatened status is confirmed by its placement on the list of World Heritage in Danger.[63] Armed groups, using automatic weapons, have been involved in large-scale poaching of the Park’s wildlife for ‘food purposes and for war-sustaining trade in ivory and bushmeat’.[64] This has had serious consequences for wildlife, as seen by the hippopotamus population in the DRC, which is now on the brink of extinction.[65] Poaching also has an economic incentive as a means by which armed groups fuel their military campaigns. For example, the Lord’s Resistance Army ran the ivory trade in the Congo’s Garamba National Park for years to fund its campaigns.[66] Further, the Park is home to mountain gorillas that are targeted by armed groups, such as the Rugendo family of gorillas that was slaughtered in 2007. Under international law, mountain gorillas are protected by instruments such as the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (also known as ‘CITES’)[67] and the Agreement on the Conservation of Gorillas and Their Habitats .[68] Despite the fact that conservation efforts have increased the number of mountain gorillas in the DRC, they still face constant danger. Indeed, the motivation for armed groups to kill the gorillas in the Park is simple: ‘kill the gorillas, and there will no longer be a reason to protect the Park’.[69] Without protection from park rangers, Virunga would be open to the pillage of its natural resources in order to fuel military activities. Exploitation of Natural Resources In recent years, concern has been raised by the UN about the role of natural resources in generating revenue for the instigation and continuation of armed conflicts.[70] This is particularly prevalent in the DRC, which contains, amongst many other valuable resources, 60-80% of the world’s coltan reserves. Coltan is used in the manufacture of electrical components of computers and mobile phones.[71] For $300 per pound, the Rwandan army and the Hutu militia monopolised the DRC’s coltan trade, selling it on to the USA in order to finance their military campaigns.[72] The 2010 Mapping Report on the DRC noted that it was at the start of the first war in 1996 that natural resource exploitation first became militarised.[73] This exploitation became increasingly attractive as the conflicts in the DRC changed shape and dragged on, not just for financing the campaigns of armed groups but also as a means of personal enrichment for political and military leaders. In this sense, natural resources became a driving force behind the war in the DRC.[74] The exploitation of natural resources in the DRC, enabled by political instability and lack of governance caused by years of conflict, has resulted in mass deforestation, and loss of wildlife and habitat. International corporations such as De Beers and Shell exacerbate this problem by engaging in the trade of ‘conflict resources’, such as diamonds, timber and oil, from war-torn countries like the DRC.[75] This unregulated and illegal pillage, enabled by conflict, causes a ‘chain of extinction’ threatening the existence of African wildlife.[76] Given that every component part of the environment is vulnerable during armed conflict, it is necessary to analyse the applicable law to determine whether IHL adequately protects the environment during wartime. III: Critical Analysis of Applicable Law Before 1976, the word ‘environment’ did not feature in any treaty on the law of war. It was not until the aftermath of the Vietnam War that ‘serious attempts were made to impose conventional law limits on the environmental damage resulting from hostilities’.[77] Arising from a surge of anti-war sentiment and with concern for the environment reaching a new high, API and ENMOD were adopted, setting codified standards for environmental protection during armed conflict. IHL provisions protect the environment during an armed conflict in two ways: direct protection by treaty and indirect protection by the general principles of IHL.[78] Direct Protection The direct protection of the environment during armed conflict is provided by two treaties, namely API and ENMOD. We shall look at each in turn before considering issues of conflict classification. API API was the first international treaty to provide direct protection of the environment during International Armed Conflicts (‘IACSs’), as outlined in Article 35(3) and Article 55. Article 35(3) prohibits means and methods of warfare that are intended to or may be expected to cause ‘widespread, long-term and severe damage to the environment’.[79] Article 55 repeats this prohibition and makes note that damage to the natural environment prejudices the health and survival of the human population.[80] Even though these two key Articles appear similar, they are not duplicates. The International Committee of the Red Cross’s (‘ICRC’) commentary to API explains the differing approaches of Articles 35(3) and 55.[81] Article 35(3) broaches the problem from the point of view of methods and means of warfare, reflecting principles of ‘Hague Law’, whereas Article 55 focuses on the survival and health of the population and creates a protected object, i.e., the environment, reflecting ‘Geneva Law’.[82] However, the effectiveness of Articles 35(3) and 55 is undermined by the number of States that remain non-parties to API, such as the USA, Israel, Pakistan, Iran, India, and Turkey. This is problematic given the military power and political influence of the likes of the USA, which has not ratified API because it is seen as ‘too broad’.[83] Further, the USA opposes the recognition of Articles 35(3) and 55 as international customary law, as stated in Rule 45 of the ICRC’s customary IHL study.[84] It is for this reason that McCoubrey contends that there should be new calls, preferably by the UNGA, to encourage non-parties to existing instruments, like API and II, to ratify these instruments as ‘the primary way forward’.[85] Furthermore, in the 2009 report, Protecting the Environment During Armed Conflict , the UN Environmental Programme (‘UNEP’) stated that Articles 35(3) and 55 do not adequately protect the environment during armed conflict due to the stringent and imprecise threshold required to demonstrate prohibited damage.[86] The problem with these key Articles is their ‘operative core’ that imposes a triple and cumulative standard of ‘widespread, long-term and severe’ that must be met before environmental damage is prohibited.[87] In both Articles, there is difficulty regarding the quantum of harm prohibited. The requirements of ‘widespread, long-term and severe’ are not defined by API, or anywhere else, resulting in an ‘elevated, uncertain and imprecise threshold that significantly narrows [the Articles’] scope of application’.[88]This is especially troublesome given that each individual requirement must be met in respect of the environmental damage to be prohibited. The publication of the ICRC’s 2020 updated Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict (‘Guidelines’) offers some guidance on the interpretation of these Articles.[89] Rule 2 sets out detailed recommendations on how each component of the ‘widespread, long-term and severe’ requirement should be understood.[90] It states: ‘widespread’ should be understood as a scale of several hundred square kilometres; ‘long-term’ should take into account the duration of the indirect effects of the use of a given method or means of warfare; and ‘severe’ should constitute the disruption or damage to an ecosystem, with normal damage caused by troop movement and artillery fire in conventional warfare falling outside the scope of this prohibition.[91] However, these guidelines are non-binding and rely upon each State adopting the Guidelines at the national level. Given that certain States are yet to ratify API, such as the USA, Pakistan, Turkey, and Israel, the usefulness of these Guidelines is questionable.[92] From an environmental point of view, Articles 35(3) and 55 are excessively restrictive, rendering it nearly impossible for the extremely high threshold to be reached by conventional warfare. A potential justification for this high threshold is that States did not want to see typical battlefield damage covered.[93] However, it could be argued that not even the environmental damage of the Vietnam War would cross the threshold since nature has largely recovered, therefore failing the ‘long-term’ requirement. Finally, because of the provisions’ lack of practicability given the high threshold and absence of concrete meaning, it must be asked whether these provisions have ‘fallen into desuetude’, losing their binding force as a result of non-use for a sufficiently long time.[94] ENMOD ENMOD also provides direct protections to the environment, albeit from a different angle. ENMOD regulates the use of environmental modification techniques as a means to cause harm to the enemy during armed conflict. In Article 1(1), ENMOD specifically prohibits ‘environmental modification techniques having widespread, long-lasting or severe effects as a means of destruction’.[95] Unlike Articles 35(3) and 55 of API, the requirements to constitute prohibited environmental modification are linked by ‘or’, which results in a much lower threshold than API’s ‘and’. Additionally, the travaux of the UN Committee of the Conference of Disarmament, which established ENMOD, provides a working definition of ‘long-term’ as ‘lasting a period of months, or approximately a season’.[96] However, Article 1(1) is criticised as undercutting the ostensible purpose of ENMOD, namely, to prohibit the military or hostile use of ENMOD techniques.[97] Indeed, during its drafting, many diplomats and observers found the wording of Article 1(1) to be too ambiguous, leaving it unclear as to what exactly would be prohibited.[98] Others felt that Article 1(1) was entirely deceptive, given that the use of a threshold requirement might serve to legitimise ENMOD techniques so long as they do not cross the ‘widespread, long-term, or severe effects’ threshold.[99] Further, ENMOD is less practical than API in a case of armed conflict, given that it deals with the slightly sci-fi-like idea of ‘environmental changes produced by deliberate manipulation of natural processes’.[100] Unfortunately, ENMOD specifies the level of damage that is prohibited, whereas an outright ban on environmental modification, which has certain sinister apocalyptic overtones, would have sent a much stronger message to belligerent parties to an armed conflict. Issues of Conflict Classification IHL makes a distinction between the environmental protections during IACs, i.e., armed conflicts between two recognised States, and NIACs, which are intra-state conflicts between non-state armed groups and government forces. IACs benefit from a wide range of albeit inadequate protections, whereas the applicable rules regulating NIACs are limited and are not subject to the direct environmental protection provisions detailed in either API or ENMOD. Today, the overwhelming majority of armed conflicts are internal.[101] This means that the vast body of IHL is inapplicable or much more restrictive when applied to NIACs.[102] This is particularly problematic given that NIACs are closely connected to the environment, with recent studies showing that over the past 60 years, at least 40% of NIACs have been linked to natural resources and their exploitation.[103] Protocol II to the Geneva Conventions (APII), which regulates the protection of victims of non-international conflicts, does not make any reference to the environment.[104] The environment only receives protection indirectly as a cultural object or object indispensable to the civilian population’s survival, as well as where aspects of the environment hold dangerous forces such as dams.[105] Despite this, the International Law Commission’s Special Rapporteur has stated, ‘it is clear that fundamental principles of distinction and the principle of humanity… reflect customary law and are applicable in NIACs’.[106] When an attack occurs against the environment in a NIAC that does not correctly balance these IHL principles, it is clear that such an attack is prohibited.[107] However, these customary principles offer minimal environmental protection during armed conflict and are often displaced by anthropocentric motives. The ICRC Guidelines encourage States to apply the same degree of environmental protection to IACs and NIACs, encouraging each party to apply ‘all or part’ of IHL rules relating to the environment.[108] If this piece of guidance was widely disseminated and incorporated into State practice, it would be of great significance to the environment, given that ‘legal explanations of the classification of a conflict do not alter the damage wrought by conflict on the natural environment’.[109] Indirect Protection Indirect protection of the environment is provided by the general principles of IHL. The ICRC Guidelines state that the environment is generally recognised as a civilian in character.[110] This means that any part of the environment that is not a military objective is protected by the general principles of IHL that protect civilians and civilian objects and property, as well as those that limit the means and methods of armed conflict,[111] namely distinction, necessity and proportionality. These principles of customary international law[112] safeguard the environment in that they guard against wanton and excessive environmental damage in the absence of explicit provisions protecting it.[113] Distinction Returning to API, Article 48 on Basic Rules codifies the principle of distinction, stating that parties to a conflict must distinguish between civilians and combatants and between civilian objects and military objects.[114] Indeed, precaution requires decision-makers to refrain from indiscriminate acts.[115] Article 52 defines civilian objects negatively as objects that are not military objectives, i.e. ‘those objects which by their nature, location, purpose or use make an effective contribution to military action and whose total or partial destruction… in the circumstances ruling at the time, offers a definite military advantage’.[116] To this extent, the restrictive conditions of Articles 35 and 55 do not apply to the principle of distinction.[117] While Article 52 does not explicitly refer to the environment, Schmitt argues that this definition is broad in scope, applying to ‘all components of the environment – land, air, flora, fauna, atmosphere, high seas, etc. – that do not present an advantage… to a military operation’.[118] However, the indirect protection of the environment as a civilian object is a precarious one since elements of the environment are all too likely to become military objects. For example, the trees that provided cover for the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War meant that their defoliation was a legitimate military objective.[119] This reasoning allowed for the mass use of herbicides on vast swathes of forest. Articles 35 and 55 API could restrain such environmental destruction; however, this brings us full circle to the triple cumulative threshold problem. Necessity Necessity dictates that a military commander is only permitted to use the degree of force required to accomplish a military objective. For example, Article 23(g) of the Hague Convention contains certain provisions with substantive (albeit peripheral) impact on military operations affecting the environment.[120] It states that it is forbidden to destroy or seize enemy property unless it is demanded by the necessities of war.[121] Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention echoes the above and protects property by reference to military necessity.[122] It states that any destruction of civilian property by an occupying power ‘is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations’.[123] Accordingly, breaches of this Article constitute ‘grave breaches’[124] whenever the damage is extensive, unjustified by military necessity, and carried out wantonly, thereby constituting a war crime under the Rome Statute.[125] There is support for the proposition that the burning of Kuwaiti oil wells during the Gulf War constituted a grave breach.[126] However, due to the subjective nature of military necessity, almost any environmentally harmful action can be given an acceptable justification.[127] Schmitt articulates this problem well, stating, absent any explicit treaty law, ‘is the law, therefore, nothing more than an articulation of that fighter pilot adage to ‘trust your gut?’ Or is it imbued with a meaning more distinct and developed, perhaps in the Martens Clause’s dictates of public conscience’.[128] The Marten’s Clause dictates that ‘until a more complete code of the laws of war is issued… populations and belligerents remain under the protection and empire of the principles of international law, as they result from the usages established between civilised nations, from the laws of humanity and the requirements of the public conscience’’’.[129] However, as with many other core themes of IHL, there is no one accepted interpretation of the Marten’s Clause.[130] It is likely that neither ‘trust your gut’ nor the Martens Clause realistically articulates how these decisions are made; rather, it is doubtful whether the environment enters the field of thought at all (save in cases of the famously vulnerable ecosystems such as the Arctic). If the killing of hundreds of civilians is enough to justify attacking a target, then it is unlikely that the environment will be considered. After all, the very name ‘International Humanitarian Law’ emphasises its anthropocentric focus. Proportionality Positive identification of a military objective triggers proportionality in that a military commander must consider the principle of humanitarian concern (‘the unwarranted destruction of life, land and property’[131]) and the doctrine of economy of forces (‘the minimum force needed to accomplish the military objective’[132]) before acting to achieve the objective. The ICJ hasheld that ‘States must take environmental considerations into account when assessing what is necessary and proportionate in the pursuit of legitimate objectives’.[133] Further, the destruction of the environment, as an end in itself, without consideration for the closely linked principles of necessity and proportionality, is a violation of international law.[134] Additionally, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, in the Tadić case, found that violations of customary IHL could be considered war crimes, and by extension, therefore, violations of customary IHL relating to the protection of the environment could also be considered as such.[135] This highlights that when aspects of the environment as civilian objects become military objectives, the attack must be weighed against the effect it will have on the environment.[136] Proportionality, like necessity, is ‘subjective and value based’, making it difficult to determine when a proportionate attack becomes disproportionate.[137] During armed conflict, determinations of proportionality are almost always self-serving. Indeed, where a military unit is at risk, a commander may use the prescriptive vagueness of proportionality to legitimise environmentally destructive actions. As Schmitt states, ‘given the nature of war and human motivations, legitimate doubt will be resolved in favour of destroying the environment to further the mission’.[138] The hard truth is that the brutality of war does not naturally lend itself to mercy towards the environment. This chapter has identified that IHL provisions on environmental protection are vague, ambiguous and abused to further anthropocentric motives and suggests that more must be done to secure the protection of the environment during armed conflict. IV: The Way Forward IHL on the protection of the environment in relation to armed conflict contains a significant number of gaps and deficiencies, which continue to allow the environment to be unjustifiably damaged. This section shall look at two possible solutions to better protect the environment during armed conflict, namely the potential for a new treaty and the use of demilitarised zones. New Treaty Schmitt states that ‘a convention on protecting the environment during armed conflict, assuming it was carefully drafted to avoid the pitfalls, would be responsive in placing Parties on notice of what is clearly expected of them’, as well as providing an effective basis for enforcement.[139] This approach was first advocated in response to the Gulf War when IHL’s environmental protections failed to regulate and prevent the environmental damage done by the Iraqi army. It was following this war that legal practitioners and environmentalists called for a fifth Geneva Convention to cater specifically for the protection of the environment during armed conflict.[140] Bothe notes that a solution to the deficiencies of IHL could involve the codification of the provisions of environmental protection during armed conflict into a ‘coherent and practical instrument that considers both IAC and NIAC’.[141] Indeed, a new treaty could model itself on the International Law Commission’s (‘ILC’) Draft Principles on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts , which would infuse IHL protections with an ecocentric quality . [142] These principles, which are due to be adopted on second reading by the UNGA later this year, approach the problem of environmental damage during armed conflict holistically with their scope applying to the protection of the environment before, during and after an armed conflict.[143] This mature view acknowledges that environmental destruction is a barrier to long-lasting peace, as the ‘destruction of the environment can remove natural resources which may have provided a potential platform for cooperation… [and] limit the possibility of enjoying natural features that cross-sectarian divides’.[144] Today, Schmitt argues that although a new treaty would be the ‘cleanest way to generate a fresh normative architecture… unfortunately, the time is not ripe for such an effort’.[145] This is especially true given that any effort to create binding law would likely fall victim to ‘politicisation and infighting’. [146] Indeed, Szasz believes a new treaty would be useless, something that would result in an unhelpful agreement resembling the lowest common denominator due to the need to achieve consensus.[147] To avoid the stillbirth of a new treaty, it is first necessary to clarify the existing IHL provisions relating to environmental protections. If these provisions were to be clarified, with the help of the aforementioned ICRC Guidelines, and developed from an ecocentric viewpoint, a new legal instrument might not be necessary.[148] Demilitarised and Protected Zones One way to mitigate the effects and reach of wartime environmental damage is to put in place concrete demilitarised zones, which would allow safe spaces for nature and civilians alike. This would be less confusing and complex than having wordy legal provisions regulating belligerents’ conduct. Further, discussions over clarifying or creating new laws are, arguably, too time-consuming when the environment is in urgent need of protection now. The UNEP Report highlights the need to grant place-based protection to areas of ecological importance and critical natural resources due to the fact that IHL does not go far enough to place these areas under protection during armed conflict.[149] UNEP proposes that at the outset of any conflict, these aspects of the environment should be ‘delineated and distinguished as demilitarised zones’, whereby parties to an armed conflict would be prohibited from conducting military operations there.[150] Indeed, there is evidence to show that demilitarised zones become havens for wildlife and ecological conservation. For example, wildlife is thriving in the demilitarised zone between North and South Korea, where endangered animals, such as the amur goral and Asiatic black bear, are making a comeback.[151] Even tigers, believed to be extinct along the peninsula, have been sighted.[152] Demilitarised zones are already provided for by Article 15 of the Geneva Convention IV,[153] as well as Articles 59 and 60 of API,[154] which specify that demilitarised zones are to be agreed upon by parties to the conflict. Despite this, belligerent parties rarely (if ever) agree upon demilitarised zones in order to protect the natural environment. Previous attempts at mandatorily establishing demilitarised zones through a new treaty had been advocated for by the IUCN.[155] However, the draft treaty failed since it did not have UNSC support due to the fact that States insist on their right to self-defence in every circumstance, no matter if demilitarised zones are compromised.[156] This was seen during the Bosnia-Herzegovina conflict, where the UNSC acknowledged the need to have designated ‘safe zones’ or demilitarised zones,[157] but the UN troops were unable (or unwilling) to enforce them with some of the worst atrocities taking place within them.[158] Despite this, there is hope for the future. The ILC’s Draft Principles, if adopted, would bolster environmental protection during armed conflict through demilitarised zones. Draft Principles 4 and 17 outline that States should designate areas of major environmental and cultural importance as protected zones protected against any attack, so long as they do not contain a military objective.[159] These principles are intended to apply to both IACs and NIACs, and make an interesting link between environmental and cultural importance, which highlights the significance of the environment for indigenous peoples, enabling a stronger case to be made for the cultural value of biodiversity.[160] In addition, the relatively new realm of International Environmental Law (‘IEL’) may be of some assistance to States in identifying and establishing demilitarised zones. For instance, the World Heritage Convention (‘WHC’)[161] establishes ‘area-based’ protection for natural and cultural heritage sites of ‘outstanding universal value’ [162] by obligating states to protect them ‘to the utmost of [their] own resources’.[163] For example, the WHC has played a significant role in protecting the DRC’s Virunga National Park. Congolese State authorities and the UN, as well as other NGOs operating in the area, have created a coalition of forces to ensure that basic protection of the Park is maintained by international law, even during armed conflicts.[164] Although it is uncertain whether the WHC applies during armed conflict, academics such as Hulme argue that it continues to apply, as the WHC seems to require its ‘continuation in conflict of a ‘protected area’ regime alongside IHL rules’.[165] The WHC could therefore complement the ILC’s Draft Principles and ‘set up systems of international cooperation and assistance to protect natural heritage areas’ during armed conflicts,[166] and its clear and concrete obligations could provide real guidance to military commanders on the battlefield.[167] However, there is a shortcoming with this approach. It is one thing for belligerent parties to agree to adhere to demilitarised zones during IACs; it is a different matter to secure such agreements from non-state armed groups during NIACs. This issue is sorely felt in other areas of IHL. Despite the increasing role of non-state armed groups in armed conflict, ‘IHL remains state-centric and provides limited opportunities for armed groups to comply with its provisions or engage in its development’.[168] Answering questions on how IHL could be developed to better protect the environment during armed conflict is not easy. However, hope may be garnered from the attempts of the ILC to seek more thorough, clear, and more easily enforceable protections for the environment, which apply to both IACs and NIACs. V: Conclusion This article has shown that armed conflict takes a significant toll on the environment and has demonstrated how environmental protection within IHL is inadequate in upholding minimum environmental safeguards during times of conflict. The failings of these provisions are compounded by the rapidly deteriorating climate crisis that is worsened by armed conflict; 12 out of the 20 countries most vulnerable to climate change are also sites of conflict.[169] Peter Maurer, President of the ICRC, states that all the present facts and statistics ‘attest to the maelstrom of stress that the environment endures during armed conflict’.[170] Although IHL provisions on the protection of the environment during armed conflict are flawed, ‘the sky is not falling’—yet.[171] As we have seen, some have argued that the time is not right for a new treaty given the lack of political will, but that does not prevent other advances from being made. IHL provisions should be clarified with the help of the ICRC’s Updated Guidelines and the ILC’s Draft Principles. In addition, States should urgently be encouraged to identify and establish demilitarised zones in areas of environmental importance, as well as those containing natural resources. These measures are essential if the international community is to ensure the future viability of the environment for generations to come. After all, if we continue to destroy the environment needlessly, whether it be in peacetime or wartime, ‘we will not thrive or even survive’.[172] Lydia Millar Lydia Millar is a Master’s student studying law at Queen’s University Belfast. Lydia is passionate about environmental law and animal rights and has contributed to published articles on ‘Ecocide’. Alongside her studies, she produces podcasts on environmental law and policy for the ‘LawPod’, a podcast series that is run by Queen’s University’s School of Law. [1] Ángela María Amaya Arias et al, Witnessing the Environmental Impacts of War: Environmental Case Studies from Conflicts around the World (PAX, 2020). [2] ibid. [3] CEOBs, ‘How Does War Damage the Environment?’ (4 June 2020) < https://ceobs.org/how-does-war-damage-the-environment/ > accessed 10 April 2021. [4] ibid. [5] Patrick Bigger, ‘The US Military Consumes More Hydrocarbons than Most Countries - With a Massive Hidden Impact on the Environment’ (Lancaster University, 20 June 2019) < https://www.lancaster.ac.uk/news/us-military-consumes-more-hydrocarbons-than-most-countries-with-a-massive-hidden-impact-on-the-climate > accessed 10 April 2021. [6] CEOBs (n 3). [7] ICRC, When Rain Turns to Dust: Understanding and Responding to the Combined Impact of Armed Conflict and the Climate and Environmental Crisis on People’s Lives (2020). [8] IPCC, Climate Change 2022: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability (Summary for Policymakers) (IPCC WG II 6th Assessment Report, 2022) 36. [9] Marco Sassòli and Antoine Bouvier, How Does Law Protect in War? Cases, Documents, and Teaching Materials on Contemporary Practice in International Humanitarian Law (2nd edn, International Committee of the Red Cross 2006) 81. [10] Rosemary Rayfuse, ‘War and the Environment: International Law and the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflict – Introduction to the Special Issue’ (2013) 82 Nordic J Int’l L 1. [11] The Holy Bible , Deuteronomy: 19-20 (English Standard Version). [12] Margaret MacMillan, War: How Conflict Shaped Us (Profile Books, 2020) 5. [13] United Nations Environmental Programme, Protecting the Environment during Armed Conflict: An Inventory and Analysis of International Law (UNEP, 2009) 4. [14] Carson Thomas, ‘Advancing the Legal Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflict: Protocol I’s Threshold of Impermissible Environmental Damage and Alternatives’ (2013) Nordic J Int’l L 85. [15] ibid. [16] Jean-Marie Henckaerts et al., Customary International Humanitarian Law (ICRC and CUP 2005) Rule 44. [17] Heba Aly, ‘Islamic Law and Rules of War’ ( Middle East Eye , 12 February 2015) accessed 28 January 2021. [18] Gregory Reichberg and Henrik Syse, ‘Protecting the Natural Environment in Wartime: Ethical Considerations for the Just War Tradition’ (2000) 37 Journal of Peace Research 449, 445. [19] ibid. [20] The Bible (n 11) Genesis 1:28. [21] ibid 457. [22] UNEP (n 13) 8. [23] Eliana Custao, ‘From Ecocide to Voluntary Remediation Projects: Legal Responses to Environmental Warfare in Vietnam and the Spectre of Colonialism’ (2018) 19 Melb J Int’l L 494. [24] Jay Austin and Carl Bruch (eds) The Environmental Consequences of War: Legal Economic and Scientific Perspectives (Cambridge University Press 2000) 1, 48. [25] Trien T Nguyen, ‘Environmental Consequences of Dioxin from the War in Vietnam: What Has Been Done and What Else Could be Done?’ (2009) 66 Int’l J Environmental Studies 9. [26] Custao (n 23) 500. [27] The Convention on the Prohibition of Military or Any Other Hostile Uses of Environmental Modification Techniques, 1977. [28] Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I) 1977. [29] Custao (n 23) 501. [30] Siamak Khorram and X. Long Dai, ‘Environmental Impacts of the 1991 Persian Gulf War: A Remote Sensing Perspective’ (1999, Centre for Earth Observation, North Carolina State University) 2560. [31] Thor Hanson et al., ‘Warfare in Biodiversity hotspots’ (2009) 23 Conversation Biology 578. [32] UNEP (n 13) 4. [33] UNGA A/RES/47/37 (9th February 1993) UN Doc A/47/591. [34] Adrian Loets, ‘An Old Debate Revisited: Applicability of Environmental Treaties in Times of International Armed Conflict Pursuant to the International Law Commission’s ‘Draft Articles on the Effects of Armed Conflict on Treaties’’ (2012) 21(2) Review of European Community and International Law 127. [35] Karen Hulme, ‘Armed Conflict, Wanton Ecological Devastation and Scorched Earth Policies: How the 1990-1991 Gulf Conflict Revealed the Inadequacies of the Current Laws to Ensure Effective Protection and Preservation of the Natural Environment’ (1997) 2 Journal of Armed Conflict Law 45, 47. [36] ibid. [37] International Law and Policy Institute, Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict: An Empirical Study (2014) Report 12. [38] ibid 16. [39] Muhammad Sadiq, The Gulf War Aftermath: An Environmental Tragedy (Pulwer Academic Press 1993) 52. [40] Kris Hirschmann, The Kuwaiti Oil Fires (Facts on File Press 2005) 23. [41] Antoinette Mannion, ‘Environmental Impact of War and Terrorism’ (University of Reading Press 2003) Geographical Paper no. 169. [42] ibid. [43] John Loretz, ‘The Animal Victims of the Gulf War’ (1991) Physicians for Social Responsibility 34. [44] ILPI (n 37) 26. [45] UNEP, ‘UNEP Releases Report on the Demise of the Mesopotamian Marshes’ (Press Release, 13 August 2001) UNEP/98. [46] ibid. [47] ibid. [48] ibid. [49] Hassan Partow, The Mesopotamian Marshlands: Demise of an Ecosystem (Early Warning and Assessment Technical Report) (UNEP 2001) 10. [50] UNSC, Resolution 687 (3 April 1991) paras 16-19. [51] Peter Sand, ‘Compensation for Environmental Damage from the 1991 Gulf War. United Nations Activities: UNCC’ (2005) 35 Environmental Policy and Law Journal 244, 246. [52] ibid. [53] ibid. [54] Austin and Bruch (n 24) 362. [55] Gwinyayi Dzinesa and Joyce Laker, Post-Conflict Reconstruction in the DRC (2011) Centre for Conflict Resolution. [56] ibid. [57] ibid. [58] ILPI (n 37) 34. [59] UNEP, The DRC: Post-Conflict Environmental Assessment Synthesis for Policy Makers (2011) 26. [60] Asit Biswas and Cecilia Tortajada, ‘Environmental Impact of the Rwandan Refugees of Zaire’ (1996) 25(6) Ambio 405. [61] ibid. [62] UNEP (n 59) 36. [63] Guy Debonnet and Kes Hillman-Smith, ‘Supporting Protected Areas in a Time of Political Turmoil: The Case of World Heritage Sites in the DRC’ (2004) 14(1) Parks 9. [64] Britta Sjöstedt, ‘The Role of MEAs in Armed Conflict: ‘Greenkeeping’ in Virunga Park. Applying the UNESCO World Heritage Convention in the Armed Conflict of the DRC’ (2013) Nordic J’ Int’l Law 82, 132. [65] Christopher Day, ‘‘Survival Mode’: Rebel Resilience and the Lord’s Resistance Army’ (2019) 31 Terrorism and Political Violence 966. [66] ibid. [67] The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora, 1963. [68] The Agreement on the Conservation of Gorillas and Their Habitats, 2007. [69] Sophia Benz and Judith Benz-Schwarzburg, ‘Great Apes and New Wars’ (2010) 12 Civil Wars 400. [70] International Law Commission, Second Report on Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflict by Marja Lehto, Special Rapporteur (UNGA, 2019) A/CN.4/728. [71] OHCHR, Report on the Mapping Exercise Documenting the Most Serious Violations of Human Rights and International Humanitarian Law Committed within the Territory of the DRC Between March 1993 and June 2003 (August 2010) 350. [72] ILPI (n 37) 36. [73] OHCHR (n 71). [74] ibid. [75] ILPI (n 37) 36. [76] Benz and Benz-Schwarzburg (n 69). [77] Michael Schmitt, ‘Humanitarian Law and the Environment’ (2000) 28 Denv J Int’l L& Pol’y 265, 267. [78] Michael Bothe et al., ‘International Law Protecting the Environment During Armed Conflict’ (2010) 92 International Review of the Red Cross 879, 6. [79] API (n 28) art 35. [80] ibid. art 55. [81] ICRC, Commentary on the Additional Protocols of 8 June 1977 to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949 (Martinus Nijhoff / International Committee of the Red Cross 1987) 663. [82] Schmitt (n 77) 275. [83] ibid. 277. [84] Henckaerts et al. (n 16) Rule 45. [85] H McCoubrey, Environmental Protection in Armed Conflict: Present Provision and Future Needs (Manuscript, University of Nottingham, January 1994) 5-6. [86] UNEP (n 13) 4. [87] Thomas (n 14) 83. [88] Liesbeth Lijnzaad and Gerard J Tanja, ‘Protection of the Environment in times of Armed Conflict: The Iraq-Kuwait War’ (1993) 40 Netherlands Int’l L. Review 180. [89] ICRC, Guidelines on the Protection of the Natural Environment in Armed Conflict (2020). [90] ibid. rule 2. [91] ibid. [92] ICRC, ‘Treaties, States Parties and Commentaries’ < https://ihl-databases.icrc.org/applic/ihl/ihl.nsf/States.xsp?xp_viewStates=XPages_NORMStatesParties&xp_treatySelected=470 > accessed 3rd May 2021. [93] Karen Hulme, War Torn Environment: Interpreting the Legal Threshold (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers 2004) 79. [94] Bothe et al. (n 78) 576. [95] ENMOD (n 28) art 1(1). [96] UNCCD to the General Assembly, Official Records of the General Assembly, 31 Session, Supplement No. 27 (A/31/27). [97] Lawrence Juda, ‘Negotiating a Treaty on Environmental Modification Warfare: The Convention on Environmental Warfare and its Impact Upon Arms Control Negotiations’ (1978) 32 International Organisation 975, 980. [98] ibid. [99] ibid. [100] ENMOD (n 28) art 2. [101] Department of Peace and Conflict Research, ‘Uppsala University Conflict Data Programme’ (Uppsala University) < https://ucdp.uu.se > accessed 19 February 2021. [102] UNEP (n 13) 10. [103] ibid. [104] Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and Relating to the Protection of Victims of Non-International Armed Conflicts. [105] ibid. arts 14-16. [106] ILC, ‘Second Report on the Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts’ (28 May 2018) UN Doc A/CN.4/673. [107] Camilo Ramírez Gutiérrez and A Sebastian Saavedra Eslava, ‘Protection of the Natural Environment under IHL and International Criminal Law: The Case of the Special Jurisdiction for Peace in Colombia’ (2020) 25 UCLA J Int’l L Foreign Aff, 123, 137. [108] ICRC Guidelines (n 89) Recommendation 18. [109] ibid. [110] ICRC Guidelines (n 89) 46. [111] Michael Schmitt, ‘War and the Environment: Fault Lines in the Perspective Landscape’ (1999) 37 Völkerrechts Archives 32. [112] Henckaerts et al (n 16). [113] Michael Schmitt, ‘Green War: An Assessment of the Environmental Laws of Armed Conflict’ (1997) 22 Yale J Int’l L 56. [114] API (n 28) art 48. [115] ibid. art 57. [116] ibid. art 52. [117] Bothe et al (n 78) 576. [118] Schmitt (n 111) 35. [119] ibid. [120] Convention (IV) Respecting the Laws and Customs of War on Land and its Annex: Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land, The Hague, 18 October 1907, Article 23(g). [121] ibid. [122] Thomas (n 14) 92. [123] Convention (IV) Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in Time of War, Geneva, 12 August 1949, art 53. [124] ibid. art 147. [125] Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 1998, art 8(2)(a)(iv). [126] Schmitt (n 87) 34. [127] Richard Falk, ‘The Inadequacy of the Existing Legal Approach to Environmental Protection in Wartime’ in Austin and Bruch (n 24) 144. [128] Schmitt (n 113) 56. [129] Vladimir Pustogarov, ‘Fyodor Fyodorovich Martens (1845-1909) – A Humanist of Modern Times’ (1996) 312 International Review of the Red Cross 300. [130] Rupert Ticehurst, ‘The Martens Clause and the Laws of Armed Conflict’ (1997) 317 International Review of the Red Cross accessed 27 May 2021. [131] Christopher Joyner and James Kirkhope, ‘The Persian Gulf War Oil Spill: Reassessing the Law of Environmental Protection and the Law of Armed Conflict’ (1992) 24 Case Western J Int’l L, 61. [132] Annotated Supplement to the Commander’s Handbook on the Law of Naval Operations, NWP 9 (REV.A)/FMFM 1-10 (1989) 6. [133] Legality of the Threat or Use of Nuclear Weapons, Advisory Opinion (1996) ICJ 679, 242. [134] US v List (1950) 11 TWC 759, 1253. [135] Prosecutor v Tadić , Decision on the Defence Motion for Interlocutory Appeal on Jurisdiction (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, 2 October 1995) Case No.IT-94-1-AR72, 70. [136] Louise Doswald-Beck, ‘International humanitarian law and the Advisory Opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legality of the threat or use of nuclear weapons’ (1997) 316 Int’l Rev. Red Cross. [137] Michaela Halpern, ‘Protecting Vulnerable Environments in Armed Conflict: Deficiencies in IHL’ (2015) 51 Stan J Int’l L 119, 139. [138] Schmitt (n 111) 47. [139] Schmitt (n 113) 64. [140] Glen Plant, Environmental Protection and the Law of War: A ‘Fifth Geneva’ Convention on the Protection of the Environment in Time of Armed Conflict (Wiley-Blackwell 1991) 37. [141] UNEP (n 13) 28. [142] ILC, Protection of the Environment in Relation to Armed Conflicts: Text and Titles of the Draft Principles Provisionally Adopted by the Draft Committee on First Reading (UNGA, 6 June 2019) A/CN.4/L.937. [143] ibid. Draft Principle 1. [144] Rachel Killean, ‘From Ecocide to eco-sensitivity: ‘Greening’ reparations at the ICC’ (2021) 25 Int’l J Human Rights 323, 326. [145] Schmitt (n 113) 64. [146] ibid. 66. [147] Paul Szasz, ‘Comment: The Existing Legal Framework, Protecting the Environment During International Armed Conflict’ 69 Int’l Law Studies 278. [148] Halpern (n 137) 146. [149] UNEP (n 13) 20. [150] ibid. [151] Iain Watson, ‘Rethinking Peace Parks in Korea’ (2014) 26 Peace Review 102. [152] ibid. [153] Convention (IV) (n 122) art 15. [154] API (n 28) arts 59 and 60. [155] Draft Convention on the Prohibition of Hostile Military Action in Protected Areas 1995. [156] Wolfgang Burhenne, ‘The Prohibition of Hostile Military Action in Protected Areas’ (1997) 27 Environmental Policy and Law 373. [157] UNSC Resolution 844 (June 18, 1993) UN Doc. S/Res/844. [158] Burhenne (n 156). [159] ILC (n 142) Draft Principles 4 and 17. [160] Stavros Pantazopoulos, ‘Conflict and Conservation – The Promise and Perils of Protected Zones’ (Conflict and Environment Observatory, 8th October 2020) < https://ceobs.org/conflicts-and-conservation-the-promise-and-perils-of-protected-zones/ > accessed 30th March 2021. [161] The World Heritage Convention 1972. [162] ibid. art 11(2). [163] ibid. art 4. [164] Sjöstedt (n 64) 143. [165] Karen Hulme, ‘Armed Conflict and Biodiversity’ in Michael Bowman, Peter Davies, and Edward Goodwin (eds) Research Handbook on Biodiversity and Law (Elgar Publishing 2016) 245. [166] Pantozapoulos (n 160). [167] Alice Bunker, ‘Protection of the Environment during Armed Conflict: One Gulf, Two Wars’ (2004) 23 Review of Europeans Community and Int’l Environmental Law 201. [168] Orla Buckley, ‘Unregulated Armed Conflict: Non-State Armed Groups, IHL, and Violence in Western Sahara’ (2012) 37 North Carolina J Int’l L 793, 795. [169] ND-GAIN, ‘Country Index’ (July 2020, Uni of Notre Dame) < https://gain-new.crc.nd.edu/ > accessed 26 February 2021. [170] ICRC (n 89) 4. [171] Schmitt (n 81) 65. [172] UNEP, ‘Climate, Biodiversity Loss and Pollution: Alarming Report on Earth’s Triple Environmental Emergencies’ (YouTube, 18 February 2021) < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISNu8W4xig8 > accessed 10 April 2021.

Stephen Marche is a novelist, essayist and cultural commentator. He is the author of half a dozen books and has written opinion pieces and essays for The New Yorker , The New York Times , The Atlantic , Esquire , The Walrus and many others. CJLPA : Let’s begin by outlining the main premise of your latest book, The Next Civil War . Who did you have in mind when you were writing it and what was your initial interest in the topic? Stephen Marche : The subject of the book is the political leanings that are tending towards a disunion, a civil war in the United States, or the breakup of the United States in some form. I wrote it as a warning to Americans. It is not written out of contempt for America at all, in fact it’s written out of deep affection for and love of America. I feel that they are in quite a bit of danger and that they’ve accepted certain political realities as normal when they’re quite abnormal. I originally started writing it when a Canadian magazine sent me to Washington to cover the Trump inauguration in 2016. That had a real kind of ‘fall of Rome’ vibe. I was walking around with anarchists and then I came back from buying cigarettes and they had all been arrested. Then I was standing on top of a limousine and somebody lit the limousine on fire. The police were right down the knife edge between left and right groups, and they could barely keep the peace. After that experience, I decided to dedicate the next four or five years to trying to figure out how much danger America is actually in. And the book is my answer to that. CJLPA : You go through five dispatches in the book. Were there any outside of that which you considered writing about, or started writing about and decided not to continue with? SM : Electoral outcomes really didn’t make their way into the book; like what a challenged election would look like, what would happen if there was a contingent election, or no agreement on January 6th when they certified the election. I didn’t include that because I wanted to base the dispatches on solid information, for which I had excellent, well-established models—like environmental models or models of civil war. It’s very hard to find non-biased or non-political and non-agenda driven approaches to questions like those around contested or contingent elections. Some models are stronger than others; economic models are not really worth anything. Nobody knows what’s going to happen in the economy. We do know that by 2040, 50% of the American population will control 85% of the senate, and we do know that trust in institutions is in freefall. And the environmental models offer an incredible predictive capacity. I wanted to keep it on that level. People get really confused in America about the importance of elections, whereas I think the trends that are really shredding the United States are well below and well above who gets elected. People are worried if Trump gets elected. I’m not really worried about that because I think the problems are a lot deeper than that. CJLPA : There’s a prevailing idea that issues as deep-set as those that you discuss in your book can only be diagnosed from a safe objective distance. I’m wondering how your being a Canadian brought a unique perspective to these issues and allowed you to consider them in a different way. SM : We are very close to America. I’ve lived in America and I’ve worked in America. Most of my income has always come from American sources. I have family in America. But I’m not an American. I can go to America, and no one would know that I’m not an American, so that’s also extremely helpful as a researcher. Being a Canadian is the perfect amount of distance because you’re right there geographically and culturally. But you also know that healthcare systems do not have to be as they are in America; gun control does not have to be as it is. There are other options. The realities that you see in America are not normal. A huge problem in America is that the educated elites have really managed to convince themselves, and have been taught from a very young age, that their political institutions are the solution to history, whereas to me they are just one option among many. I think that’s the difference between myself and an American commentator, who on one hand really has to believe in their country, and on the other has been indoctrinated into believing that it is the greatest country in the world and an exception to history and so on. When of course there are no exceptions to history. CJLPA : I agree with your conclusion in the book that the hope for America lies with Americans, and that it is the fusion of opposites and the coming together of differing opinions that makes America so unique and allowed it to become what it is today. Great political thinkers like Hannah Arendt and Walter Benjamin view contrasting opinions as the highest good in politics. How do you think the University helps––or maybe doesn’t help––in creating a space for dissent? SM : From the outside it looks horrible. I don’t think anyone imagines that the university would be a place where you could openly explore ideas anymore. I would never have the inclination that if I really want to explore or open up ideas, I should make an appointment at a university and talk about it with some students. The university really isn’t the world. The humanities are falling apart, they cannot argue for a reason for their own existence. They get less powerful every year out of a willed powerlessness. And if you can’t make arguments for why you should exist you won’t exist. CJLPA : Where do you think that space of dissent could be or is? SM : My opinion generally is that these things go in cycles: political leanings, engagement, disengagement. There’s a great temptation whenever we’re in these situations to feel like we are in the ideology that’s going to survive forever. One of the things that worries me is that the right-wing backlash to that will be so horrible that it will be worse than what we have now. The heroes that I had were renaissance humanists; people like Arendt and Benjamin, who maintained their humanism in very dark periods. I really believe in cosmopolitan humanism as an intellectual approach to the world, and that’s the world that I want to be in. I don’t feel like that’s impossible at all. I feel like I can write and say what I want, and some people will hate me, and some people will like me, but I’m a journalist! You’re supposed to be hated, that’s part of the gig. I don’t really feel all that threatened by any of that. I feel like it’s important to keep your eye on the prize of what you want to do and who you want to be intellectually, and to not respond to trends that are based in fear. Fear is quite overblown on these matters. I’ve been attacked a lot, but I think we should expect to be attacked. Sharing an opinion of the world comes with a price. I feel like there is still room for humanism, probably as much as there ever has been because it’s never been very popular. Humanism is always under threat; it’s never been the successor ideology but it’s the one I have. It’s all that I care about and want to do. And I can do it. CJLPA : Since you’re a Shakespeare scholar and this is a British journal, is there any particular play, or even a scene, which you see as particularly illuminating to contemporary Canadian or American politics? SM : Coriolanus is a big one because it’s about patriotic elites who turn into a globalized fascist force, which you don’t have to look too far to find. Someone like Putin is very Shakespearean; people who manage to convince themselves of their own propaganda and become obsessed with their own rhythms of revenge, This is absolutely the Shakespearean mode. The parallels are not exact, but there are a whole host of plays which can be related to the ongoing conflict between the Ukraine and Russia, like Antony and Cleopatra or Coriolanus . Unfortunately, they are all tragedies. The tyrants of Richard III and Macbeth undoubtedly still apply. It’s amazing how these works remain so in tune with the psychological process behind tyrannical behaviour. Richard III is pretty damn close to Putin. I don’t think you’re going to find a better representation, except maybe Boris Godunov. This interview was conducted by Charlotte Friesen, an honours graduate from King’s College, Halifax, Nova Scotia. She wrote her thesis on early modern cookery manuscripts and cookbooks, and works as a bread baker when she’s not writing or reading.

The last few months, in particular the furore over Partygate,[1] have scarred the reputation of many of Britain’s most vital institutions. Police are investigating law breaking not just by the Prime Minister and his team, but among their own ranks. Parliament’s ability and willingness to hold power to account has come into question. We face a government whose answer to the old question—‘who guards the guards?’—is a simple one. No-one. This is a government that claims its democratic mandate trumps all constraint on its power, from the police, from the law, from the courts, from honour, convention, tradition, or rules. Gone is the conservative mission of the Conservative Party: the instinct to protect and preserve institutions. In its place is a revolutionary, iconoclastic movement, far more interested in dismantling the things it doesn’t like than in building anything to replace them. It is clear we can no longer rely on what Peter Hennessy called the ‘good chaps’ theory of government: that those who rise to the top will always be honourable people, willing to submit to informal rules of behaviour.[2] Instead, we need to think creatively and imaginatively about a different kind of constitutional future: how to reform and rebuild the institutions that hold power, and those that hold it to account. In this essay I’m going to set out—briefly—an institutional reform agenda for some of the most important institutions that frame our lives. Devolution, in my view, is fundamentally important, and a new settlement between the power of the centre and the power of the cities must be core to how we reform the United Kingdom, to stop it sliding into political self-destruction. Principles for institutional reform This is a central truth of all institutions, which they often struggle to deal with. They come under attack from their enemies for existing at all; their defenders get defensive and refuse to change anything; they worry that capitulation will start them down the slippery slope of institutional decay. This is wrong-footed. Institutions play an essential role in creating binding relationships between people and each other, including and especially relationships between generations. They have the potential to last hundreds of years: an institutional mindset is far more likely to worry about the legacy for generations to come—generations that most of us are not even thinking about yet—than individuals are. And yet, if institutions fail to adapt to changing times, they come under attack from the iconoclastic impulse. In physics, the word plastic doesn’t just mean the stuff used in packaging and littering our oceans. Plastic, the adjective, is the opposite of elastic. An elastic material will snap back to its original shape if you stretch it, while a plastic material will stay in its new shape. Instead of being iconoclastic, we need to be icono plastic : ambitious and aggressive in reshaping our institutions to protect them from being smashed to pieces. An iconoplastic movement should be built around three core principles: Acceptance of New Power: The thesis of Jeremy Heimans and Henry Timms in their book New Power is that we have moved away from a primarily hierarchical system of political power to a collaborative, bottom-up one.[3] Grassroots movements, membership uprisings, social media campaigns: all challenge the old power structures that vested decision-making at the top of organisations. New Power institutions need to be built to cope with this reality, not challenge or protect against it. Participation, not just representation: In an Old Power system, representation has been the primary way that members or voters’ voices have been able to influence decision-making. Representative democratic systems have their place, but technology is increasingly making it far easier for mass participation in decision-making, including through deliberative methods. The great benefit of including people in the process of choice is that it builds a kind of democratic skillset: understanding, compromise, and collaboration. Participative institutions will be far less focused on semi-regular elections to the top, and far more focused on maximising constant collaboration. Openness: New Power and mass participation need to be facilitated by greater openness about decision-making, data, and opportunity. Organisations under iconoclastic threat can become fearful: hoarding information to protect it from bad actors who will use it to contribute to their destructive agenda. An institution confident in its own ability to continue its own process of constant reform has to stay open to challenge, sharing its weaknesses as well as its strengths. Parliament For too long we have believed the hype about Westminster being the ‘Mother of Parliaments’.[4] The truth is that all the pomp and tradition disguises the fact that Parliament is too often a hollow sham, ignored by an over-mighty executive of ministers and civil servants. No wonder, when new democracies were emerging from the Soviet bloc in the 1990s, not one of them copied our model of governance. Our system does not deliver what people want, it does not keep government or politicians honest, and it does not foster the meaningful debate we need. First, I think we should move Parliament to Manchester, though I’d be open to a public consultation on the best place to put it. Our current Parliament buildings have become a potent symbol of political decay, propped up by scaffolding, beset by leaking roofs and drafty doors, even the clockwork of the nation’s favourite bell running out of steam. Billions are being spent shoring up these crumbling edifices, misguidedly trying to preserve the old order in the old stonework.[5] Those of us who love London have to accept that this city is toxic to millions of people. It is a byword for distance, disengagement, and disconnection from the rest of the UK.[6] Government from London cannot offer the transformative moment the country needs: a recognition that the rage has been heard and that change will really come. Moving Parliament offers the chance to fundamentally rebalance our economy, as well as our politics. For thirty years or more, governments have promised to regenerate the North, and rebalance growth away from the overheated south-east. Billions of pounds have been invested; entire civil service careers have been spent mapping and planning and designing initiatives with all the goodwill and ambition in the world. Some achievements have been wrung from this sustained effort. Labour transformed the city centres of many great Northern cities. Transport investment is finally arriving across the North’s rail network, in a much more coordinated way than before. But all this goodwill is fighting gravity and it isn’t working. London and the south-east of England still outstrip everywhere else in wealth and growth[7]. The UK is Europe’s most regionally divided nation[8]. Only when politicians have to go to work every day on the rickety trains of our northern cities will they really change this, and give the North the infrastructure investment it actually needs to grow and thrive. There will be huge agglomeration effects of shifting this vitally important state institution to a city where it might do some good, rather than just contributing to the overheating of the housing market. It won’t be just politicians who will move; it will be journalists, public affairs companies, regulators, and regulated industries: anyone whose business relies on knowing what the government is up to. London will remain our financial and cultural capital, and will recover from the economic shock quickly. In the process, the North will be transformed. Countries do not need to have their economic and their political capitals in the same city. The US has four cities bigger than its capital. Australia and Canada each have five. Shanghai is larger than Beijing. And countries can move their capital for the sake of the nation: Canberra was established to stop Melbourne and Sydney from quarrelling; Abuja replaced Lagos as Nigeria’s capital because the latter was considered a divisive place to be (as well as being hot and overcrowded). Brasilia was established as Brazil’s capital, replacing Rio de Janeiro, in 1960. Belize, Botswana, and Pakistan followed soon after. Myanmar recently moved its capital city to Naypyidaw. But of course, the traditionalists will declare, it’s alright for these funny, foreign, modern sorts of places to go ‘messing around’ with the institutions of their government. We can’t: we’re English. We speak the language (as Bernard Shaw put it) of ‘Shakespeare, Milton, and the Bible’. We’ve got the very ‘Mother of Parliaments’. They declare that Parliament is a symbol of a thousand years of history and must, therefore, be protected from anything that smacks of modernity or reform. This is, of course, historical hokum. There have been buildings used for and by our rulers on the site of Westminster for a thousand years, but the vast majority of the current Palace of Westminster was completed just 150 years ago. It looks older partly because Westminster Hall, which fronts the road, is truly ancient, but mostly because our national predilection for the ancient led to its being designed in the Gothic style. In fact, Parliament’s history is not of continuity but of a series of radical changes forced upon it. From the destruction by fire of the old Palace in the 1830s to the destruction of the debate chamber by bomb in the 1940s and the establishment of something approaching democracy in the Great Reform Act to the full national franchise for men and women in 1928, Parliament changes when it needs to change. A proper reading of history shows that our greatest institutions survive when they adapt. The adaptation Parliament needs now is to move, if it wants a chance of being loved again. Democracy doesn’t live in a building. We can take Big Ben north with us, if people want to. We can hold the state opening of Parliament once a year in our crumbling relic on the Thames, if it makes life easier for the Queen and her golden carriage. But now is a time for national rebirth, and we should mark that with change, not stagnation. Political parties To cross the divides of identity politics our political parties must be transformed too. This is because membership of parties is increasingly based on identification with a particular ‘tribe’ or group, contributing to the polarisation of our politics and weakening the ability of our parties to be representative of the country at large. It was during the election of 2015 that I wrote the first draft of the constitution of the Women’s Equality Party (WEP). We included one truly radical proposition: that party members were allowed to be members of other parties, too. WEP was set up to be a ‘cross-party’ party: to welcome feminists from across the political spectrum, and offer them a second home. This is a completely different conception of what politics and parties are for, and many people laughed at us and still do. It’s the direct opposite of the rules that are set by the other parties. They can throw you out of the party for even tweeting support for a friend who’s standing under another party’s ticket; for making a £50 donation to a friend in another party; or for admitting you voted tactically in your seat. The Labour party’s constitution says that its primary purpose is to ensure the continued existence of the Labour party. Their idea is to create a community of trust in which everyone is fighting for the same purpose. Otherwise, your opponents could infiltrate your local party and, for example, choose an unelectable candidate. Of course, there’s an easy solution to this and it’s to open up candidate selection to everyone in your constituency. The closed shop of political parties does more to sabotage good politics than anything else we do wrong in Britain. Open primaries are the only way to give real voice to constituents in a two-party system; I’d be happy to change our voting system instead, but that’s a more structural reform that’s hard to imagine happening. So, for the moment, let’s just open up the parties. Pass a law against party exclusivity so the Conservatives can’t ban you from joining the Women’s Equality Party and Labour can’t ban you from campaigning for the Green candidate in your local area. Mandate and fund open primaries in every constituency. Allow people to donate a few pounds, at the ballot box, alongside their vote, from taxpayer funds and ban big donations completely from party politics. All elections should be majority publicly funded, and we should introduce legislation to force political parties to show all donors. Donations should not be more than £1000 per person, and can only be made once every year. The Monarchy and the honours system It’s hard to do much better than the proposals set out in Demos’ early days for the British monarchy. The transition to a new monarch must be a moment of renewal and reformation. The honours system is an important first step: while in the last twenty years reforms have been implemented to honour more everyday people, and prevent those who don’t pay their full taxes from being honoured, we need further change: First, we need to replace the outdated references to the British Empire: an order of British excellence is a sensible shift to the naming conventions of our honours. We should also think about the privileges conferred on those who receive an honour. Many recipients have the right to marry, or for their children to marry, in a special chapel at St Paul’s Cathedral. This is a nice perk, but we should take a less London-centric view. We should work with our civic infrastructure—town halls, guildhalls, cathedrals, temples and more—to give real status and honour to those who’ve been recognised for their service in normal life. We need a better system for stripping those who commit crimes or abuse the tax system, of their honour, in order to protect its integrity for the future. We should use the Royal magic to celebrate places, as well as people. Let every town get involved in choosing the people to be honoured from their place—instead of having the lion’s share of honours going to Londoners. Create honours for towns and villages, too: the right for every place to be Royal for a year, instead of only Leamington Spa and Tunbridge Wells. Devolution and community power Over centralisation is one of the greatest failings of our system of governance. Over the last couple of decades we have slowly inched towards progress—establishing mayors, combined authorities and devolving some power to more local organisations. We need to go much further; the central assumption needs to be reversed. We must move away from a system in which local areas must come cap in hand to central government and beg for powers and responsibilities, to one in which central government must make the case for why things need to be standardised and centralised. At Demos, we have made the case for transforming our public services by centering them around strong relationships—between citizens and the state, between citizens and each other, and—crucially—between the various services who so often work at cross purposes to one another. This is only possible if we devolve power and centre reform around places instead of the vertical specialisms of individual government departments and professional specialisms. We’ve argued for complete decentralisation of employment support services, replacing JobCentres with a Universal Work Service to help all working people develop their career and find better work.[9] That should be run and managed locally, built around the needs and opportunities of particular areas. We’ve also argued for a new approach to crime prevention, putting local authorities in the lead role, and giving them oversight of the police.[10] There is little logic in having a powerful City mayor and a separate Police and Crime Commissioner. And there is little logic in leaving crime prevention to the police alone, when the factors that reduce crime are usually to be found in social services, education, housing, and youth provision. Of course, devolution has its critics. One of the best arguments against devolution, of course, is that it enables far more variation between places and that tends to benefit people who are better off: instead of a single national system, you get good services where people can pay for them, and bad services where need is highest—also known as the ‘postcode lottery’. Thus, the desire to standardise across the country is driven by an ideological commitment to fairness and equity that has huge merit. Of course, national systems tend to have huge variation in them, too, no matter what the theory says. But it’s vital that we don’t allow community devolution to exacerbate inequality: in fact, we should use it to push in the opposite direction. Efforts to build social capital and democratic capability need to be concentrated in areas of higher deprivation. Whether through the transfer of community assets, the investment of time and resources in training, education, and relationship building, or simply through more direct funding, poorer areas need far more support, to enable them to take power, and develop their capabilities. Still, there’s the risk that politics gets more intense locally, and you end up surrendering evidence about what works and replacing it with what people fancy, even if that’s no housebuilding, unsafe hospitals, or expensively subsidised but hardly used, post offices. So why open ourselves up to the risks associated with far greater democracy at the local level? It’s because taking decisions away from people absolves them of responsibility for managing trade-offs and complexity. It allows them to outsource difficult decisions to politicians who they then complain about, and this slowly builds resentment that eats away at the political system. Many of the policy problems we face today are in fact better resolved at community level because it’s where we have the best chance of building legitimacy for so many uncomfortable decisions. But the community level is also where you can leverage human relationships, voluntary networks, and community infrastructure to be far more effective, often for less money. The state can be mobilised at national level to meet demand, but only a really strong social system can actively reduce demand. The Community Paradigm is the name given by New Local, a think tank working with local government and other organisations, to their work.[11] It identifies why the community paradigm is more likely to be effective at tackling the kind of systemic problems identified in earlier chapters. It engages people at a level that is far more likely to influence their own behaviour and choices. It has agility and personalisation that are vital in a diverse society. It builds connections and relationships between people that, over time, add up to social capital. Starting the journey It is far easier to set out ideas for reform than it is to implement them. Institutional reform requires careful, slow, patient, and confident work. Some may look at our government and feel hopeful: the Levelling Up White Paper does suggest a level of analysis and ambition that has rarely been paralleled.[12] Others may look at it and despair: where is the long-term financial commitment? Why has this generational goal of shifting power and opportunity in the country disappeared from public view within a few short months? But neither naive hope nor despair are the right approach. Perhaps this government will become great, and perhaps it will be replaced by a great government. At some point in my lifetime, I do expect that we will have a government that is willing to initiate structural change from the centre. But we should not wait. It is in the nature of ‘new power’ that we do not need to. Organisations in the public and private sphere can start to take an iconoplastic approach. We can all add a little more participation and a little more openness to the way we run our businesses, our charities, our universities, and our local systems of government. Instead of waiting for the iconoclastic enemies at the gates wanting to tear us to pieces, we can think about how to share the power we have. Change is best started yesterday, but today will do. The government that replaces Boris Johnson’s finally provides an opportunity for leadership to reset our institutions. Polly Mackenzie Polly Mackenzie is Chief Social Purpose Officer of University of the Arts London. She ran the cross party think tank Demos from 2018-2022 and was Director of Policy for the Deputy Prime Minister from 2010-2015. This article was written in the Summer of 2022. [1] ‘Partygate’ is the term given to the UK Government scandal that revealed the gatherings – which violated COVID-19 lockdown rules – taking place. The full timeline of events and police investigation results can be found at < https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-59952395 >. [2] Cf. Robert Saunders, ‘Has the “good chaps” theory of government always been a myth?’ The New Statesman (London, 3 August 2021) < https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/politics/has-the-good-chaps-theory-of-government-always-been-a-myth-peter-hennessy-boris-johnson > accessed 24 June 2022. [3] J eremy Heimans and Henry Timms, New Power (Penguin Random House 2018) . [4] UK Parliament, ‘A beacon of democracy’ ( UK Parliament ) < https://www.parliament.uk/about/living-heritage/building/palace/big-ben/much-more-than-a-clock/a-beacon-of-democracy/ > accessed 13 April 2022. [5] Aubrey Allegretti, ‘Parliament renovation could take 76 years and cost £22bn, report says’ The Guardian (London, 23 February 2022) < https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/23/parliament-renovation-could-take-76-years-and-cost-22bn-report-says > accessed 13 April 2022. [6] Roch Dunin-Wasowicz, ‘London Calling Brexit: How the rest of the UK views the capital’ ( LSE Blogs, 13 November 2018) < https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2018/11/13/london-calling-brexit-how-the-rest-of-the-uk-views-the-capital/ > accessed 13 April 2022. [7] Sam Bright, ‘The Shocking Divides Between London and the Rest of Britain’ ( Byline Times , 28 April 2022) < https://bylinetimes.com/2022/04/28/the-shocking-divides-between-london-and-the-rest-of-britain/ > accessed 13 April 2022. [8] Jamie Hailstone, ‘ UK one of the most divided countries in Europe, study warns ’ ( NewStart, 27 November 2019) < https://newstartmag.co.uk/articles/uk-one-of-the-most-divided-countries-in-europe-study-warns/ > accessed 13 April 2022. [9] Andrew Philipps, ‘Working Together: The case for universal employment support’ ( Demos , May 2022) < https://demos.co.uk/project/working-together-the-case-for-universal-employment-support/ > accessed 13 April 2022. [10] Alice Dawson, Polly Mackenzie, and Amelia Stewart, ‘Move on Upstream: Crime, prevention and relationships’ ( Demos , May 2022) < https://demos.co.uk/project/move-on-upstream-crime-prevention-and-relationships/ > accessed 13 April 2022. [11] Adam Lent and Jessica Studdert, ‘The Community Paradigm: Why public services need radical change and how it can be achieved’ ( New Local , 4 March 2021) < https://www.newlocal.org.uk/publications/the-community-paradigm > accessed 13 April 2022. [12] Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, ‘Levelling Up the United Kingdom’ (February 2022) < https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/levelling-up-the-united-kingdom > accessed 13 April 2022.

The Estonian flag is a blue-black-white tricolour. Or at least it should be. As a foreign correspondent in 1990, I was puzzled to see that the flags sprouting across the country as Soviet rule crumbled sometimes featured a dingy yellow bar at the bottom, instead of the correct crisp white. The reason was illuminating. These flags had been stored in secret during the past forty-five years of Soviet occupation—an era when possessing any symbols of the pre-war republic was a serious criminal offence. The fact that the flags could be flown again not only exemplified the dawn of freedom. It paid tribute to the dogged bravery of those who had cherished these fading pieces of cloth at a time when the restoration of independence seemed as unlikely as the re-emergence of Atlantis. Flags are the most potent form of political art. People will kill for them, suffer and die. Even their existence can arouse fury. Taiwan’s flag, for example, is taboo in the eyes of the mainland Chinese authorities. They regard the offshore democracy as a rebel province and its claims to statehood as an affront to national unity. So how should an international airport signal the right visa queue to Taiwanese passengers? One option is to show the Taiwanese flag. Another is to replace it with a bland TWN on a white background. These two photos—one taken at Milan Airport in August 2021, one at Venice in November, show the variation. Flags, wrote the late Whitney Smith, an American pioneer of vexillology (the study of flags) ‘are employed to honour and dishonour, warn and encourage, threaten and promise, exalt and condemn, commemorate and deny’. They ‘remind and incite and defy...the child in school, the soldier, the voter, the enemy, the ally and the stranger’.[1] Flags’ origins are lost in the mists of time. An Iranian standard made of beaten copper dates back 5,000 years. Their function was originally military: an identifiable rallying point on a confusing battlefield, possibly with religious connotations—a holy relic, for example. The switch from military heraldry to politics can be traced back to the 16th-century Dutch revolt against Spanish rule, when the ancient red, white, and blue colours of the Charlemagne era came to symbolise not a monarch, but a people, a language, a culture, and a cause. Flags are the simplest way of encoding national myths, with all their errors and ambiguities. Britain’s Union Jack comprises the cross of St George, the white diagonal Scottish saltire (St Andrew’s Cross), and the red diagonal St Patrick’s cross of Ireland. This is odd. Only Northern Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, and Wales, very much a constituent country, is not represented. The US flag is a complicated and slightly inaccurate representation of the country’s composition (the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico are short-changed when it comes to the 50 stars). The Estonian flag combines blue for the sky, black for forests, and white for snow. Religion plays a big role. Crosses reflect Christian origins (the oldest national flag in continuous use is Denmark’s white cross on a red background, dating from the 15th century). Muslim countries use Koranic texts or crescents. Flags send more detailed signals too. Before the advent of radio, flags were the most effective way of communication across water. Their use, with special knots tied at high speed to flag halyards, to send complex (and coded) naval signals is one of many all-but-lost nautical arts. The rules about flags can seem arcane. Protocols about lowering, raising, and folding—when to fly them at half mast, for example—are fussy and detailed. British pedants insist, wrongly, that the flag of the United Kingdom should be called the Union Flag when flown on land, and the Union Jack only at sea. But flags are not going out of date. They went into space on the rockets that launched the Soviet Sputnik satellite and were planted on the moon by American astronauts. Afghan embassies around the world still defiantly fly the red-green-black of the fallen pro-Western regime, not the Taliban’s stark black and white version emblazoned with a Koranic verse. That continuing defiance recalls the Baltic states’ embassies in Rome, Washington DC, and elsewhere, which throughout the Soviet era signalled their countries’ surviving de jure statehood by flying the national flags. As political technology, flags are still highly effective. A daily salute, a pledge of allegiance, marchpasts, and other ritual displays help entrench patriotism and cohesion. Foreigners visiting the United States do well to remember the particular veneration that Americans have for the Stars and Stripes (though oddly, this does not preclude its ruthless commercial exploitation). Aesthetic concerns, however, usually come second. Crests and symbols create clutter. The ideal flag is attractive, memorable, and significant. Whitney Smith designed the flag of Guyana, with its red diamond (for steadfastness), gold arrowhead (Amerindians and mineral wealth), and green background (verdure). Distinctiveness matters. Austria’s horizontal scarlet-white-scarlet is easily confused with Latvia’s, which uses maroon. Chad and Romania have identical flags; Andorra and Moldova use the same blue-yellow-red tricolour, but with different crests. Monaco and Indonesia use the same red and white format, though the Mediterranean micro-state’s version is a tad shorter. Ireland and Chad have the same tricolour, but with the colours in reverse order. Australia and New Zealand are almost identical (both using the British Union Jack), with differences in the depiction of the Southern Cross constellation. For those with fervent vexillic attachments, outsiders’ ignorance can be vexing. I lived in Washington DC during the Soviet crackdown in Lithuania in January 1991. As my friends in Vilnius stared death in the face, I hung the beleaguered Baltic state’s tricolour from my window as a sign of solidarity. It features a yellow stripe (for sunrise), a red one (for dawn), and a green one for the country’s fields and forests. A few days later my neighbour stopped to ask me—slightly puzzledly—about my support for Rastafarianism, a religion whose flag uses the same colours but in a different order. But overlaps can be useful too. The souvenir shop at Tallinn airport does a brisk trade in patriotic-themed souvenirs. Its staff were understandably bemused when vast quantities of their stock were bought up by burly visiting Britons. The blue-black-white colours just happen to be the same as Bath Rugby Club, and its diehard fans, in Estonia by chance for a stag weekend, were delighted to find a new source of team memorabilia. Just don’t call it cultural appropriation. Edward Lucas Edward Lucas is a British writer and journalist who has written for newspapers including The Economist , The Times , and the Daily Mail . His focus has been on European and transatlantic politics, economics, and security. He is now the Liberal Democrat candidate for Cities of London and Westminster. [1] ‘Obituary: Whitney Smith, vexillologist, died on November 17th’ The Economist (London, 10 December 2016) < https://www.economist.com/obituary/2016/12/10/obituary-whitney-smith-vexillologist-died-on-november-17th > accessed 15 February 2022.

It would be pointless to list all the issues driving so much of society to take on a pessimistic view of our near future and view us as living through an age of crisis. Even if one attempts to muster the statistics to show how, despite appearances, the world is getting better overall, the very fact that everybody thinks and acts as if we are in the middle of or heading towards a catastrophe is in itself emblematic of the volatility of the current age. If the pandemic and the charged geopolitical situation triggered by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine were not enough to put to bed the idea that we were living in a utopia back in 2019, the statistics constantly cited by neoliberal optimists like Nicholas Kristof and Steven Pinker to paint the present as the pinnacle of all humanity have been thoroughly debunked as data manipulation by a host of economists and anthropologists.[1] What is less clear, however, are the reasons why we ended up in such a predicament. The centre, left, and right, while occasionally coinciding on certain particular solutions, have markedly different explanations. The left will blame either the inherent structures of an economy structured around the profit motive, American imperialism, or the neoliberal order as instituted beginning in the 70s and 80s; the right laments the breakdown of traditional social hierarchies, immigration, and the erosion of national sovereignty in favour of trans-national trade agreements and rootless global finance; and the centre chastises everyone for losing trust in the ‘rational’ technocratic structures and norms of the international world-system governing the age of American total hegemony after the collapse of the Berlin wall. Depending on whether they are more left or right-leaning, centrists will also either blame white supremacy and unrealistic demands by the ‘far left’, or the Trumpian takeover of the ‘Grand Old Party’ and the left’s excesses of political correctness and identity politics. While any one of these individual explanations indicates certain real problems that cannot be merely dismissed due to political disagreements about their causes and solutions, these explanations are not all mutually exclusive and none by themselves can fully describe our current predicament. Although, because nothing exists outside of bias or ideology, I will admit my personal sympathies to lie with the first view that our situation can be elucidated by examining the fundamentally crisis-prone nature of the capitalist mode of production, saying this by itself without context would not be productive. Capitalism as the dominant mode of production has existed for at least two centuries and a more in-depth analysis of economic and state structures would be required to show exactly why it is manifesting in the specific form of crisis we see today. Therefore, rather than examining exact policy and system-change proposals or giving a comprehensive economic analysis of why we are here today (which already produces many hot debates), this article will attempt to examine modes of thought necessary to begin thinking about what redemptive social transformation in a time of crisis would mean. For given the vast power of our technology, high levels of technical and scientific expertise, and over a century of struggles and proposals on how to move to a freer, more sustainable, and less economically precarious society, if it were merely a matter of the right technical fixes and not also of people’s consciousness, we would have already been able to construct a better world by now. The Marxist tradition has traditionally framed the relationship between the consciousness required to change the world and the concrete actions by civil society, political parties, and the state to implement these changes as the dialectic between theory and praxis. While the two are viewed as impotent when taken in isolation, Marx’s famous thesis 11 on Feuerbach, that ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; it is necessary to change it’, states the primacy of praxis, as theory and philosophy have no actuality outside of the way they inform action in the world.[2] When one can accurately theorise a situation with the goal of intervening in it in mind, effective strategy combined with proper subjective ‘fidelity to the Event’ (to use Alain Badiou’s terms) then brings about a new reality, meaning that we will then dispense with old ways of thought.[3] However, the ability of one’s understanding of the world to influence the course of events is dependent on the existence of a political agent or agents who contest the direction of society as a whole. If the battling of competing theories and truth-claims by different organisations and layers of society to model the world after themselves is politics, our recent history before Covid and the Russian intervention was therefore apolitical, marked by political stasis, even with dangerous figures like Trump sticking mostly to standard conservative neoliberal policies. The emergence of issues related to the global commons, such as climate change, Covid, and the war in Ukraine, have caught us completely off-guard. Despite decades of warnings from scientists about pandemics and the consistent build-up of tensions between Russia and the West since the end of the Cold War, few predicted the breakout of these two events. Some would say that this is because we live in a post-truth era, where people ignore facts when making theories about the world, thereby informing bad policy. However, we live in a post-truth era not simply because the facts promulgated by ‘experts’ are being ignored by the masses, but because no truths with the meaningful power to change and shape the world, rather than merely manage it, arise out of the facts. Following Badiou’s conception, truths are not only the correspondence of a statement to facts in the world, but primarily to the struggle of subjects to affirm them and reorganise reality around them.[4] Therefore, we live in a post-truth world not because nobody recognises facts anymore, but because there are no longer subjects and institutions to push through the repressed truths that should emerge from these facts. Likewise, as I will explore with reference to the notion of the end of history, we have been living in a post-history era not because there are no events, but because these events have not been the site for the creation of new worlds, subjects, and the implementation of repressed truths. Although it is clear that this era is coming to a close, the events that have brought about this end of the end of history (Covid, the Ukraine war, climate change, and economic instability) have merely politicised people as individuals without bringing back the classical realm of politics proper as the collective fight for the implementation of different theories of society based on differing interpretations of society. In light of us moving to a new era yet finding ourselves able to neither theorise nor act upon it, it is worth bringing up Hegel’s more pessimistic take on the relationship between theory and praxis. ‘When philosophy paints its grey in grey, a form of life has grown old, and it cannot be rejuvenated with grey and grey, but only be recognised; the owl of Minerva begins its flight only with the breaking of dusk’.[5] It has been in fashion since post-structuralist thinkers such as Gilles Deleuze to think of Hegel as a ‘totalizing’ optimist, who merely justifies the status quo by declaring it to be a fully rational system that overcomes all antagonism. However, the previous quote rather exemplifies that Hegel’s attempts to rescue and integrate the newly won idea of freedom into a philosophical system, as social conditions of the early 19th century and the rise of industrial capitalism were threatening it. Therefore, the recognition that his ability to systematise the world, ‘when philosophy paints its grey in grey’, coincides with the coming of a newly contested reality, meaning that one must therefore constantly be reconceiving the concept of freedom and the actions and institutions that implement and guarantee it. As Russia’s invasion of Ukraine (just as Covid nears the possibility of becoming endemic) definitively marks the owl of Minerva’s taking flight from the end-of-history era, this article will attempt to paint the grey and grey that defined our recent political situation and some of its effects in culture. I will rely heavily on concepts from the recently published The End of the End of History (2021),[6] as well as Anton Jäger’s notion of ‘hyper-politics’[7] to examine how we came to such a desperate position, lacking both in redemptive ideas, subjects, and organisations. Without offering a definitive solution, I will propose a concept of Messianism that can combine both the Marxian and Hegelian conceptions of the relationship between philosophy and its effects on action in the world and balances anchoring in the past and present necessity for upheaval. For Messianism is not only a desperate plea for the Other to intervene in our existence and does not merely entail waiting about idly for rescue, but is also predicated upon the active use of human intellect to theorise the positive potentials of the current age and put them into practice. Politics Ex Nihilo? To understand why everything appears to be politically contentious nowadays, yet nobody seems able to change anything and we lack competent and inspiring leaders, we should reflect on our recent history of political stasis to note the continuities and differences with the current moment. We should start with the end of the Cold War, as that marked the last period in living memory for many people where there seemed to be an apparent clash of visions for the future and ways of organising society. Francis Fukuyama proclaimed in his essay ‘The End of History?’ that the fall of the Soviet Union marked not the end of events, social conflicts, or suffering in general, but rather that there would be no more competing paradigms for world hegemony beyond minor flare-ups in areas of the global periphery.[8] The regime of politics that dominated the immediately post-Cold-War period, exemplified by Fukuyama’s triumphalist announcement of the end of real ideological struggle, is designated by Alex Hochuli, George Hoare, and Philip Cunliffe in The End of the End of History as ‘post-politics’. They define the term as ‘a form of government that tries to foreclose political contestation by emphasising consensus, “eradicating” ideology and ruling by recourse to evidence and expertise rather than interests or ideals’.[9] Despite being premised on the official coronation of liberal democracy and its associated rights and freedoms as synonymous with scientific and technocratic governance, post-politics also coincides with massive popular demobilisation, a foreclosure of the public sphere to administrators and technocrats, as well as the consignment of politics to the level of personal interest, where being interested in politics is at the same level of Marvel fandom or following football. All of this is profoundly anti-democratic, undermining the role that popular will can play in shaping collective decision making. With mass movements and struggles that put the whole of society in question consigned to the dustbin of history, post-politics emphasises the private individual as the focus of all policy making. Though stated a few years before the post-political period proper, Margaret Thatcher’s famous declaration that ‘ there is no such thing [as society]; there are individual men and women and there are families’ exemplifies the individualist maxim of this era.[10] This new post-political order was declared as being no more constructed and determined by humans than the natural world, with Tony Blair proclaiming that ‘globalisation is a force of nature’, no more debatable than the fact that ‘autumn should follow summer’.[11] With neither talk of political orders nor reference to anything but the disconnected pursuit of private interests by private persons, with no responsibilities to individuals beyond their most immediate kin, even naming the system we lived in became impossible. ‘Shorn of a systemic alternative, even the notion that we lived in a system called “capitalism” receded from view’.[12] The 90s and 00s were not completely without polarising issues: we might name rising partisanship under the Clinton presidency, the threat of global terrorism after 9/11 and the accompanying attacks on civil liberties, and the wars in the Middle East as examples. All-out rejection of society at large was, however, either completely absent, channelled into silent resignation, or expressed in subcultural scenes (e.g. grunge, rave culture, or bands like Rage against the Machine), which were always caught between the tensions of their radical image and seemingly inevitable corporate co-option. However, once the 2008 crisis showed the unsustainability of ‘debt-fuelled consumption’ to ‘[assuage] anxieties’, post-politics lead to anti-politics, where antagonism and struggle against power structures were back on the table, yet lacking any program or affirmative proposals.[13] Anti-politics can be described as the response to the collapse of post-politics after the global financial crash. The most notable political actor of this period was populism, ranging from Occupy, Syriza, and Podemos to Trump, Brexit, and a renewed Front National in France. Anti-politics, rather than aiming at new forms of politicisation around an idea of a new politics, is merely a reaction against what it perceives as the professionalised and sectioned-off world of officially sanctioned politics’ corrupted existence. Rather than creating powerful organisations to challenge big capital, the anti-political stance bemoans the mismanagement of the situation by technocratic elites, who forced politicisation upon people by severing their material conditions and introducing market disorder to the post-political space, which was billed as being free of conflict. One could take the Occupy Wall Street movement as an example of a movement, which spurned all forms of institution and organisation-building that could take on the economic regime as a whole. Instead, it blamed a particular group of specific figures (the 1%), overlooking class differences amongst the 99% themselves, and praising a version of horizontalist organising based on fetishizing immediate relations between normal people outside of the sanctioned political space of the 1% and economic institutions. The failure of Occupy to effect change epitomised the era which Mark Fisher famously called ‘capitalist realism’.[14] People are mad and disgruntled and the system has been shocked to its core, yet nothing changes and people cannot even think of actually creating a new social order, choosing instead to take a simply negative stance of consternation against the troubled reality thrown upon them as if from outside. The left in anti-politics, still reeling from the post-politics era, shirked from the task of coming to power at a national level. While internationalism and a critique of the viability of nation states as the site of liberation has been and should be a cornerstone of left-wing analysis, this failure to face up to the reality that the global order is structured on national lines is a manifestation of its internalised defeat. To avoid truly contesting national politics, the authors of The End of the End of History note that the left has both made vain attempts at trans-national politics, such as the DiEM-25 movement, and retreated to local participatory structures and support in certain urban municipalities, such as Berlin, Barcelona, or Seattle’s Capitol Hill.[15] Yet this has only served to confirm the retreat of the left from the task of societal transformation to the comfortable place of revelling in minor localised successes. Taking its incipient form in the Trump era, with an anti-political figure taking power and bringing about polarisation in all parts of lie, and coming into full bloom during our hyper-online forced confinement during Covid, post-politics has now given way to what Anton Jäger has called ‘hyper-politics’: A new form of ‘politics’ is present on the football pitch, in the most popular Netflix shows, in the ways people describe themselves on their social media pages…Yet instead of a re-emergence of the politics of the twentieth century—complete with a revival of mass parties, unions, and workplace militancy—it is almost as if a step has been skipped…Today, everything is politics. And yet, despite people being intensely politicised in all of these dimensions, very few are involved in the kind of organised conflict of interests that we might once have described as politics in the classical, twentieth-century sense.[16] Now, the various divisions of the left, right, and centre’s visions of how the world should be are becoming clearer and permeate every single fact of life. Yet, despite this, nothing seems to change, with the technocratic centre reasserting its power with Covid and the election of Joe Biden. Another hallmark of our current moment is the tendency to view all political issues through the lens of ‘culture wars’ and to make various aspects of personal morality and cultural history the site of political contestation, where we are meant to prove our own individual virtue rather than organising around shared material interests. Given the constant political scrutiny and evaluation of everything from hairstyles to cartoons and comedy shows, it seems the public sphere is everywhere. There are no real civil society organisations to back it up or mobilise people to a positive goal, with religious groups, in-person cultural scenes, and unions that are not mere state or party management of interests having failed to regain their previous levels of participation and militancy. This is made even worse by Covid and social media siloing us both literally and figuratively into our personal bubbles. As Jäger notes, even with politicisation of every facet of life, political parties have not regained their previous levels of membership, which has declined by an average of 69% for the major parties of Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands. Despite making everything political, hyper-politics has not overcome the post-political erosion of the public sphere. It has rather promoted a public sphere whose every part is merely a reflection of private desires and conflicts. One can invoke here the classic ‘ship of Theseus’ thought experiment, where a museum ship’s parts are slowly replaced over a period of time to the point that the ship’s form stays the same, but not a single physical component of the original remains, begging the question of whether the same ship remains. We could say that, through the various political forms of the end-of-history era, what used to be the public sphere has been slowly replaced with pieces of entertainment, personal spats on social media, and culture war issues. In face of this, it is questionable whether we are still even dealing with a public sphere at all. Instead, mass expression of individual virtues is passed off as politics and interaction with the public sphere takes place only through atomised engagement with social media in the interests of personal entertainment. People form their political opinions today through scrolling past various punchy headlines as they appear in their feeds and then sharing them without reading through the articles themselves. Far from being a place of meaningful public communication by people around the world to create networks that would bring about social change, the great hope during and after the Arab Spring, the use of social media to share news and engage politically has degenerated into mere feedback loops of outrage, sneering, and mockery. These serve mainly to entertain us in a feed of content, flattening the significance of the various individual articles, posts, and discussions we come across. Covid accelerated this tendency exponentially; during periods of lockdown and semi-normality, certain people accessed the world only through social media. Phenomena such as Neuralink, Metaverse, NFT’s, or Google Glass represent attempts at totalising this type of digital engagement even more completely to all facets of waking life—a dream for those in power who want to prevent our hyper-charged reality from spilling over into real social unrest. Whether or not they are practicable, the fact that our tech oligarchs are moving in such a direction is indicative of the role current virtual online spaces play in our political sphere. Cultural Defence Mechanisms against the Return of Politics Hyper-politics shows itself to be a synthesis of the globalised political stasis of post-politics, which forecloses thought about any new society, bringing along a hyper-charged environment of extreme polarisation and pseudo-politics without concrete programmatic visions for the future. All of this, in combination with the various cultural pathologies of social media, leads to some very peculiar overlaps between the public sphere, personal entertainment, cultural mores, and political contestation. Though reverence for charisma and for the politician and business figure as a ‘personality’ has existed for a long time, the active celebrification of public figures has reached new heights. This is clearly the case for figures like Trump or Zelenskyy, who built their careers in media and whose rises can be partially attributed to personal charisma and having already been a household name for years. Elon Musk, similarly, has taken advantage of the neuroses of online popular culture to build a falsified image of his ‘genius’. However, this trend is even more notable when mainstream figures are elevated to celebrity status, such as Andrew Cuomo (a classic New York machine politician) and Anthony Fauci (a career bureaucrat) for giving the air of competence in contrast to Trump, while relying on the liberal media’s pandering to their role in the culture war to shroud their own indiscretions. Even a figure like Jeremy Corbyn was memeified, with his name chanted at football stadiums and declared as the ‘absolute boy’: this despite him being personally rather uncharismatic and unable to build a robust counter-image of himself against smears by the mainstream press beyond the insipid slogan of ‘a kinder, gentler politics’. In the broad realm of what gets called ‘identity politics’—a vague term, which nonetheless refers to a large set of generally recognised phenomena—one can see how a hyper-political landscape is used to gloss over the bread and butter issues pertinent to the mostly working class members of historically marginalised groups. A classic manifestation of this, which has reached its peak since the hyper-political MeToo movement, is the ‘girl-bossification’ of vapid, corrupt, and uninspiring political leaders and corporate executives, taking shape with Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’ and reaching its apex with Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. Criticism of their records, class status, or elite-friendly policy proposals, even from a feminist standpoint, could easily reduced to mere sexism. In racial politics, a similar framing of all sociological categories through hyper-mediatised exposures of individual racism has been called ‘race reductionism’ by political scientist Adolph Reed.[17] Unlike when racial struggles were more directly connected with socialist movements, trade unions, or basic material demands and universalist messages, social justice movements increasingly focus on diversifying elite positions in business, media, and politics, closing the wealth gap (which exists primarily between the upper classes of various races) as well as attempting to restrict cultural exchange to fight ‘cultural appropriation’. This coincides with the rise of what Haitian-American writer Pascal Robert calls ‘the Black Political Class’: a minority of black people in positions of power within their own community, who proclaim their own interests, i.e. as members of the middle and upper classes, as the interests of black people at large and ‘ who work as a “race management” elite that metaphorically corrals Black electoral choices into a politically contained vessel’.[18] What Robert is identifying is a generalised phenomenon not specific only to African-Americans, whereby the struggle against various particular racial, religious, or gender-based oppressions is conceived not in universalistic terms, but rather through the concept of ‘representation’. This serves more to benefit those already in a privileged position to speak for their marginalised group than to remedy the less glamorous problems shared by poor and working class people of all identities. Furthermore, identity reductionism also serves as tool of the ruling class at large to portray anything that opposes either their self-serving cultural policies or elite technocratic rule at large as rooted in racism, sexism, or other forms of intolerance, the accusation of which can (justifiably) discredit someone’s political ideas. An example of this was the painting of the Canadian trucker protest against vaccine mandates and the biomedical security state as ‘conspiracy theorists’ and ‘white supremacists’ by the Liberal government to justify invoking war-time security measures: or the labelling of Bernie Sanders’ male supporters as ‘Bernie bros’ to falsely conflate critique of Hillary Clinton and support for social democracy as sexist. Parallel to the use of identity politics is the generalised tendency of modern hyper-politics to reduce every conflict to one between the forces of good and the forces of evil. This was present to a degree in George Bush’s famous identification of an ‘axis of evil’. A contemporary example of this is the coverage regarding Ukraine. Although Putin’s war of aggression bears as little justification as Bush’s invasion of Iraq, almost the entirety of the media has framed the conflict as one of pure innocent freedom-loving Europeans against ‘Eastern despotic hordes’, rather than a more nuanced examination of the different factions within both countries. Instead, we are throwing our own cultural quarrels onto a regional conflict and framing Ukraine, another impoverished post-Soviet oligarchy with moderately stronger liberal civil liberties than Russia, as the bastion of everything free and civilised about the West. In doing so, we end up infantilising Ukrainians and whitewashing their leaders, such as Zelenskyy himself, who, as honourable as his decision to stay in Kyiv was, is himself supported by oligarchs,[19] holds wealth in offshore accounts,[20] and recently banned all independent media and 11 political parties in order to stop ‘pro-Russian disinformation’, even though some on the list have condemned Russian aggression and are non-aligned socialist parties.[21] By praising Ukraine as the upholder of our free liberal democratic order, despite recognising for years our system’s decay to a point where freedom is becoming merely formal, we are being morally blackmailed to accept our own state of unfreedom and our societies’ giving up on their avowed liberal principles as the pinnacle of human freedom. We can thereby see a clear attempt to restore the post-history consensus in light of the shocks of both Covid and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Pop culture and culture war metaphors of goodies and baddies were used in similar ways to justify curtailments of our freedoms and collective well-being during Covid lockdowns. As discussed, calls for censorship and ‘content moderation’ on tech platforms were justified by painting anybody who questioned the conclusions of officially sanctioned experts as right-wingers, conspiracy theorists, and racists. This was used to suppress important and potentially politically influential stories such as evidence for the lab-leak theory and the Hunter Biden emails. With the re-fetishisation of technocracy in the aftermath of the ‘populist decade’, in which experts started to appear discredited, management and technocracy have reasserted their cultural cachet while simultaneously feeling constantly like the embattled underdogs in a fight against the evil forces of ‘disinformation’ and ‘Russian meddling’. The authors of The End of the End of History call this phenomenon ‘Neoliberal Order Breakdown Syndrome’: This section of society assumes their views and predilections are common sense, while at the same time feeling constantly embattled…While “the liberal package” (combining elements such as cosmopolitanism, respect for expertise, individualism, an emphasis on personal ethics) is culturally hegemonic, liberals refuse to acknowledge their own hegemony. The liberal always has her back to the wall. While their views find home in the newspapers of record, they feel submerged under a tsunami of tabloid content. They flaunt their commitment to tolerance and diversity, but balk at the expression of non-liberal views from their fellow citizens.[22] This explains how the naturalisation of the ruling technocracy of the post-political period, with its emphasis on neutral expertise, can at the same time coincide with an emphasis on personal morality and individual common sense in the polarised world of hyper-politics. Many have attempted to explain the Left’s lack of resistance to, and even outright support of illiberal and technocratic policies on the basis of moral victimhood, by blaming its capture on the Professional Managerial Class (PMC). However, the socialist movement has always relied on being able to take certain sections of the radicalised middle and upper-middle-classes to bring their intellectual and professional skills to mass organising—from radicalised middle-class progressive liberals like (arguably) Marx himself, to high bourgeois and aristocratic figures who commit ‘class suicide’ like György Lukács. Nonetheless, the fact that this ‘professionalisation’ of the Left has taken place in the post-political era has largely foreclosed the events that would previously have pushed this social stratum towards a working-class politics. Instead, there remains a petty managerialism that serves only to counteract the unfulfilled promises of social mobility through education and credentialization. The political gap caused by the absence of a radical Left has been filled by the tech industry’s promise to release us from all previous scarcity and social hierarchy. We consigned the thought of the new to marketing wizards like Steve Jobs, to sell us on surrendering every aspect of our social sphere to algorithms. However, the novelty these produce is merely quantitative, regenerating infinite new variations upon a static underlying logic. By adjusting our human behaviour to the impersonal forces of the algorithm, we end up producing things with the sleek presentation of novelty, whilst being progressively deteriorating variations on the same underlying model. Marxist technologist Dwayne Monroe notes, for example, how the term ‘artificial intelligence’, designating mere pattern matching algorithms combined with vast storage, works to diminish the value and dignity of human labour and ingenuity.[23] In the cultural sphere, the tech-driven explosion of the hours of music available has similarly resulted in a drop in the consumption and production of new music; the 200 most popular new songs account for less than 5% of streaming.[24] We can see hyper-politics as a correlative to this hyper-charged, yet somehow indifferent domination of all our lives by technology. For, likewise, without a subject borne out by parties and institutions with the power of transforming the state, we cannot turn the quantitatively rising polarisation of every aspect of reality into qualitative political change. Quoting Jäger again: In many ways it seems that the lesson which has truly been learned from the ‘post-political’ era is that politics must be reintroduced into the public sphere. But without the re-emergence of mass organisation, this can only occur at a discursive level or within the prism of mediatic politics: every major event is scrutinised for its ideological character, this produces controversies which play out among increasingly clearly delineated camps on social media platforms, and are then rebounded through each side’s preferred media outlets. Through this process much is politicised, but little is achieved.[25] At the same time, as shown in Hegel’s ‘owl of Minerva’ quote, although the ability to theorise the totality of an era corresponds to its passing, it also coincides with the recognition and preservation of an original idea of freedom that has been lost and must be recovered. As much as I have criticised in this article the current state of liberal democracy, scientific management, and technology, at various points these have brought with them the promise of liberation from earlier forms of domination and rigid positions within a social caste. It is once these had wholly swept aside older forms of unfreedom that the contradiction of free labour itself showed itself in its full form and brought about the demand for it to be overcome. In order to break out of our continuing death spiral, we must relearn how to think about the unrealised potentials of the past, so as to make them actual in a radically new form. How can we think this freedom in an age of rising unfreedom? Hegel attempted to preserve the notion of liberty sparked by the French Revolution by systematising it into the Absolute in his Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820). Theodor Adorno, in Negative Dialectics (1966), takes an inverse approach by introducing the notion of the ‘non-identity’ of any concept raised to the level of the Absolute: By immersing itself in what confronts it a priori, the concept [ Begriff ], and becoming cognisant of its immanently antinomic character, thought dwells on the idea of something beyond contradiction. The antagonism of thought to its heterogenous object is reproduced in thought itself as its own immanent contradiction. Reciprocal critique of universality and particularity, identifying acts that judge whether the concept does justice to what it is concerns itself with and whether particularity fulfils even its own concept, this is the medium of thinking the non-identity of concept and particularity.[26] Adorno is essentially arguing that the non-identity of any positive content with the material reality it engenders points to the possibility of moving beyond a certain contradiction. Thus, to recover lost ideas of freedom, we must—Adorno suggests—focus on the non-identity of the world as it is with the ideals and structuring principles it is built upon. This is the task of figuring out how to build the new out of the ideas and materials currently at hand. However, unlike Adorno, we must not stay forever at the level of critique by non-identity. To do so would bring about criticism that is either unable to change anything (it is hard to affirm a concept if we retain the compulsion to deconstruct everything), self-reproducing for the sake of mere theoretical activity, or easily co-optable by the status quo (like tendencies of so-called ‘post-modernism’). If we are to think about non-identity, we must not merely think of it in its empty critique as an abstract concept structuring all political theoretical engagement; this would be taking non-identity outside of its intensity and vivacity. Or, as Friedrich Nietzsche would say, this would be a taming of the concept’s real effectivity and vitality in the world, in favour of a purely theoretical exercise that degrades concrete experiences of this non-identity.[27] While not dispensing with the notions of totality or identity, using them rather as operators whose unreality still structures the immediacy of non-identity to reality, we must learn to consider the absolute totality of non-identity in order to tackle its vicissitudes in a historical era like ours. More simply put, we must learn to experience the discontinuity of the past and the future as colouring the tensions of the present situation. This process is immanent, but not exclusively a critique. To overcome both the pitfalls of a systemic justification of the world as it is (such as that undertaken by Right Hegelianism) and the deflationary practice of incessant critique, it strives for renewed self-conscious engagement with the Absolute, i.e. the whole of society as self-consciously shaping its future, at the hinge-points of history where we are faced with either total tragedy or coming redemption: Messianism. In the next section, I will suggest a conception of Messianic thought, based particularly on Walter Benjamin’s late works on history, to formulate a generic concept, universalizable throughout particular spiritual, political, and secular contexts, that can engender renewed engagement with the ideas of freedom and redemption of the past so as to break out of the hyper-charged yet languid space brought about by the end-of-history era. The Proposition of Messianism At first glance, the Messianic longing that there be sent a figure from beyond all conceivable present horizons of possibility seems to have nothing to do with politics. Politics is ultimately about the management and allocation of, and conflict over decision making power, distribution of resources, and mobilisation of labour. On the one hand, then, the notion of a redeeming force coming from outside of all currently imaginable horizons to save us from our own impotence seems to contradict the active engagement and concrete strategising required by politics. On the other hand, we have seen supposedly transformational political movements contenting themselves merely with the technical management of state political affairs. For there to be true politics, there is also the need for a Messianic idea of something outside of what is currently conceivable in state politics to be actively pushed through by partisan political subjects. The task of Messianism is to figure out how the current range of possibilities can be transformed into something that appears impossible in our current horizon. Rather than being apolitical, the experience of working towards a Messianic or even utopian future and seeking to transform the whole of society responds to the demands of all three of the contemporary regimes of politics discussed in this essay. Firstly, Messianism, in the post-political landscape of the end of history, seeks to bring about a culmination of all previous events as leading to a single point in the present. Rather than being the mere transition between fleeting moments, the present then becomes a monad containing all the congealed influence of the past and its respective potential futures in decisive suspension. This conception of the historical temporality of the present is intended to lead away from what Walter Benjamin calls the ‘empty homogenous time’ of liberal progressivism in his essay ‘On the Concept of History’.[28] This was seen clearly in the Third Way politicians of the nineties, who viewed any progress to come out of indifferent cycles of global markets managed by neutral technocrats in a system which seemed to stand outside of the twists and turns of history. While completing a sort of end of history, or rather ‘consummation’ ( Vollendung ) of history, Messianism differs from post-politics in that it reintroduces politics by bringing all of its conflicts to a decisive hinge point, which, by opening the opportunity for redemption at any moment, does not so much end history as rather transforming it so radically that its concept must be rethought.[29] The kingdom of God on earth brought about by the Messiah is thereby not the ultimate destination of fate, but rather marks the end of a certain period of existence, marking that ‘a form of life has grown old’ as Hegel said.[30] Secondly, political Messianism, like populist discontent, contains an antipolitical moment of rejection of the precarious conditions of the present and its institutionally sanctioned ideology. It is in this sense that Messianic thought relates to a sense of crisis and impending catastrophe, rooted in a plea to a force that can save us and let us no longer have to deal with the dreadful present. However, in rejecting the anti-political impulse to sweep away evil actors causing disorder in order to preserve a previous order, it is necessary to concretely introduce new goals and models of social organisation to avoid an impotent sense of nihilistic resentment, which can only push towards the far right. For one must always remember not to reduce political problems to being a matter of an intact social organism, ‘the people’, that is undermined by an outside group or factor of essentially different character. Rather, a Messianic view seeks out the contradictions of society in itself and considers redemption not to be the removal of a particular enemy, entity, or institution, but rather the redirection of the past that brought about the current disorder towards a new future: and hence a new past and present. Finally, the hyper-political moment we are in, with its polarisation of every aspect of politics and social life, while so far merely confused due to the inability to see positive changes, sets the preconditions for actively determining society as a whole. Whereas the incessant debates about every cultural and historical institution and the heated accusations flying on every side are tedious due to their apparent lack of resolution, this is at least an indicator that our current ways of existence socially, economically, civically, and with nature cannot continue sustainably. Hyper-politics, nonetheless, tends to amount to a frantic quibbling over the precarity of the present. It is neither an attempt to redeem the potential of the past nor yet to implement concretely different conditions for the near future. One potential positive of the tendencies for nostalgia shown by culture and art is an at least unconscious memory of the past’s lost potentials. Though nostalgia is often a conservative force when engaged in modern phantasmatic reconstructions (as it is neither possible, nor desirable, to resuscitate the past ‘as it actually was’), the focus on the absolute difference of the past to the present, as showing the possibility of social reproduction along almost unrecognisable logics, also creates the theoretical space for thought of the new and the redemption of lost futures. Messianic thought is meant to fill the conceptual gap that hyper-politics is currently stuck in, by attempting to think about the redemption of past history through the immediate possibility of a future that overcomes the extreme tension and emergency of the present point in time. This sense of ‘dialectics at a standstill’ (‘Dialektik im Stilstand’[31]) that Benjamin uses in his inversion of Marxist dialectics, which usually emphasises history’s constant movement rather than stasis, helps us to think of how the present, beyond its mere fleeting into the past, can hold all of the contradictions of the past and the potentials of the future at a point, where the subjective factor of history can play a determinate role in shaping the future. Benjamin thereby conceives the Messianic moment not as something flashing up for no reason to our help to bring about an unconditionally good world, but rather as when the whole material and causal nexus that determines our present is halted due to internal breakdown, and can be redirected towards and present the image of a new future. History deals with connections and with arbitrarily elaborated causal chains. But since history affords an idea of the fundamental citability of its object, this object must present itself, in its ultimate form, as a moment of humanity. In this moment, time must be brought to a standstill. The dialectical image is an occurrence of ball lightning that runs across the whole horizon of the past. Articulating the past historically means recognizing those elements of the past which come together in the constellation of a single moment…The dialectical image can be defined as the involuntary memory of redeemed humanity.[32] This uniquely charged moment cannot come about randomly at any time in history. Rather, it has a tragic dimension and is occasioned by desperation and potential catastrophe. The revolutions that make new forms of politics and social life do not come about as seamless transitions from one progressive age to the next in times of prosperity, but arise when the material and intellectual foundations of a state show themselves to be in crisis. To quote Benjamin: ‘Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train—namely, the human race—to activate the emergency brake’.[33] Furthermore, the scholar of Jewish mysticism Gerschom Scholem noted that every instantiation of Messianiam in the Jewish tradition entails not only a utopian dimension, but also the restoration of an ideal original condition. This restorative element likewise also contains utopian implications, because, given change in conditions, what is intended to be reinstated is actually novel and differentiates from both the present and the past. Here is Scholem, in his essay ‘Toward an Understanding of the Messianic Idea in Judaism’ (1963): The restorative forces are directed to the return and recreation of a past condition which comes to be felt as ideal. More precisely, they are directed to a condition pictured by the historical fantasy and the memory of the nation as circumstances of an ideal past. Here hope is turned backwards to the re-establishment of an original state of things and to a ‘life with the ancestors’. But there are, in addition, forces which press forward and renew; they are nourished by a vision of the future and receive utopian inspiration. They aim at a state of things which has never yet existed…the Messianic idea crystallizes only out of the two of them together.[34] What most defines the potentially tragic character of the Messianic moment is that redemption is ultimately not guaranteed. Complete destruction and death, collapse into barbarism, or even continued slow decline and increasingly whitewashed suffering, are all possible. The fact that both overcoming present despair and succumbing to it are absolutely possible is what gives Messianism a central place in intervention by people into history, because it confronts historical antagonism from a point that cannot be smoothed out and seamlessly integrated into the passage of time, shaping individuals out of this experience. It involves a use of political will which cannot be reduced through consensus or conflict mediation. The political actor who takes part in a Messianic project for the future identifies a space that is more originary than either the past individual’s material determinacy or subjective will. Theologian Franz Rosenzweig calls this the ‘metaethical’ dimension of human life,[35] along with the metaphysical and metalogical, critiquing Hegel for attempting to reconcile the individual with the social whole and history through a smoothly integrated system of contradictions.[36] The metaethical aspect of personhood rather, which both extends beyond particular contemporary norms and is always linked to a determinate place in history, comes about at moments where the political subject must act and make decisions to reorient the past and its connection to the future. In conceiving the Messianic moment as one where the incessant movement of history is taken ‘at a standstill’, one connects with the metaethical dimension of humanity, where subjects intervene to self-consciously shape the rules and structures of social life and morality. History at the moment of rupture and possible redemption or ruin therefore brings about a reflection on society’s past and current potentials as a whole, beyond the apparent chaos of the crisis-ridden situation. For Messianism entails an encounter both with the positive and progressive elements of the past, such as capitalism’s institution of free labour, liberal rights, and productive capacities, as well as the present situation of its missed potential, such as in climate change, rising inequality and poverty, and increasingly illiberal and repressive political systems. To self-consciously shape the future and implement a possible redemptive new idea of society, one therefore needs to think both the potentials of the concepts in the past and their non-identity, à la Adorno, with the present situation they have conditioned. The task is to spot the presence of the formerly redemptive ideas of the past as they appear when fleeting from the present. ‘For it is an irretrievable image of the past, which threatens to disappear with every present that does not recognise itself as meant in it’.[37] Rather than being fixated on abstract lofty ideals, the Messianic promise of freedom is likewise predicated on having an idea of unfreedom and the threat of total subjugation (by fascism, climate austerity, economic breakdown, etc.). Therefore, instead of being beholden to the hopeful promise of a better future, one must actively fight the enemies of freedom to realise a Messianic future. ‘For the Messiah does not only come as the redeemer; he comes as the conqueror of the anti-Christ’.[38] Because the idea of utopia only gains meaning when contrasted with its reflected dystopic potentials. ‘Freedom can only be grasped in determinate negation, in proportion to the concrete form of unfreedom’.[39] A Messianic political movement therefore does not conceive of utopia through ahistorical figments of reified thought, but rather as arising out of the concrete potentials of the movement of history in its present moment. The inversion of the movement of history into a politically charged Messianic moment, where both the concept of freedom and the reality of unfreedom are immanent to political action, puts our subjectivity and connection to the world, social structures, and ourselves into question at its zero-level. In opposition to pure historicism, which presents an invariant history in which human subjects are merely moving parts, the Messianic conception of material history takes this nexus of material contradictions discovered by the historian or political scientist as they matter immanently to historical subjects, who can affect society’s direction. With the confusion of events taken in their absolute singularity qua crystallisation into a single moment, one is able to ‘burst the continuum of history’.[40] This does not mean an end of history as such or the descent into pure degeneration, but rather the attempt to split the history of humanity into two parts. What Messianism introduces is a way to think about the centre between these two parts, where political agency can be expressed in the subject’s engagement. The political-messianic subject therefore comes about by crystallising both its prior historical determination and the accelerating continuum of time into the full gravity of the present moment, in order to mark an absolute break between past and future.[41] To conclude, it is worth reemphasizing the situation of political foreclosure that generates the need for its overcoming by Messianic thought and action. Recent history has shown both the flatness of the post-history era and the directionless impotence of anti-politics and hyper-politics, all premised on deemphasizing the role of collective affairs and of political order in shaping individuals’ lives and creating transformative change. Although we cannot simply choose to think ourselves out of our predicament, we must again affirm the ability of current circumstances to generate ideas of new possibilities and state that any political order, even one declared to be post-history, will inevitably generate ruptures. Where Messianism enters is in thinking about how these breaks in history occur not merely as a seamless unnoticed transitions between systems, but are based around decisive moments, which manifest concretely, beyond both immanence and transcendence, to political actors in the present. This is not simply the imposition of a ‘totalising’ political idea on top of discrete individuals. By understanding historical events as monads containing past determination, future possibility, and present subjective engagement, Messianism applies universally, allowing anyone to consider the relationship between their own actions and the external arrival of world redemption at the crossroads of history. Combining what Scholem called the ‘utopian’ with the ‘restorative’,[42] Messianism is a paradigm that allows the individual to conceive better possible futures through a double reflection on the past: both as conditioning the ways that the future must distinguish itself from the past, and recalling the lost possibilities contained in our origins. For though Messianism is ultimately future-orientated, it rests upon the necessity to think about the Origin, both to understand the causal chains determining our current predicament and conceive of absolute novelty based on our original creative essence. Rather than the unchanging continuum of the post-history era, Messianism situates the historical subject between the rooted mass of the past events and the idea of human redemption and a rupture in history. Without the notion of something external coming with to help us dig ourselves out of this tension, we are haunted by the past, rather than revering it by transforming the present. Rather than overcoming past failures by reviving their lost liberatory potentials, we pathologise them excessively in our politics. As Marx said, ‘ the tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living’.[43] Current hyper-politics sees past ideologies infecting us parasitically, as a neurotic defence mechanism against our own powerlessness. Without prospects for political agency, the left and right take pleasure in unseriously using political tension around every facet of life as an escape from the mundanity of every-day powerlessness. The concrete Messianic thought of redemption in the future, which remained unimaginable during the era of ‘capitalist realism’, rather views in the past ‘a secret index, through which it is pointed towards redemption’.[44] This allows the past to always point to the possibility of its future redemption, and creates links between political subjects and truths across historical epochs: the Origin that constantly is renewed, transformed, and re-individuated. Nothing about any of this is ‘deterministic’ or ‘reductionist’. Any radical change in the world being pushed through by free and imperfect human subjects can fail based on a variety of unpredictable factors. The Messianic moment is an unconditioned encounter with the possibility of reconnection with the past through a utopian future, which Badiou calls the Event, the point at which the contradictions of the world crystallise and engender a new organising principle of society. This promise of a different future engendered by the Event requires a certain subjective ‘fidelity’ and a name—the Messiah—upon which its success is not guaranteed from the outset. The Messianic moment is only confirmed in retrospect, once it has already been completed and having initiated a new mode of existence requiring different forms of thought. This is why we are always ultimately in waiting for the Messiah, for whose arrival one is always working and rethinking the past. Whenever a crisis-ridden present and the potential for tragedy brings about what Scholem calls ‘the plastic hours of history’,[45] where political subjects have the leeway to establish new orders, a ‘light messianic force’[46] persists, which bears the constant task of redeeming lost conceptions of freedom and investigating the historical structure of our desperate situation to see how it can give birth to new worlds. Max Klein Max Klein graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in French and German from the University of Cambridge in 2022. Raised in New York City and currently based in London, his interests include Marxism, structuralism, Hegelian philosophy, Jewish thought, and political economy. Additionally, he is active as a composer and jazz pianist. [1] Cf. Jason Hickel, The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality and its Solutions (William Heinemann 2017). [2] Karl Marx, ‘Thesen über Feuerbach’ in Volker Gerhardt (ed), Eine angeschlagene These (Akademie Verlag 1996) 298. Translation the author’s. [3] Cf. Alain Badiou, L'être et l'événement (Édition du Seuil 1988). [4] Cf. Alain Badiou, The Immanence of Truths (Bloomsbury 2022). [5] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Grundlinien der Philosophie des Rechts (first published 1820, Akademie Verlag 1981) 28. Translation the author’s. [6] Philip Cunliffe, George Hoare, and Alex Hochuli, The End of the End of History: Politics in the Twenty-First Century (Zero Books 2021). [7] Anton Jäger, ‘How the World Went from Post-Politics to Hyper-Politics’ ( Tribune , January 3 2022) < https://tribunemag.co.uk/2022/01/from-post-politics-to-hyper-politics > accessed 10 June 2022. [8] Francis Fukuyama, ‘The End of History?’ (1989) 16 The National Interest 3-18. [9] Cunliffe, Hoare, and Hochuli (n 6) 4. [10] Douglas Keay, ‘AIDS, Education, and the Year 2000: An Interview with Margaret Thatcher’ ( Woman’s Own , 31 October 1987) 8-10. [11] ‘Tony Blair's Conference Speech 2005’ The Guardian (London, 27 September 2005) < https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2005/sep/27/labourconference.speeches > accessed 10 June 2022. [12] Cunliffe, Hoare, and Hochuli (n 6) 5. [13] ibid 36. [14] Mark Fisher, Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? (Zero Books 2010). [15] Cunliffe, Hoare, and Hochuli (n 6) 148-9. [16] Jäger (n 7). [17] Adolph Reed, ‘Socialism and the Argument against Race Reductionism’ (2020) 29(2) New Labor Forum 36–43. [18] Pascal Robert, ‘A Black Political Elite Serving Corporate Interests Is Misrepresenting Our Community’ ( Newsweek , 23 November 2021) < https://www.newsweek.com/black-political-elite-serving-corporate-interests-misrepresenting-our-community-opinion-1652384 > accessed 10 June 2022. [19] David Clark, ‘Will Zelenskyy Target All Ukrainian Oligarchs Equally?’ ( Atlantic Council , 10 July 2021) < https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/ukrainealert/will-zelenskyy-target-all-ukrainian-oligarchs-equally/ > accessed 10 June 2022. [20] Aubrey Belford, Luke Harding, and Elena Loginova, ‘Revealed: ‘anti-oligarch’ Ukrainian president’s offshore connections’ The Guardian (London, 3 October 2021) < https://www.theguardian.com/news/2021/oct/03/revealed-anti-oligarch-ukrainian-president-offshore-connections-volodymyr-zelenskiy > accessed 10 June 2022. [21] Grayson Quay, ‘Zelensky Nationalizes TV News and Restricts Opposition Parties’ ( The Week , 20 March 2022) < https://theweek.com/russo-ukrainian-war/1011528/zelensky-nationalizes-tv-news-and-restricts-opposition-parties > accessed 10 June 2022. [22] Cunliffe, Hoare, and Hochuli (n 6) 62. [23] Dwayne Monroe, ‘Attack Mannequins: AI as Propaganda’ ( Computational Impacts , 19 September 2021) < https://monroelab.net/attack-mannequins-ai-as-propaganda > accessed 10 June 2022. [24] Ted Gioia, ‘Is Old Music Killing New Music?’ The Atlantic (Washington DC, 23 January 2022) < https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/old-music-killing-new-music/621339/ > accessed 10 June 2022. [25] Jäger (n 7). [26] Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialektik (first published 1966, Suhrkamp 1999) 149. Translation the author’s. [27] Cf. Friedrich Nietzsche, The Antichrist (first published 1888) in The Portable Nietzsche (Walter Kaufmann ed, Penguin Classics 2008). [28] Walter Benjamin, ‘Über den Begriff der Geschichte’ in Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften I-2 (first published 1940, Suhrkamp 1980) 704. Translation the author’s. [29] Walter Benjamin, ‘Theologisch-Politisches Fragment’ in Walter Benjamin, Illuminationen: Ausgewählte Schriften I . (first published 1921, Suhrkamp 1977) 203-4. Translation the author’s. [30] Hegel (n 5) 28. [31] Walter Benjamin, Gesammelte Schriften V (Suhrkamp 1982) 577. [32] Walter Benjamin, ‘Paralipomena to “On the Concept of History”’ in Walter Benjamin, Selected Writings Volume 4: 1938-1940 (Belknap 2006) 403. [33] ibid 402. [34] Gerschom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism and Other Essays on Jewish Spirituality (Schocken Books 1971) 3. [35] Franz Rosenzweig, Der Stern der Erlösung (first published 1921, Suhrkamp 1988) 12. [36] ibid 7-8. [37] Benjamin (n 28) 695. [38] ibid. [39] Adorno (n 26) 230. [40] Benjamin (n 28) 702. [41] ibid 702-3. [42] Scholem (n 34) 3. [43] Karl Marx, ‘Der achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte’ in Karl Marx / Friedrich Engels: Werke, Artikel, Entwürfe Juli 1851 bis Dezember 1852 (first published 1852, Dietz Verlag 1985) 97. Translation the author’s. [44] Benjamin (n 28) 693. [45] David Biale and Gerschom Scholem, ‘The Threat of Messianism: An Interview with Gershom Scholem’ The New York Review of Books (New York, 14 August 1980) < https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1980/08/14/the-threat-of-messianism-an-interview-with-gershom > accessed 10 June 2022. [46] Benjamin (n 28) 694.

To stand at the edge of the sea, to sense the ebb and flow of the tides, to feel the breath of a mist moving over a great salt marsh, to watch the flight of shore birds that have swept up and down the surf lines of the continents for untold thousands of years, to see the running of the old eels and the young shad to the sea, is to have knowledge of things that are nearly as eternal as any earthly life can be. —Rachel Carson It would have been a shame to have missed the scale of the night with sleep and, besides which, it has been too cold. A late May frost has crept across the land, stiffening stalks and deep-freezing my bones. A super-moon has drowned the night with light. It is three in the morning. The ducks who have been swimming all night keeping warm and alert, are now calling to each other in short whispered wheinkk-wheinkkks. An owl patrols the path at the foot of the sea wall and on the silver band of silent water before me huge supertankers hum and throb their way up-river towards London’s ports. The Thames Estuary is not beautiful in any conventional sense. Joseph Conrad, who is probably the estuary’s greatest champion wrote, ‘it has no noble features, no romantic grandeur of aspect, no smiling geniality’. For centuries, its marshes have been a place for dirty industry where ‘tall slender chimneys smoked, speaking of work, manufacture and trade as palm groves on a tropical island speak of luxuriant grace, beauty and vigour of a tropical nature’. Nowadays the chimneys have largely been replaced by the squat tanks and twisting pipes of oil refineries, gas and petrochemical works. Acres of imported cars twinkle like gems in the sun and cones of sand and gravel peak like extinct volcanoes. But, beyond the cement and aggregate works of Gravesend, is the wild and mysterious Hoo Peninsula. Conrad wrote of the area that it appealed to an ‘adventurous imagination’. He wrote of the ‘wide open, spacious, and inviting place’ which is ‘hospitable at first glance’. It is a haunting place where skylarks and curlews have shared the space with convicts, cordite, and malaria. The critic, novelist, and London biographer Peter Ackroyd wrote that ‘even at the beginning of the 21st century, walking alone by the shores of the estuary, it is possible to feel great fear—fear of solitude, fear of being abandoned, fear of the river itself’. In Gravesend’s last pub before the isolation of the marshes begins, grey-haired men with big bellies slouch in metal chairs, drinking mid-morning lagers at the Ship and Lobster. Two St. George flags twitch on the beer garden’s fence and another flaps from a flagpole. I walk past the crumbling Victorian warehouses and join a fence which borders the path. A red flag, agitated by the stiff easterly wind, warns of a firing range. A group of police marksmen in fluorescent jackets gather by a firing wall. They shall be the last people I’ll see for more than 24 hours. As the land breaks free from the town, the horse-cropped grass is firm and fast to walk upon. This is that lovely moment at the beginning of a walk when one feels that one could walk forever. A sure and clear path, a wind and a cloudless May sky. Sandwiches, coffee and soup in the back pack. Ahead, avenues of pylons stretch from horizon to horizon and along the sea-wall stubby hawthorns whistle in the wind as they prepare to burst their buds. Wild gypsy horses with huge furry forelocks nibble at short stems. Supertankers filled with oil, others labouring under cliffs of containers, ply the river. They seem ponderous and slow, burdened by their loads, but I cannot keep up with them as they sail downstream. I even ran for a short section, but they are fleeter than they appear. After an hour or so of walking—and some running—I arrive at Shornmead Fort, one of several built in the 1860s to counter a new French threat. It’s no mediaeval fantasy of square keeps and round towers, but rather a low black wall with gun ports on top of a bramble-covered bank. The state had ordered the Royal engineers to blast it in the 1960s and what remains is under the control of the local youths who have mounded earth in the former parade ground to make jumps for bike stunts. Each gunport has its collection of cheap lager cans and NO2 gas canisters piled into a corner. I have the place to myself today and it is perfect for a coffee stop—art on the walls, ingenious inglenooks and wildflowers in the courtyard. Further along the path, towards Cliffe, near to the low mound of the next abandoned fort, a hawthorn bush bursts with photos and mementos which were tied on to it last week. Dayton Webb, a railway worker, had misjudged a jump on a trial bike and was killed while having reckless fun. He was 23. This place—this marshland—has a narcotic effect on me. It’s my ‘go-to’ place when I need space in which to breathe. This is where my spirit rejoices and my mind empties of concerns. I am almost skipping along the path as it continues along the top of the sea wall. The air is rich with sea smells and the light phosphorescent. An unseen moon pulls the trickling tide-waters away from the bank, leaving mud which ripples like a blanket on an unmade bed. Dunlins, black-tailed godwits and shelducks feast on worms and shells. Gulls loll like teens in the sky. Purpling sea lavender and grey green sea purslane grow in the muddy creeks and I pick shoots and leaves as I walk. Tastes of the sea fizzle on my tongue. Approaching Lower Hope Point the path twists through towering cones of sand and gravel. Conveyor belts wheeze and whine. Tiny particles of silica roll down the steep sides. It is as if another world has been entered where nature has yet to settle on a design. The air smells ferrous and earthy. The path through the works is bordered by a high chain-link fence, on which notices hang warning of death by various means. Gold-green alexanders border the path and sweeten the air. The watery earth of the peninsula has always been exploited—Romans dug for salt, farmers dug ditches, and during Victorian times ‘muddies’ dug for the mud—Gault Clay— which made the hundreds of millions of bricks needed for the ever-expanding city. At Cliffe Pools, birds convene in a raucous conference. This former gravel extraction site is now a nature reserve managed by the RSPB, where avocets, spoonbills, and egrets roam. They say it’s the best place in Britain to hear nightingales. Today the pools are teeming with black-headed gulls, herons, and egrets. On the shorelines, redshanks and Kentish plovers are probing the mud whilst a black kite patrols the skies above. In a few days, the rough scrub will tune to the throaty willow warblers, marsh warblers, and blackcaps. To see such density of nature re-colonising the rough dug pits is joyous. Peter Ackroyd wrote that the marshes ‘exert a primitive and still menacing force, all the more eerie and lonely because of its proximity to the great city’. It is not difficult to become lost in the autumn rains or in the low light of winter. Paths can take on the appearance of deep ditches and mists twist the shapes of huts and trees into something the irrational imagination fears. In the low, grey light of winter, when red lights blink on masts and pylons, when indefinable noises haunt the turbid air, and the sudden scream of vixen on heat, can chill already cold bones. Today is early summer and the light is full and bright, but a frisson of fear is stalking me as memories of an earlier time return. Now, the RSPB car parks are empty, and I am acutely aware again of the remoteness of these Pools. Here, many decades ago, I nearly met my end when a banger of a car, driven by a skin-head youth, misjudged a hand-brake turn and just missed me. On another occasion, a youth rode a motocross trial bike straight and fast at me, jerking out of the way at the very last second, spraying me with mud and gravel, after which a knot of malevolent youths appeared out of the scrub cheering and jeering, asking—‘whachya want mate?’ Not responding, I walked fast away. On a wide sweep of the river stands Cliffe Fort. Domes of sand and thickets of bramble and thorn are piled against the black walls and two non-scaleable fences surround the ditch. Beside the fort are the remains of a Brennan Torpedo launch, one of only eight made, which was designed to propel torpedoes into the Thames. The rails emanating from out of the scrub onto the beach make a perfect place to stop for lunch. Eating cheese and pickle sandwiches, and a salad of fresh sea purslane picked from the shoreline, is the most perfect lunch. I watch ships, and inhale lungfuls of sea air which smells of shells and salt. I watch the waders prodding the mud and the gulls in the canopy of sky above me. There are no dogs sniffing around, no joggers pounding past, no city people leaking their music and noise. These marshes were not always a blissful place to be. Peter Ackroyd described the lands beyond the Pools as ‘not a human place’. Malaria—or the ‘ague’ by which it was known—regularly swept away those who had to live nearby. The Anopheles Mosquito, the largest of its kind in the Western Hemisphere, carried a parasite known as Plasmodium vivax which had a fatal effect. People were still dying of malaria beyond the end of the Great War. As the afternoon drifts into evening, the land carries a haunted feel. In the nineteenth century, Hay Merricks & Co. set up a small-scale gunpowder storage facility which quickly grew into a chemical explosives factory, producing cordite for the navy. Accidental explosions and deaths were common. Shadows from the now roofless nitro-glycerine huts lengthen across the grass and the hills bordering the flatlands turn a deeper shade of purple. The wind has died. Everything is very quiet. Across the Thames six skeletal monsters at the London Gateway port haul containers from the decks of ships two at a time and lay them down on the quay, where another automated crane carefully places them onto the backs of queuing lorries. Watching this silent and graceful movement is mesmerising. I reach a large dent in the coastline; Egypt Bay. Google maps has marked the bay with an icon of a sun umbrella and beach ball. What a shift of imagination someone has had! In the waning light, there is a large curve of mud, channelled by shaky rivulets and near the sea wall, a wide expanse of purple sea lavender. The sea itself is a long way away, so far that the oil tanker passing along the river seems as if it’s gliding across land. In my weary state the bay seems benign, but it was a fearful place. There is no sign today of the rotting hulks of former ships of the line which, de-masted and decommissioned, spent their last few years as prisons on the Thames. Few sentenced to spend time on these prison ships ever re-emerged. They were chained to the decks, and succumbed to malnourishment and disease. Charles Dickens, who lived on the peninsula’s small spine of hills, was appalled by the conditions and campaigned for a more humane treatment of criminals. In his novel, Great Expectations , Abel Magwitch escaped from a prison ship in this bay before surprising Pip and demanding ‘wittels’ in the Cliffe churchyard up on the hill. I’m tired now and the day is done. The sun is setting. I walk on to where the OS map describes a ruined building as ‘Camp Abandoned’. It is a 3 metre square block of old concrete which has been much holed by time, guns and youths. On the inside wall is written, ‘Datse loves girls’. The floor is sand banked with dust and dried marsh dirt. In a corner, empty Diet Coke cans and a Subway sandwich packet jerk idly across the rippled concrete floor. I kick away the worst and unroll my sleeping bag. It is nearly dark and near to freezing. Supper is chunky warm soup. The night quickly turns from chilly to very cold. A gentle wind whines, and ghouls patrol the outside marsh and steal my sleep. However the night is magical. The Rose moon, one of three super moons of the year, is now so large and bright that the marshes glow in a light of silver gilt. Mist steams from dykes. I watch the ducks paddle in circles. Reeds twitch. Ships continue to throb and growl. Lights on the opposite shore blink red and white from towers, chimneys and cranes. In the night light they seem like fallen stars. Directly opposite me is the London Gateway port where the world’s largest dockside cranes work in total silence through the night, relieving two ships of their containers. To be so alone and so far from the city, yet so close to its workings, is an extraordinary and thrilling feeling. Dawn comes early, and after a cup of barely warm coffee from a flask and a chew on a very squashed croissant, I set off into a thin line of mist which lies across the ground. I cannot see my legs, nor anything that is below waist height. I feel my way along the path and make for posts which float like wood on the sea. Birds and fowl commute on invisible lines in the air. Across the river, Southend begins to wake and traffic noise drifts across on the tide. By the time I reach Allhallows-on-Sea I’m nearly ready to re-enter society again, after my time alone with ghosts and the cold. Some early dog walkers are about. We nod as we pass each other in early morning greeting. As the sun rises on the caravan park, I pass a new concrete and gravel-filled plot commemorating 2nd Lt. Armand John Ramacitti. He’d been flying his first combat mission in a B17 and was returning from northern France. He’d been hit by flak and lost an engine. Over the Thames another engine failed. As he struggled to control his plane, it veered into his section leader, lost a wing and nose-dived into the Thames. He was only 15 minutes away from landing at his base in Essex. A mile or so further on, is a stone memorial to a boy who drowned in the Yantlet channel. The copper plaque with his name and story has long since been prized off and melted down. To those Romans who fell chasing the woad-covered Britons, to the malarial victims, to the women in the nitro-glycerine factories, prisoners, sailors, smugglers, fishermen and others who’ve died on these watery lands, there is no monument other than the living and ever-changing memorial of the marshes themselves. Beyond the Yantlet, it really is the end of the world. An obelisk marks it so. Joseph Conrad wrote of this place as where ‘the sky and sea are welded together without a joint’. The solitude and immensity is beyond words. I turn inland and am met by great rusting coils of barbed wire, along with notices warning of death. The MoD shells have long been removed from this firing range but it still remains closed. I toy with the idea of trespass but after such a blissful solitudinous time, I’m in no mood for an argument should I meet a ranger. So I take the new and more circuitous England Coast Path towards the huge cylindrical containers of the Isle of Grain, some white, some rusting brown, some aged grey, resembling gigantic African huts. On the Isle of Grain there are tank traps along the shore, and another disused fort which is much loved by brambles. Walking along the streets of Grain, and passing unglamorous housing, is a ‘coming-back- to-earth’ experience after the euphoria of being in space. The little stains of sadness which inevitably smudge the emotions after the passing of so fine a time, mix with the knowledge that all things must end. In a public park, beneath the fort, there’s a bench with a table where I sit and watch the sun sparkle on the silver sea. A man is mowing the grass creating long horizontal lines of green with his sit-on mower. He decides it’s time for a break and so drives his noisy machine straight towards where I am sitting and parks it right in front of me. ‘Coffee break’, he says and sits on the other side of the table blocking my view of the sea. I have left my words out on the marshes so nod by way of reply. Reluctant to leave, but in need of some sleep and food, I walk towards the stop where the bus will come and take me home. Julian Kirwan-Taylor Julian Kirwan-Taylor is a retired teacher of History and Philosophy and the curator of two websites: one which details walks in unconventional, imperfect and impermanent landscapes ( www.wheremyfeetgo.uk ); the other promoting traffic-free cycling in the UK ( www.wheremywheelsgo.uk ).

I see NFTs as a way to innovate, empower others and push the boundaries of how artists interact with their fans. I see NFTs…as the future of the creator economy...NFTs are democratising art - Paris Hilton[1] Introduction This year marks the 25th anniversary of Jay-Z’s debut album, Reasonable Doubt .[2] The 1996 album jump started the Brooklyn-born rapper’s career from a fledgling artist to a business mogul, who became the first to be declared a hip-hop billionaire by Forbes magazine.[3] Hailed by fans as his ‘rawest and most vulnerable work’, Jay-Z’s first album recently spotlighted novel legal challenges with regard to ownership and regulation of the emerging asset class of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).[4] Since 1994, when Jay-Z was first introduced to Damon ‘Dame’ Dash, a young music executive from Harlem, the now-estranged pair went from selling CDs out of the trunk of Jay-Z’s car to co-founding Roc-A-Fella Records, Inc (‘RAF, Inc.’).[5] However, twenty-seven years after their first encounter, they now find themselves embroiled in a lawsuit centred on Dash’s alleged attempt to auction off the copyright for Reasonable Doubt as an NFT.[6] The suit is replete with implications for current and prospective NFT market participants, especially for those in the arts and entertainment industry, ranging from artists and promoters to developers. While NFTs present challenges due to the absence of guidelines, they may, with the development of certain legal and regulatory contours, herald the beginning of a new normal that would allow artists to better control and monetise their work. Against this backdrop, this article explores the principal legal issues that arise in the NFT space, specifically those related to the arts and entertainment industry. First, this article provides an overview of NFTs, including examples that illustrate how artists use them. Second, it examines the ongoing Roc-A-Fella Records, Inc. V. Dash lawsuit[7] and its practical implications. Third, this article argues that despite the associated challenges, if utilised properly NFTs may serve as a medium through which artists and public figures may relinquish control over the usage of their name, image, and likeness. A Brief Overview of NFTs A Non-fungible token (NFT) is a digital unit of value stored on a digital ledger where each unit represents a unique digital item ranging from artwork, collectibles, to even tokenised versions of real-world assets such as real estate.[8] One of the primary attributes of NFTs that distinguishes them from other cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins is their uniqueness.[9] NFTs are unique because no two NFTs are interchangeable with one another; each NFT containing unalterable, permanent metadata describing the asset that it represents while certifying its authenticity.[10] The uniqueness of NFTs may provide artists and entertainers with a vehicle to not only enhance fan interaction, but also build highly engaged communities. Indeed, minting and issuing NFTs allow artists to provide their fans with unique experiences, engaging with them in novel ways in the digital age. By reverse token, NFTs democratise public access to art and entertainment by allowing them to participate without having exclusive invite-only tickets or retaining the services of an art consultant for a hefty fee. For instance, in early 2021, Kings of Leon, the four-time Grammy winning American rock band, released their new album, When You See Yourself as NFTs, becoming the first band to release an album as an NFT.[11] Each NFT was unique in that token holders received a limited-edition ‘Golden Eye’ vinyl and exclusive artwork, along with tickets to four front-row seats to a show of each Kings of Leon tour for life.[12] Through the NFT sales, Kings of Leon reportedly raised $2 million, where over $500,000 was donated to a fund through which musicians have been supporting the industry throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.[13] NFTs are also characterised by their indivisibility, unlike other types of cryptocurrencies.[14] Under smart contracts implementing ERC-721, the current industry standard for minting NFTs, certain terms in executing functions via NFTs such as assignment of ownership and management of transferability are defined in a network, as in a regular contract.[15] An NFT holder’s rights to the work depend on the terms embedded in the NFT through the smart contract, and these terms are automatically enforced when the programmed conditions are met.[16] For instance, NFT royalties may be automatically paid out to the original creator once the coded terms of the smart contract are fulfilled upon a secondary sale transaction.[17] Accordingly, if an NFT contract is designed to trigger such an automated resale royalty payment mechanism, the artist would retain the right to future resale royalties and more control over his work. This is best illustrated through the digital artist Beeple’s sales of Everydays , a collage of images that Beeple created and shared online every day since 2007. Everydays was sold for a record-breaking price of $69.3 million at Christie’s, rendering the preeminent auction house the first amongst its counterparts to offer a purely digital work with a unique NFT.[18] Notably, the artwork is known as the most expensive NFT to date.[19] Due to an automatic 10% resale royalty executed through an NFT platform called Nifty Gateway, Beeple reportedly gained more through the resale of his artwork compared to the price he received from the original sale.[20] Hence, creators that mint NFTs may benefit from implementing a custom creator share percentage for each subsequent resale to receive royalties, so long as they ensure that their work is resold within the platform.[21] Another important attribute is its interoperability, which allows NFTs to be traded and purchased in different distributed ledger technologies with relative ease.[22] The interoperability of NFTs between different platform chains allows the original creator of the digitised item to receive a steady source of income each time the NFT is sold in the secondary market, without an agent or distributor who would charge commission fees.[23] Meanwhile, the value of NFTs corresponds to fluctuations in market supply and demand because their value lies not in the intrinsic nature of the token itself, but rather in the value assigned by those who deem it valuable.[24] Indeed, the prices of NFTs vary widely. To illustrate, CryptoPunks —the 24x24 pixel, 8-bit-style avatars—first created by software developers in 2017, were valued at a mere $1-$34 each when they were initially released.[25] However, their values have risen considerably over the years; a CryptoPunk owner is reported to have been offered $9.5 million for his CryptoPunk .[26] This reflects a positive correlation between the value of NFTs and their increased public perception and popularity.[27] Furthermore, appreciation of CryptoPunks’ value proves not only the prestigious status that accompanies the ownership of rare NFTs, but also NFTs’ potential to become lucrative investment opportunities.[28] Roc-A-Fella Records v. Dash : A Case Study of the Legal Challenges Surrounding NFTs The case study of Roc-A-Fella Records v. Dash shows that there are unresolved problems in the nascent terrain of NFTs. On June 18, 2021, RAF, Inc. filed a lawsuit against Damon Dash in the U.S. District Court of the Southern District of New York.[29] RAF, Inc. sought to enjoin the latter from selling any interest in Reasonable Doubt and requested that the court enter a judgement declaring, amongst others, that (i) RAF, Inc. owns all the rights to Reasonable Doubt , including its copyright; and that (ii) Dash must transfer to RAF, Inc., any NFT in his possession, custody, or control reflecting rights to Reasonable Doubt .[30] The complaint alleged that Dash, an owner of a 1/3 equity interest in RAF, Inc. along with Jay-Z and Kareem Burke, attempted to steal Reasonable Doubt , a company asset, mint it as an NFT, and auction his purported interest in the copyright on the album.[31] According to RAF, Inc., however, Dash as a minority shareholder of the record label did not actually hold any individual ownership interest in the album.[32] This is because the copyright, and all rights, title, and interests to and in Reasonable Doubt —including the right to sell, reproduce, distribute, advertise, and exploit the album without limitation—all belong to RAF, Inc.[33] Stated simply in the words of RAF, Inc.’s attorneys, ‘Dash can’t sell what he doesn’t own’.[34] Despite his non-existent property interest in the album, Dash is alleged to have knowingly and intentionally breached his fiduciary duty and duty of loyalty by leveraging his position as a shareholder to entice bidders and proceed with the sales of the corporation’s asset.[35] In support of its argument, RAF, Inc. quoted language from the auction announcement on an NFT platform called SuperFarm containing representations that Dash is auctioning off ‘[his] ownership of the copyright to Jay-Z’s first album Reasonable Doubt’.[36] The announcement boldly stated that ‘the newly minted NFT will prove ownership of the album’s copyright, transferring the rights to all future revenue generated by the album from Damon Dash to the auction winner’.[37] Moreover, it elaborated that ‘thanks to the magic of the…blockchain technology…[the auction] will set a precedent for how artistically created value and ownership can be proven, transferred, and monetised seamlessly through a public blockchain’.[38] According to RAF, Inc., Dash had not only stolen the copyright to Reasonable Doubt by minting it as an NFT and offering it for sale, but also refused to stop his actions despite warnings from RAF, Inc.[39] Rather, he proceeded to search for another venue to consummate the transaction after SuperFarm decided to cancel the auction upon RAF, Inc.’s request.[40] On June 21, 2021, three days after filing the complaint, RAF, Inc. argued for and obtained a temporary restraining order barring Dash from minting and issuing Reasonable Doubt as an NFT.[41] In response, Dash filed a Memorandum in Opposition of RAF, Inc.’s Order to Show Cause, in which he refuted any claims that he attempted ‘to auction off’ or ‘otherwise sell off’ the Reasonable Doubt copyright.[42] Dash contended that RAF, Inc. erroneously relied on SuperFarm’s internal memo in claiming that he represented to SuperFarm that he owned 100% of the copyright, or that he wanted to mint an NFT based on the copyright. Further, he claimed ‘nothing was ever minted!’[43] and that he was attempting to sell his 1/3 interest in RAF, Inc. as an NFT that he later planned to create, as opposed to a specific copyright interest in the album.[44] Thus, Dash claimed there was no basis for the court to grant a preliminary injunction, as he was merely exercising his right to freely transfer his lawfully owned 1/3 interest in RAF, Inc.[45] Thereafter, Dash successfully convinced RAF, Inc. and Southern District of New York Judge John Cronan to limit the preliminary injunction to the sale of Reasonable Doubt .[46] Specifically, the parties agreed to include explicit language in the court order not to prevent Dash from disposing of his 1/3 ownership interest in RAF, Inc. in any way to the extent compliant with applicable laws.[47] Meanwhile, both parties have engaged in their own NFT transactions outside of the suit. Dash began an auction for his share of RAF, Inc., with a starting bid of $10 million, in which the winner would receive a commemorative NFT representing a certificate of ownership.[48] Likewise, Jay-Z proceeded to sell his own NFT that celebrates the 25th anniversary of Reasonable Doubt through Sotheby’s for the price of $138,600.[49] Legal Implications of the Roc-A-Fella Records, Inc. v. Dash Case While the case is ongoing, the high-profile NFT case involving the industry’s moguls brings to the forefront a myriad of issues that courts have only recently begun to grapple with. First, the above case sheds light on the risks involved in minting and selling an NFT based on an underlying work over which its creator, promoter, or seller does not own the copyright. The proprietary issues presented by the process of minting NFTs is two-fold. Creators should be alerted to the fact that only the owner of the copyright (or one operating with the copyright owner’s permission to do so) in the underlying work may engage in the act of minting an NFT.[50] Otherwise, minting the NFT risks a copyright infringement, and potential, additional infringements arising from its promotion and sale.[51] Indeed, RAF, Inc. based its argument on this very issue, claiming that Dash was not entitled to mint and sell the Reasonable Doubt NFT because it was RAF, Inc., not Dash, that owned the album and its underlying proprietary rights. In fact, the Dash case is not the first precedent in this regard. In April 2021, an NFT of a Jean-Michel Basquiat drawing was withdrawn from a planned auction on the OpenSea platform after the late artist’s estate intervened, confirming that no license or rights were conveyed to the seller, and that the estate owned the copyright in the artwork.[52] Although it did not lead to litigation because the NFT was subsequently removed from sale, the Basquiat incident reiterates the need for clear guidance on proprietary rights associated with NFTs and for the implementation of best practices in this regard when NFT transactions are concerned. Likewise, purchasers should conduct reasonable due diligence before purchasing an NFT so as to preclude incurring liability and legal risks.[53] The following is a non-exhaustive list of factors that purchasers may consider prior to an NFT acquisition: whether the artist is indeed the original author of the work at issue; whether the NFT platform through which the purchase will be made, provides any IP warranties; and the scope of license for an NFT holder.[54] Another ancillary issue in relation to this is a common misconception harboured by many purchasers that they are entitled to intellectual property rights to the underlying work upon acquiring an NFT. However, this is not necessarily true because the rights governing the use and resale of an NFT that are conferred to a purchaser depends on the smart contract associated with each NFT.[55] Accordingly, purchasers should be advised to scrutinise the specific terms governing the smart contracts contained within each token to determine whether certain intellectual property rights (e.g. copyright) are transferred upon its sale.[56] Secondly, the RAF, Inc. case raises questions about the regulation of the offers and sales of NFTs under the U.S. federal securities law framework. By arguing instead that he intended to sell 1/3 of his shares of RAF, Inc. in the form of an NFT as opposed to the copyright to Reasonable Doubt , Dash risks subjecting himself to the U.S. securities laws. That is, Dash’s claim gives rise to whether an NFT would constitute an ‘investment contract’ and thus, a ‘security’ subject to regulation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (‘SEC’).[57] Whether an instrument constitutes a security is determined under the Supreme Court’s Howey test.[58] Howey involves a four-part test under which all of the following four factors must be present for an instrument to constitute a security: (1) an investment of money (2) in a common enterprise (3) with a reasonable expectation of profits (4) to be derived solely from the efforts of others.[59] Moreover, the Howey Court stated that the foregoing test embodies a flexible principle where form would be disregarded for substance while placing emphasis on economic reality.[60] In other words, it is ‘immaterial whether the shares in the enterprise are evidenced by formal certificates or by nominal interests in the physical assets employed in the enterprise’.[61] This means that depending on the facts and circumstances, any instrument may be deemed a security for purposes of the Howey test. If Dash’s sale of his equity interest as an NFT falls within the purview of the federal securities law, he would be subject to the registration requirements of the Securities Act of 1933[62] and the disclosure requirements of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934,[63]the non-compliance of which will constitute an unregistered sale of securities. There has been increasing public demand for the SEC to offer specific guidance regarding this matter. Most notably, in April 2021, a registered broker-dealer sent a petition to the SEC requesting the publication of a concept release surrounding the regulation of NFTs.[64] However, the SEC has yet to issue any guidance on NFTs. Nevertheless, creators and issuers of NFTs should be aware of the flurry of lawsuits that give rise to the question of whether such NFTs constitute a security and thus trigger the application of the SEC’s general analytical framework for the broader issue of digital assets to NFTs. In the 2019 ‘Framework for ‘Investment Contract’ Analysis of Digital Assets’ (‘Framework’) published by the SEC’s Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financial Technology, the SEC explicitly included language cautioning potential issuers: ‘If you are considering…engaging in the offer, sale, or distribution of a digital asset, you need to consider whether federal securities laws apply’.[65] The Framework echoes the language from the Supreme Court’s Howey test. It urges entities and individuals engaged in the offers and sales of digital assets to examine the relevant transactions in determining the applicability of the federal securities laws because the applicability of Howey to digital assets is a fact-specific inquiry.[66] The applicability of the Framework recently became the centre of a class action suit filed in the Supreme Court of New York (later removed to the Southern District of New York) in May, 2021.[67] There, purchasers of NFTs depicting video clips of highlights from NBA basketball games alleged that the NFTs promoted, offered, and sold by Dapper Labs, Inc., a Canada-based blockchain-focused technology company, were unregistered securities under the Framework.[68] While the suit is still pending, the case serves as a warning to industry professionals, the trajectory of which should be closely monitored. Moreover, earlier this year, SEC commissioner Heather Peirce—a pro-crypto member of the SEC also dubbed as ‘crypto mom’—specifically warned against selling fractionalised NFTs.[69] Fractionalised NFTs refer to NFTs that can be split into smaller pieces and sold to multiple purchasers for partial ownership interest, risking the likelihood of being deemed as securities.[70] Dash’s proposed offering of his equity interest in RAF, Inc. as NFTs may raise red flags with financial regulators. This is because such an offering would involve a large number of purchasers to invest sums of money to gain the NFT, with the expectation of profits from a fractional ownership of a highly valuable record company. Furthermore, depending on the promotional activities and the structure of the transaction, the purchasers’ profits may be deemed to derive from the entrepreneurial efforts of Dash or a third-party NFT platform. Thus, issuers and developers of digital assets should remain alert to future developments in this regard. That way, such issuers and developers may preclude any potential disputes and penalties resulting from their failure to exercise care in offering and selling these innovative assets, which may unintentionally be characterised as investment products. NFTs as a Potential Medium for Artists and Public Figures in Regaining Authority over their Publicity Rights Although NFTs pose certain challenges, the technology may—if properly and ethically utilised—be channelled to inspire and empower creators and entertainers. As a novel response to the long-standing problems in the digital terrain arising from the easy dissemination and exploitation of digital images by third parties without consent, public figures are now embracing NFTs as a medium of regaining authority over the usage of their name, image, and likeness. NFTs not only allow them to reclaim control over their appropriated digital identities, but also allow them to receive rightful compensation for its usage and distribution. The exploitation of name, image, and likeness and lack of control over the commercial use of identity is especially prevalent amongst celebrities, owing to the fact that celebrities voluntarily make themselves public figures.[71] There is currently a relative dearth of case law regarding the commercial exploitation of publicity rights in the US, rendering disputes surrounding publicity rights unpredictable. Moreover, there is a lack of clarity regarding the current state of law due to varied interpretations and statutes on publicity rights because there are no federal statutes recognising the right of publicity, while state laws lack uniformity as statutes differ across jurisdictions.[72] The economic and emotional ramifications arising from the unauthorised use of name, image, and likeness were recently brought to the forefront by American model and actress Emily Ratajkowski. In an effort to reclaim her image wrested from her for the profit of another, Ratajkowski recently minted an NFT named ‘Buying Myself Back: A Model for Redistribution’ that was auctioned at Christie’s for $175,000.[73] Upon discovering that a photo she had publicly posted on Instagram had been printed on a large canvas and sold as part of a collection released by artist Richard Prince, Ratajkowski decided to mint an NFT consisting of a photo of herself posing in front of Prince’s artwork.[74] In vocalising her decision to do so, she pointed out the ironical loss of commercial control over her image as a public figure: ‘as somebody who has built a career off of sharing my image, so many times—even though that’s my livelihood—it’s taken from me and then somebody else profits off of it’.[75] However, through her recent NFT sale, she not only regained partial possession of her own image, but also revealed she would receive ‘an undisclosed cut’ of the profits of each resale.[76] Commenting on the potential that NFTs carry, she expressed her hopes to set a precedent for others to ‘have ongoing authority over their image and to receive rightful compensation for its usage and distribution’.[77] Despite the benefits conferred by NFTs in repossessing digital identities in the age of social media, a fatal drawback of this budding technology is the risk of counterfeiting. If NFTs are minted with false information or the core code underlying the NFT is stolen, original creators of the NFTs may incur difficulties in tracing or exercising effective control over unauthentic or identical products.[78] Likewise, purchasers may be misled as to the authenticity or value of their tokens.[79] Indeed, a counterfeit NFT of the renowned British graffiti artist, Banksy, was recently sold for $900,000 on OpenSea (the world’s largest NFT platform), reigniting concerns over counterfeit NFTs.[80] Counterfeiting issues are exacerbated by the fact that many blockchain platforms currently allow virtually anyone to mint their own NFTs. It remains to be seen whether such platforms will impose internal control systems to mitigate such risks and whether they will be subject to external regulations with the evolving use of NFTs. Conclusion The NFT market has seen a stunning growth trajectory, surging to a record-high of $10.7 billion in sales volume in the third quarter of 2021.[81] The numbers mark an eightfold increase from $1.3 billion in the previous quarter.[82] Such an explosive growth was catalysed in part by the COVID-19 pandemic.[83] The pandemic led to shifts in business models such as remote working and digitalisation of work products, as well as an unprecedented increase in online spending as a substitute for traditional off-line consumption.[84] In line with such developments, creators and artists have also tapped into the NFT space to use the technology to their benefit. Some industry professionals and commentators have dubbed the current state as ‘a golden opportunity…for digital entertainers’.[85] Indeed, NFTs may be a boon to many creators and artists, restoring autonomy by means of exercising greater control of distribution and resale royalties, provided that the smart contracts stipulate the exact terms of resale mechanisms, and such resales are made within the same marketplace as discussed above. However, this golden age is not without its shadows. Indeed, in the words of Gary DeWaal, a former trial lawyer with the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission, ‘this whole industry…suffers from a paucity of clear regulation, and as a result folks are sort of left on their own to figure it out the best they can’.[86] As such, due to an absence of clear regulatory guidance, pending cases should be closely monitored because they may serve as meaningful guideposts in providing regulatory clarity regarding NFT regulation. Meanwhile, to preclude significant adverse legal consequences and regulatory risks, market participants should conduct due diligence prior to any issuance or transaction involving an NFT. Furthermore, the rights and terms of the transaction in the underlying smart contract should be clearly drafted so acquirers of NFTs may fully avail themselves of its protections and benefits by limiting the grant of proprietary rights and stipulating terms for automated royalty payments, amongst others. Bo Hyun Kim Bo Hyun Kim is a third year student at Handong International Law School in South Korea where she is studying US and international law. She has published articles on emerging technologies and, most recently, contributed a chapter on NFTs and the Metaverse in a legal handbook on e-sports law and practice (pending publication). [1] Paris Hilton, ‘I’m Excited About NFTs—You Should Be Too’ ( Paris Hilton , 8 April 2021) < https://parishilton.com/nft/ > accessed 25 October 2021. [2] Sotheby’s, ‘Heir to the Throne: An NFT in Celebration of JAY-Z’s Reasonable Doubt 25th Anniversary by Derrick Adams’ ( Sotheby’s , 2 July 2021) < https://www.sothebys.com/en/digital-catalogues/heir-to-the-throne > accessed 25 October 2021. [3] Zack O’Malley Greenburg, ‘Artist, Icon, Billionaire: How Jay-Z Created His $1 Billion Fortune’ ( Forbes , 3 June 2010) < https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackomalleygreenburg/2019/06/03/jay-z-billionaire-worth/?sh=7bf3f7d53a5f > accessed 25 October 2021. [4] Chris Richardson, ‘Jay-Z’, 100 Entertainers Who Changed America: An Encyclopaedia of Pop Culture Luminaries (2013) 289. [5] Asondra Hunter, ‘Rockin’ On A Roc-A Fella’ ( Yahoo Music , 5 January 1999) < https://web.archive.org/web/20070609232211/http:/music.yahoo.com/read/interview/12048673 > accessed 25 October 2021. [6] A.D. Amorosi, ‘In Lawsuit Over Jay-Z NFT Auction, Damon Dash and Roc-A-Fella Dispute What’s at Stake, Beyond a ‘Reasonable Doubt’ ( Variety , 21 June 2021) < https://variety.com/2021/music/news/damon-dash-jay-z-lawsuit-rock-a-fella-records-1235001534/amp/ > accessed 25 October 2021. [7] Complaint, Roc-A-Fella Records, Inc. v. Damon Dash (Southern District of New York 2021) (No. 1:21-cv-5411) < https://fingfx.thomsonreuters.com/gfx/legaldocs/xegpbrrwwpq/IP%20JAYZ%20COPYRIGHT%20complaint.pdf >. [8] Nir Kshetri, Blockchain and Supply Chain Management (Elsevier 2021) 23. [9] Ramakrishnan Raman and Benson Edwin Raj, Enabling Blockchain Technology for Secure Networking and Communications (Adel Ben Manouer and Lamia Chaari Fourati eds, IGI Global 2021) 92. [10] ibid. [11] Samantha Hissong, ‘Kings of Leon Will Be the First Band to Release an Album as an NFT’ ( Rolling Stone , 3 March 2021) < https://www.rollingstone.com/pro/news/kings-of-leon-when-you-see-yourself-album-nft-crypto-1135192/ > accessed 28 October 2021. [12] Sam Moore, ‘Kings Of Leon have generated $2million from NFT sales of their new album’ ( NME , 12 March 2021) < https://www.nme.com/news/music/kings-of-leon-have-generated-2million-from-nft-sales-of-their-new-album-2899349 > accessed 28 October 2021. [13] ibid. [14] Kshetri (n8) 24. [15] Ethereum, ‘Non-fungible tokens (NFT)’ ( Ethereum , 6 March 2021) < https://ethereum.org/en/nft/#:~:text=NFTs%20are%20minted%20through%20smart,the%20NFT%20is%20being%20managed > accessed 29 October 2021. [16] ibid. [17] Cyberscrilla, ‘NFT Royalties: What Are They and How Do They Work?’ ( Cyberscrilla ) < https://cyberscrilla.com/nft-royalties-what-are-they-and-how-do-they-work/ > accessed 30 October 2021. [18] Christie’s, ‘ Beeple’s opus ’ (Christie’s) < https://www.christies.com/features/Monumental-collage-by-Beeple-is-first-purely-digital-artwork-NFT-to-come-to-auction-11510-7.aspx > accessed 30 October 2021. [19] Lynnae Williams, ‘The 5 Most Expensive NFTs⁠—And Why They Cost So Much’ ( MakeUseOf , 7 September 2021) < https://www.makeuseof.com/most-expensive-nfts-why-they-cost-so-much/ > accessed 30 October 2021. [20] Grace Kay and Brittany Chang, ‘A digital artist known for his satirical work is breaking sales records, making over $10 million on 2 crypto-art piece’ (Business Insider, 5 March 2021) < https://www.businessinsider.com/art-nft-beeple-blockchain-pieces-sell-for-millions-2021-3 > accessed 30 October 2021. [21] Evan Vischi, ‘The NFT resale dilemma: How can creators make sure they keep getting paid?’ ( Medium , 24 April 2021) < https://blog.tatum.io/the-nft-resale-dilemma-how-can-creators-make-sure-they-keep-getting-paid-e929c96a6599 > accessed 30 October 2021. [22] Raman and Raj (n 9) 93. [23] Cybrscrilla (n 18). [24] Maria L. Murphy, CPA, ‘NFTs come with big valuation challenges’ ( Journal of Accountancy , 16 July 2021) < https://www.journalofaccountancy.com/news/2021/jul/nft-nonfungible-token-valuation-challenges.html > accessed 30 October 21. [25] Katie Rees, ‘What Is a CryptoPunk and Why Are They Worth So Much?’ ( MakeUseOf , 26 August 2021) < https://www.makeuseof.com/what-is-a-cryptopunk-why-are-they-worth-so-much/ > accessed 30 October 2021. [26] MK Manoylov, ‘CryptoPunk owner declines a $9.5 million bid for his rare NFT’ ( The Block , 15 October 2021) < https://www.theblockcrypto.com/linked/120873/cryptopunk-owner-declines-a-9-5-million-bid-for-his-rare-nft > accessed 30 October 2021. [27] Williams (n 20). [28] ibid. [29] Dash (n 7). [30] ibid [11]. [31] ibid [B.22], [C.23]. [32] ibid. [33] ibid [B.21]. [34] ibid [6]. [35] ibid [34]-[36]. [36] ibid. [C.24]. [37] ibid. [38] ibid. [39] ibid [42]-[43]. [40] ibid [27]. [41] Blake Brittain, ‘Jay-Z label Roc-A-Fella blocks co-founder’s ‘Reasonable Doubt’ NFT auction’ ( Reuters , 23 June 2021) < https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/jay-z-label-roc-a-fella-blocks-co-founders-reasonable-doubt-nft-auction-2021-06-22/ > accessed 2 November 2021. [42] Memorandum of Law in Opposition of Plaintiff'sx Order to Show Cause and in Support of Defendant Damon Dash’s Motion to Disqualify Plaintiff’s Counsel, Roc-A-Fella Records, Inc., v. Damon Dash (Southern District of New York 2021) (No. 1:21-cv-5411), II.B. < https://www.thetmca.com/files/2021/07/Rockafella-v-Dash-Response.pdf >. [43] ibid [I]. [44] ibid [II.D]- [III]. [45] ibid [I-III]. [46] Stipulation and Order, Roc-A-Fella Records, Inc., v. Damon Dash (Southern District of New York 2021) (No. 1:21-cv-5411) < https://www.thetmca.com/files/2021/07/Rockafella-v-Dash-Amended-Order.pdf >. [47] ibid 1. [48] Chris Dolmetsch and Bloomberg, ‘Jay-Z’s legal dispute with Damon Dash hits the NFT space’ ( Fortune, 17 September 2021) < https://fortune.com/2021/09/16/jay-z-damon-dash-roc-a-fella-nft-lawsuit/ > accessed 5 November 2021. [49] Sotheby’s, ‘[JAY-Z]; Derrick Adams [artist]. Heir to the Throne, 2021’ ( Sotheby’s , 25 June 2021) https://www.sothebys.com/en/buy/auction/2021/jay-z-x-derrick-adams-heir-to-the-throne-an-nft/heir-to-the-throne accessed 5 November 2021. [50] Harsch Khandelwal, ‘Minting, distributing and selling NFTs must involve copyright law’ ( Coin Telegraph, 22 August 2021) < https://cointelegraph.com/news/minting-distributing-and-selling-nfts-must-involve-copyright-law > accessed 5 November 2021. [51] ibid. [52] Anny Shaw, ‘Basquiat NFT withdrawn from auction after artist’s estate intervenes’ ( The Art Newspaper , 28 April 2021) < https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/04/28/basquiat-nft-withdrawn-from-auction-after-artists-estate-intervenes > accessed 5 November 2021. [53] Georgina Adam, ‘But is it legal? The baffling world of NFT copyright and ownership issues’ ( The Art Newspaper , 6 April 2021) < https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/04/06/but-is-it-legal-the-baffling-world-of-nft-copyright-and-ownership-issues > accessed 6 November 2021. [54] ibid. [55] Margaret Taylor, ‘Digital assets: surging popularity of NFTs raises important legal questions’ ( International Bar Association , 5 August 2021) < https://www.ibanet.org/surging-popularity-of-NFTs-raises-important-legal-questions > accessed 6 November 2021. [56] ibid. [57] Securities and Exchange Commission v. W. J. Howey Co. , 328 U.S. 293 (1946). [58] ibid. [59] ibid 301. [60] ibid 299. [61] ibid. [62] 15 U.S. Code § 77a. [63] 15 U.S. Code § 78a. [64] Vicent R Molinari, Rulemaking Regarding Non-Fungible Tokens , ( Sustainable Holdings , 12 April 2021) < https://www.sec.gov/rules/petitions/2021/petn4-771.pdf > accessed 10 November 2021. [65] U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, Framework for ‘Investment Contract’ Analysis of Digital Assets (2019) < https://www.sec.gov/corpfin/ framework-investment-contract-analysis-digital-assets#_edn1 [hereinafter, ‘the framework’ > accessed 10 November 2021. [66] Howey (n 58). [67] Complaint, Friel v. Dapper Labs, Inc., et al. , (Supreme Court of the State of New York 2021) (No. 653134/2021) < https://www.scribd.com/document/507902520/Jeeun-Friel-v-Dapper-Labs-Complaint >. [68] ibid. [69] Sophie Kiderlin, ‘The SEC’s ‘Crypto Mom’ Hester Peirce says selling fractionalized NFTs could be illegal’ ( Business Insider , 26 March 2021) < https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/currencies/sec-crypto-mom-hester-peirce-selling-nft-fragments-illegal-2021-3 > accessed 13 November 2021. [70] ibid. [71] Peter A Carfagna, Representing the Professional Athlete (3rd edn, West Academic Publishing 2018) 153. [72] ibid 156. [73] Christie’s, ‘Emily Ratajkowski (B. 1991)’ ( Christie’s , 25 April 2021) < https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6317722 > accessed 15 November 2021. [74] Emily Kirkpatrick, ‘Emily Ratajkowski Is Auctioning Off an NFT Called ‘Buying Myself Back’‘ ( Vanity Fair , 23 April 2021) < https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2021/04/emily-ratajkowski-nft-buying-myself-back-richard-prince-instagram-painting-new-portraits-christies > accessed 15 November 2021. [75] ibid. [76] ibid. [77] Rachel King, ‘Emily Ratajkowski on ownership, consent, and the #FreeBritney movement’ ( Fortune , 25 June 2021) < https://fortune.com/2021/06/24/emily-ratajkowski-book-nft-social-media/ > accessed 17 November 2021. [78] Incopro, ‘Brand Protection & NFTs: Scams, Fakes & How to Mitigate Risks’ ( Incopro ) < https://www.incoproip.com/nft-fakes-scams-brand-protection/ > accessed 17 November 2021. [79] ibid. [80] Anny Shaw, ‘Banksy-Style NFTs have sold for $900,000–but are they the real deal and does it even matter?’ ( The Art Newspaper , 22 February 2021) < https://www.theartnewspaper.com/2021/02/22/banksy-style-nfts-have-sold-for-dollar900000but-are-they-the-real-deal-and-does-it-even-matter > accessed 20 November 2021. [81] Elizabeth Howcroft, ‘NFT sales surge to $10.7 bln in Q3 as crypto asset frenzy hits new highs’ ( Reuters , 5 October 2021) < https://www.reuters.com/technology/nft-sales-surge-107-bln-q3-crypto-asset-frenzy-hits-new-highs-2021-10-04/ > accessed 20 November 2021. [82] ibid. [83] Arushi Chawla, ‘NFT: Creating Buzz in Digital Ecosystem’ ( Counterpoint , 16 June 2021) < https://www.counterpointresearch.com/nft-creating-buzz-in-digital-ecosystem/ > accessed 21 November 2021. [84] ibid. [85] Jordan Lintz, ‘The Future of NFTs: Digital Entertainment At Its Finest’ ( Forbes , 19 November 2021) < https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2021/11/19/the-future-of-nfts-digital-entertainment-at-its-finest/ > accessed 21 November 2021. [86] Dolmetsch and Bloomberg (n 49).

At the heart of the metaverse stands the vision of an immersive Internet—a gigantic, unified, persistent, and shared realm.[1] To the jewellery industry, it remains to be seen as to whether this enormous virtual cyberspace is a blessing, or, in fact, as curse. Fig 1. Tiffany & Co. Iris Corsage Ornament. Wikimedia Commons: Walters Art Museum. Since the expansion of the Internet in the 1990s, the cyberspace has kept evolving. We have created various computer-based environments including social networks, video conferencing, virtual 3D worlds (VR HoloLens), augmented reality applications (Pokémon Go), and Non-Fungible Token (NFT) Games (Upland). Such virtual environments have bought us various degrees of digital transformation and the term ‘metaverse’ has been coined to further reflect the digital transformation occurring in every aspect of our physical lives. For some, there is a sense of vigilance in engaging with the metaverse and are wary of the disruption it could cause for the community.[2] In the virtual world there are many examples of altruism and Samaritanism, but these come with the constant presence of players bent on distraction, disruption (or even destruction) that the digital community has to deal with. Boellstorff describes this phenomenon as the dark side of the disinhibition that many people find in virtual worlds.[3] Another aspect in this fluid nature of going between real and a virtual life, is that some people reside in more than one virtual world, sometimes as similar personalities, sometimes different. Sometimes they give up on one world and migrate to another.[4] Developments in electronic communications are drastically changing what it means to be human, interacting with other humans, and for our idea of creation.[5] Others have considered this world to have brought unprecedented opportunities for artists to blend every facet of our physical surroundings with digital creativity.[6] The value of recent technological developments for artists is more than being able to become more efficient and more productive. It is also the ability to ‘highlight and elevate humanness in new ways through art, even by appearing to replace the real with the virtual’.[7] New tools don’t simply replace humans, they allow human creators to shift into new realms of creation: creating dynamic systems and worlds instead of static products.[8] This piece will challenge such perspectives, showing that the digital and physical can simultaneously work together to maintain creative freedom in both spheres. This article will consider three different types of interactions that emerge from these digital immersive platforms in relation to the jewellery industry and explore the remarkable types of novel creations in the expanded horizons of metaverse cyberspace. Firstly, I consider the ways we can interact and experiment within this digital world. The discussion will then turn to issues of digital privacy and safety for metaverse artists and companies, bringing to light the questions around ownership of digital artworks. Then, the piece will reflect upon the origin of the metaverse itself and the effects this has on the creative freedom of artists, drawing together the material and immaterial worlds we live in. At the outset, we consider our world to be tactile, touchable, and have a physical presence. Yet is this actually the case today, and will this be so in the near future? After all, as of January 2021, there were more than 4.5 billion active internet users worldwide, and 92.6% of them accessed this digital world via mobile devices.[9] As such, there is an ever-growing overlap between our digital and physical lives, as we can socialise, create, and entertain ourselves through virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), or simply through an alternate realm on-screen. Whilst terms such as ‘internet’, ‘online’, and, perhaps, ‘virtual reality’ are widely disseminated through society, what about the word ‘metaverse’? The term has become a buzzword within the last year, and, to put it simply, it is a shared three-dimensional state in virtual reality where people can interact. To enter this digital world, you have to put on a pair of augmented or virtual reality headsets, enabling you to interact and hang out with each other via avatars, just as you would in the real world.[10] What is so innovative in this computer-generated world, is that we are able to express and re-create ourselves with unparalleled creative freedom, not governed by the rules of reality. This is especially revolutionary in the jewellery space, which has already begun to intersect the physical world’s real-time, spatially oriented content with this emerging and immersive digital environment. In this context, let us first consider the ways artists can interact in this digital world. The metaverse offers the opportunity for the creation and virtual styling of digital jewellery across a variety of devices and platforms. This could be in gaming, for example, when the heritage Japanese pearl jeweller, Tasaki, collaborated with Animal Crossing to produce a collection for game avatars; to e-commerce, like Dress X’s digital accessories designed by the 3D designer Alejandro Delgado. Indeed, the metaverse has become a new space for design, as creators, artists, and consumers are able to exchange and make use of different models and creations, without any restrictions, across platforms. In this immersive world, it seems that 2021 was the year for the breakthrough of non-fungible tokens (NFTs).[11] This NFT market has surged exponentially, as a new study by NonFungible and L’Atelier BNP Paribas recorded sales reaching $17.7 billion in 2021, up from $82.5 million in 2020—a jump of more than 200 times.[12] Being able to sell NFTs within the metaverse acts as a massive incentive for digital jewellery to be produced. Some of the biggest releases of NFTs have stemmed from digital jewellery collaborations between celebrities, including Lil Pump’s ‘Esskeetit Diamond VVS’ collection. Available to purchase through the platform ‘Sweet’ in March 2021, Pump minted a total of five NFTs, each retailed for $10,000, possible to buy securely on a first-come-first-served basis.[13] The jewellery-themed sale, also, featured more affordable NFT cards at $10 each. The digital drop intended to emulate the American rapper’s physical jewellery, allowing fans and collectors to own a piece of his personal, multi-million-dollar jewellery collection in the digital world. According to Tom Mizzone, the CEO of NFT trading platform ‘Sweet’, ‘the future of rare, collectible merchandise is in the digital arena’, as evidenced by the growing interest in NFTs.[14] Some experts even consider NFTs could become the jeweller’s best friend in the near future, as it allows them to earn money via selling NFTs for digital jewellery. Asprey’s executive chairman, John Rigas, believes NFTs and jewellery are, ‘a perfect match’ as they ‘capture everything about the product, forever, when the information is part of the blockchain’, in turn bolstering the authenticity of these luxury goods.[15] As such, there are increasing deliberations across the sector regarding the technological benefits of the metaverse as designers can create captivating pieces of jewellery that draw inspiration from both the physical and digital realm. Thus, the digital world has opened the door to new types of interactions and considerations of what jewellery can be. Market experimentation within the metaverse offers solutions to some of the biggest spectres haunting the world of jewellery. The digital space offers jewellery companies a solution to two issues: the safety of transactions and devaluation of real jewellery. The security of the digital transaction in the current financial market is enabled by blockchain technology that backs digital assets, in turn, providing a tamper-proof, digital ledger of all the information on any product. This is becoming an appealing method for securing transactions as we live in an age where hacking, spyware, and digital fraud are an ever-present threat. The second aspect that metaverse assists with is devaluation of jewellery and diamonds occurring due to fluctuation on the market. Shockingly, as soon as they leave the jeweller’s shop, diamonds tend to lose value, depreciating by as much as 30-35% if they are re-sold.[16] The blockchain-based diamond marketplace, Icecap, offers a solution to this issue, developing a new way of online trading as it allows the trading of NFT tokens ‘without friction’ while the diamonds are vaulted and insured.[17] According to Icecap’s CEO, Jacques Voorhees, unlike liquid assets of gold and silver, purchasing diamonds through the online platform protects these valuable assets from the long-term problem of devaluation faced in the diamond industry.[18] Astonishingly, trading diamonds virtually, through platforms such as Icecap, allows their value to be retained, with investments retaining much more value. Prices of rare pieces, also, are more likely to preserve their investment price, such as the one-hundred-carat diamond necklace ‘Desert Wind’ which featured as part of Icecap’s inaugural line of collector-quality gems in the world’s first NFT diamond and jewellery collection, in May 2021.[19] Even Christie’s, the noted auction house, is paying close attention to the capabilities of digital assets in the metaverse. Their resident specialist Noah Davis has said, ‘blockchain is on the cusp of being integrated into every single creative industry’, alluding to the strong commercial interest attached to the evolving sphere of digital jewellery.[20] It must be recognised, however, that there are currently no laws that govern existing trademark registrations of physical goods in the metaverse. What does this all mean for traditional Intellectual Property (IP), such as trademarks and copyrights? There are some new instances, including the lawsuit that Hermès filed against the digital artist Mason Rothschild for creating, selling, and using ‘MetaBirkin’ in January 2022. The ‘MetaBirkin’ NFTs featured the Hermès Birkin handbag design, which was allegedly used without permission and in violation of its trademark rights. The luxury fashion retailer described Rothschild as ‘a digital spectator who is seeking to get rich quick’ by appropriating the brand ‘MetaBirkins’ for the exchange of digital assets NFTs.[21] Having said this, such cases have not yet been heard by courts. It may be that the disputed NFTs experience drastic fluctuations in value due to negative publicity and uncertainty over the courts’ decisions, but it is highly improbable for these cases to trigger a collapse of the general NFT market.[22] A simple reason for this is that more big-name brands are taking their first steps into the digital realm, and for these companies, the risk of their NFTs becoming the subjects of legal actions is extremely low as they own all the IP rights related to the underlying works. No doubt, IP practitioners, legal analysts and NFT traders alike will be avidly anticipating the decisions from the U.S. courts as these judgments will help determine how these online creations will interact with long-standing intellectual property rights, such as copyrights and trademarks. Thus, if a company is thinking of expanding into the metaverse, it would be worth their while to consider filing for relevant trademarks in order to have legal protection.[23] Still, there are great possibilities for the creative industries in the metaverse. Rather than a space for division, the metaverse will make jewellery appreciation and creation more accessible. Craftsmen, designers, and clients will be able to interact in a globally immersive world without the need to journey from gemmological mines, to workshops, and commercial stores. The metaverse will, also, make for better opportunities for self-expression: we will be able to communicate our individuality by designing and later re-designing jewellery to suit our current interests, interweaving inspiration from literature, art, and even our political beliefs. Indeed, for a considerable number of artists, the metaverse creates unending possibilities in the evolution of art and design. That said, preserving this digital blossoming of creativity is not always as straightforward as it first seems, as it has also become a stage for the expansion of corporate domination. One such artist providing insight and campaigning for the protection of public ownership in the digital sphere is Sebastian ErraZuriz. Blurring the boundaries between contemporary culture, art and technology , ErraZuriz has previously reworked Jeff Koons’ augmented reality (AR) sculpture in a political stance against the ‘ i mminent augmented reality (AR) corporate invasion’, which could ultimately fuel a version of the metaverse that is limited by corporate powers of intervention and business models. This piece was titled ‘Vandalized Balloon Dog’, intending to act as a direct criticism of Koons Partnership w ith Snapchat ‘which saw digital 3D versions of the artist's best-known sculptures appear in international tourists hot-spots via augmented reality’.[24] His latest project, an NFT start-up, Digital Diamonds Co., similarly intends to foster open innovation, focusing on promoting a new kind of diamond company. Each Digital Diamond is valued at the price of a real diamond using the Ethereum currency and has accommodated for changing pricing for bidding purposes. What is most interesting about Digital Diamonds Co. is the parallel drawn between real diamonds and the NFT creation. After all, diamonds are neither scarce, nor intrinsically precious, with their value a product of societal perception. In foresight, should artificial, lab-grown diamonds be considered to be of greater or equal significance and originality, in comparison to digital, artistic creations online? The nature of the metaverse also means that digital jewellery can sidestep issues of gemmological sourcing and occurrences of blood diamond mining; a desirable feature as consumers’ interest in ethically sourced diamonds is growing. In light of this, the evolving digital space offers a new-found freedom to artists from the complex gem authentication systems and control of the jewellery industry. The adoption of these immersive technologies can offer great creative freedom, without the limitations which govern our physical reality. Designers can use an unlimited array of gemstones, no longer be confined to small scale production, and can challenge the concepts of jewellery itself. Some of the largest fashion brands have begun to define their own label within this kaleidoscopic metaverse, as they, too, seek to explore it. Even the fashion house Gucci has recognised the value of the metaverse, presenting a digital display of their haute jewellery collection, ‘Hortus Deliciarum’, in 2021. The 130-piece collection is divided into four chapters, taking inspiration from the hues of an ever-changing, natural sky. Waterfalls, shooting stars, and celestial phenomena launched the first chapter’s designs, while the second section took inspiration from rose gardens. The colours of the sunset informed part three, with precious gemstones, such as opal, topaz, and garnets translating the rich twilight hues of the sky to one of nightfall. These pieces have a discordant symmetry as the jewels were placed mismatched to encapsulate the ephemerality of the sky as it passes from day to night. The fourth incorporated prides of lions, roaring their way around necklaces and earrings encrusted with gemstones. I believe that launching the jewellery collection in this way would simply not have been possible if it were in physical form: it feels as though Gucci chose to present the collection through a digital platform by also believing in the aptness of the metaverse. In a conventional display, the collection would not have had the same ambiance of enchantment, which captivated me and countless others.[25] And now, when the fine jewellery is worn for special events and red carpets, we can be reminded of its release in a digital format. As such, even the biggest names in commercial luxury are embracing the universe of possibilities that virtual jewellery creates. Keeping this in mind, the large-scale fashion brands designing luxury jewellery have not been the only ones to benefit from our ever-increasing connection with the metaverse. Independent artists are also able to blossom and collaborate with the creative aficionados driving the campaigns of high fashion. This is facilitated by the deregulated finance ecosystem (DeFi), which allows digital creators to sell and authenticate their NFTs without a field of experts deciding what is valuable, precious, or appealing. This helps designers, such as the New York based artist, Carol Civre, as DeFi applications give users more control over their money through personal wallets and trading services that cater to individuals. Civre’s digital creations can maintain space within the world of the big fashion brands, bridging the worlds of fashion, 3D art, and CGI to create an idealised ‘exaggeration of reality’.[26] The artist aims to transform, elevate, and explore the possibilities of the human body that may not be possible to explore in our physical lives.[27] Carol’s innovative ways of developing digital art were key to her success and have appealed to an extensive selection of brands, with her clientele including Chanel, Prada, and Vivienne Westwood. Her work has even been described as promoting an ‘E-Renaissance’ in Vogue Italia .[28] This digital space has facilitated collaborations between individual and large-scale enterprises to create new forms of jewellery that transgress the digital and physical world to form a united multi-experience for the consumer. Experiences can thus start in the physical world, but then extend into an infinite realm of the digital metaverse. It is surreal to think that we are already able to create and innovate in such an unhindered manner and in an alternative reality. It triggers a flurry of questions about what comes next in digital design. In the fashion industry, will there be a large-scale transformation with the new growth of opportunity for digital agencies, stylists, or collections, operating through the metaverse? While some companies will likely continue to operate only in the physical world, others that wish to can continue to exercise their duty in the creation of the new through digital design. With NFTs, blockchain gems, and the metaverse–jewellery is evolving beyond the physical bounds of reality, transitioning into a realm of pixels and colour. For these reasons, despite the continued process of jewellery designs serving both functions of being appreciated for its artistic qualities, as well as being an indicator of wealth, the industry is turning to digitisation to suit the future market and creative design. This is what sets the metaverse apart– the promise of infinite, artistic outcomes–and, in turn, the chance to transform the concept of jewellery in itself. On this premise, the fundamental concept of the metaverse is not to act as a way to supersede and out-do contemporary painterly, sculptural, or architectural practices so fundamental to our contemporary artistic practices today. Rather, it seeks to enable the blossoming of creative practices through a digital platform, in turn, preserving and connecting these two inspirational worlds. A thought to end this essay: this creative unity could, in fact, activate a radical shift as to how we can evaluate the notion of artistic freedom. Indeed, the interactions of the physical and digital world, in the jewellery, fashion, and broader cultural sphere could result in the transformative visualisations of our world around us. Danielle Jump Danielle Jump is an undergraduate student of History of Art at the University of Cambridge. She is interested in the decorative arts, jewellery, and the ways in which these art forms are reflective of contemporary culture. She hopes to pursue a career within the art industry, specialising in contemporary jewellery. [1] Lik-Hang Lee et al, 'All One Needs to Know about Metaverse: A Complete Survey on Technological Singularity, Virtual Ecosystem, and Research Agenda' (2021) 14(8) Journal of Latex Class Files < https://arxiv.org/pdf/2110.05352 > accessed 6 May 2022. [2] Daniel Schackman, ‘Review Article: Exploring the new frontiers of collaborative community’ (2009) 11(5) New Media & Society. [3] ibid. [4] ibid. [5] Gianluca Mura (ed), Metaplasticity in Virtual Worlds: Aesthetics and Semantic Concepts (IGI Global 2011). [6] Jeffrey M. Morris, ‘Humanness Elevated Through its Disappearance’ in Mura (n 5) 102. [7] ibid. [8] Microsoft Mesh (Preview) Overview’ (Docs.microsoft.com, 2022) < https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/mesh/overview > accessed 6 May 2022. [9] Joseph Johnson, ‘Global Digital Population 2019’ (Statista, 2021) < https://www.statista.com/statistics/617136/digital-population-worldwide/ > accessed 4 May 2022. [10] John Herrman and Kellan Browning, ‘Are We In A Metaverse Yet?’ The New York Times (New York, 10 July 2021) < https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/10/style/metaverse-virtual-worlds.html > accessed 4 May 2022. [11] A term still unfamiliar to many, the NFT is an interchangeable unit of data stored on a blockchain, a form of a digital database, that can be sold and traded. Types of NFT data units may be associated with digital files, including photos, videos, and audio. Each token is uniquely identifiable, which differs from other blockchain currencies, such as Bitcoin. These NFTs can then be ‘minted’, referring to the process of turning a digital file into a digital asset on the Ethereum cryptocurrency blockchain, and it is impossible to edit, modify, or delete it. It is similar to the way metal coins are minted and put into circulation, non-fungible tokens are also ‘minted’ after they are created to retain their value on the digital marketplace. [12] NonFungible, ‘Yearly NFT Market Report 2021’ (NonFungible, 2022) < https://nonfungible.com/reports/2021/en/yearly-nft-market-report-free > accessed 4 May 2022. [13] Minting is the process of turning a digital file into a crypto collectible or digital asset on the Ethereum Blockchain. [14] Sweet, ‘Sweet Launches Broad-Scale NFT Solution For Leading Entertainment And Consumer Brands In Partnership With Bitcoin.Com’ (2021) < https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/sweet-launches-broad-scale-nft-solution-for-leading-entertainment-and-consumer-brands-in-partnership-with-bitcoin-com-1030044246 > accessed 4 May 2022. [15] Anna Tong, ‘Can NFTs Work For Luxury Jewellery?’ Vogue Business (21 June 2021) < https://www.voguebusiness.com/technology/can-nfts-work-for-luxury-jewellery-asprey-cartier > accessed 4 May 2022. [16] Preeti Kulkarni, ‘What You Should Keep in Mind When Investing in Diamonds’ The Economic Times (Mumbai, 12 October 2015) < https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/markets/commodities/what-you-should-keep-in-mind-when-investing-in-diamonds/articleshow/49297685.cms > accessed 8 May 2022. [17] ‘Non-Fungible Token Hard Asset Diamond Investment | NFT Marketplace | Icecap’ (Icecap, 2022) < https://icecap.diamonds/ > accessed 6 May 2022. [18] ibid. [19] Jacques Voorhees, ‘The World’s First NFT Diamond & Jewellery Collection’ (Icecap, 2021) < https://storage.googleapis.com/icecap/CollectibleCerts/GD%20Icecap%20Catalogue%20April%202021.pdf > accessed 4 May 2022. [20] Tong (n 15). [21] Victor Danciu, ‘Not For Trademarks? The Truth About NFTs And IP’ (Dennemeyer, 2022) < https://www.dennemeyer.com/ip-blog/news/not-for-trademarks-the-truth-about-nfts-and-ip/ > accessed 4 May 2022. [22] ibid. [23] Philip Nulud, ‘Protecting Your Intellectual Property In The Metaverse And On NFTs’ (Lexology, 2022) < https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=3458d650-8351-421f-a0ee-f1d5fbcb6094 > accessed 4 May 2022. [24] Anna Codrea-Rado, ‘Virtual Vandalism: Jeff Koons’s ‘Balloon Dog’ Is Graffiti-Bombed’ The New York Times (New York, 10 October 2017) < https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/10/arts/design/augmented-reality-jeff-koons.html > accessed 4 May 2022. [25] Sarah Royce-Greensill, ‘Gucci’s New High Jewellery Collection Is Worthy Of A Fantastical Fairy Princess - Or Prince’ The Telegraph (London, 21 June 2021) < https://www.telegraph.co.uk/luxury/jewellery/guccis-new-high-jewellery-collection-worthy-fantastical-fairy/ > accessed 4 May 2022. [26] Claudia Luque, ‘Review Of Carol Civre: An Extension Of Reality’ Metal Magazine (2020) < https://metalmagazine.eu/en/post/interview/carol-civre > accessed 4 May 2022. [27] ibid. [28] Rujana Cantoni, ‘RENAISSANC-E’ Vogue Italia (Milian, 17 July 2021) < https://www.vogue.it/fotografia/article/renaissanc-e-by-rujana-cantoni-7-3d-artists > accessed 4 May 2022.

Mariya Ionova wears many hats. She is a Member of the Parliament of Ukraine, holds a bachelor’s degree in Finance and Credit and a master’s in Global Business and International Economy, is a wife and mother of two children – and above all, is a fierce Ukrainian patriot. Over her eight-year tenure in Parliament, she has collaborated with others in government to secure Ukraine’s integration with Europe and to assist Ukrainians impacted by the ongoing Russian war. Since 2014, when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula and launched a hybrid campaign in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions of Eastern Ukraine, she has regularly visited the contact line to deliver aid and support to internally displaced Ukrainians. In addition, she is advancing legislation to promote women’s rights, to prevent and combat domestic violence and the protection of children. On 15 April 2022—52 days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022—we spoke to Ionova about her priorities as an elected official in wartime, her view of the West’s response to Russia’s war on Ukraine, and her predictions for how the war will end. This interview was lightly edited for length and clarity. Fig 1. Mariya Ionova 2022 © Mariya Ionova. CJLPA : When you were elected to be a member of Ukraine’s Parliament, the Verkhovna Rada, did you ever imagine you would be serving your country during a time of war? Mariya Ionova : Yes and no. I was first elected in 2012, and I was very active in questions of European integration during the Revolution of Dignity and Euromaidan].[1] The war for us started in March 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea and occupied Luhansk and Donetsk. The West did not want to escalate the war by putting boots on the ground. We had been fighting for six months and we were asking for sanctions. Russians were killing our people; I remember when President Petro Poroshenko [elected after Viktor Yanukovych’s removal] was working 24/7 on creating an international coalition and asked for a UN peacekeeping mission. He also worked on strengthening our Armed Forces together with our partners, and signed association agreements: legislative agreements to put the European Union and NATO integration into our constitution. This was a strategic course in his presidency. Because of this, when Russia invaded Ukraine again on 24 February of this year, we did not falter. Our armed forces, Ukrainian people, government, and Parliament work in solidarity, and we are brave. After that, we visited the front lines in Eastern Ukraine and meet regularly with IDPs [internally displaced persons] to provide humanitarian assistance. On 24 February, we were expecting war. But we did not expect such horror, such inhumanity, such cruelty, that there would be such crimes against women and children, girls and boys. Pure brutality. You can’t find the words when you see a seven-year-old boy watching his mother get raped and dying. Today, my colleagues and I are not only Members of Parliament, but we’re also volunteers in our communities. We are people who love our nation, our country, we love our people. And we are full of rage at the same time. We will not be OK until this settles in the courts. We need justice. We are working on the diplomatic front, on humanitarian aid and securing weapons for our military. Fig 2. In the town of Avdiivka, (left to right) Iryna Geraschenko (MP), Rebecca Harms (MEP) and Mariya Ionova (MP) 2022 © Mariya Ionova. CJLPA : Without sharing any details that might put you or your loved ones at risk, what steps have you taken to protect your safety and the safety of your family? MI : On 23 February I was in Parliament, and I felt it was wrong that my family was at home in Kyiv. I really couldn’t function at work from worry. So, in the evening, I called Myron [husband Myron Wasylyk, a Ukrainian-American advisor to the CEO of Naftogaz of Ukraine] and said ‘please be ready in one hour, we’re leaving for Western Ukraine’. When we arrived at five in the morning in Lviv the day after, the bombing started in Kyiv. My mom and aunt also arrived two days later, and then I went back to Kyiv while my family stayed in Lviv, and then to the Ukrainian/Hungarian border. I am worried about my mother; she has cancer and now must look after my children while my husband and I fight for Ukraine. Since then, I’ve been travelling to Zaporizhzhia, Dnipro, Ivano-Frankivsk. We are donating humanitarian aid from the USA and Canada. In our party [European Solidarity], we have a network of women that I work with closely: Jana Zinkevych, Sophia Fedyna, Nina Yuzhanina, Tac, Viktoriya Sumar, Iryna Gerashchenko, Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, and Iryna Friz . They are all strong, intelligent, and brave women. I’m so proud of these women, but it’s also heart-breaking what they’re doing. Iryna Friz, the first Minister of Veterans in Ukraine, in the past 53 days of the war, has sourced 328+ tonnes of humanitarian aid for Ukraine, including bulletproof vests. I don’t think about my security. I have my responsibilities and I must do them. There is no safe place in Ukraine. Today in Lviv, seven people including a small child were already killed and 15 badly wounded. My father and my brothers are in Kyiv, they are volunteers in different places. The men are trying to do what they can. CJLPA : As a Parliamentarian, in a time of war, with the country under martial law, what are the most important actions the Parliament is and should be taking right now? MI : Now our priorities are hostages and civilian hostages. There are more than 1,000 civilian hostages, and 500 of those are women, including local representatives, journalists, and civil activists. The conditions for them are not, shall we say, according to the Geneva Convention. They need medical attention. On this list of hostages is paramedic Yulia “Tayra” Payevska—her daughter Anna-Sofia Puzanova won a bronze medal at the Invictus Games. Yulia was working as a paramedic in Mariupol from the first days, and the Russians kidnapped her. We must highlight her name. They’ve made up stories about her. It’s just terrible. We also have a list of 40 children who were kidnapped and taken to Russia, most of them from Mariupol. We know the exact address of where they are in Russia. But these children have relatives in Ukraine. One boy, Ilya, his mother was killed in Mariupol, but his grandmother is in Uzhhorod. Another boy, Maksym, 15, is an orphan who was studying in college in Mariupol and was wounded. He also has relatives in Ukraine. Another girl, 12-year-old Kira Obedinksy, her father Yevhen Obedinksy was the former captain of the Ukrainian men’s water polo team, and he was killed in Mariupol. She’s been taken to Donetsk, and they want to give her to a Russian family, but Kira has a grandfather in Ukraine. Each has a personal story. As mothers we all can imagine our own children in these stories. This problem has to be named: Russia is a country that is kidnapping children. Fig 3. Near Mariupol in Shirokino, 809 metres from an enemy fire point. Members of Ukrainian Parliament (left to right) Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze, Iryna Geraschenko, Mariya Ionova, with Ukrainian soldiers 2022 © Mariya Ionova. CJLPA : We have heard reports from Ukraine’s government and the media about atrocities being committed against Ukraine’s people—executions, rape, abductions. What can you tell us about the situation on the ground that Ukraine’s allies may not be aware of? MI : The list of 40 children represents those where we have the exact address where they are being held, where we have a complete history and detailed information. But there are many, many more cases where we don’t yet have all the details. Especially in occupied territories, to which of course we don’t have access. All we have on those cases is information that the Ministry of Defence is collecting, and that which the Ombudswoman on Human Rights gets on their phone hotline [about missing or kidnapped individuals]. There are over 4,000 criminal cases that are open but, unfortunately, we don’t have the volume of legal professionals to prosecute them all. There are still bodies that have still not been identified after 50 days of war. Where there is rape of women and children, 99 percent of these victims are not ready to speak to law enforcement institutions, they are afraid to speak now. And that’s also a problem. But we are asking our international partners for assistance. There has also been evidence that people are dying of starvation and dehydration. In Mariupol, in Bucha, there are elderly people who have been blocked in their houses for weeks. In Bucha, they were finding that [Russian troops] killed families, five bodies in a yard. In all, thousands killed. We have to get all this documented and get this to the International Court, and it has to be punished. That’s why we are calling this a genocide. Fig 4. Members of Ukrainian Parliament Mariya Ionova and Iryna Geraschenko in front of a bombed building 2022 © Mariya Ionova. CJLPA : How would you rate the response from the international community so far to these atrocities? MI : All the European countries and America were teaching us about democratic values [before Russia’s latest invasion]. Now it’s their turn to show us how they defend those values. It is the responsibility of the free world. If they will not help us, he [Putin] will not stop. He has 150 million people. He doesn’t care how many Russian people will be killed. And he will go further. There are no red lines for him. The free world was not ready to defend their values. They didn’t have a strategy. Our strategy is that Russia must be defeated, Putin must be punished. He is a war criminal. The Western community is not ready for this. For us, there is no grey, only black and white. We are paying with our lives. That is why we are demanding weapons to defend ourselves. So, we say, ok, if you won’t give us a no-fly zone, at least give us military equipment. The problem is all these countries waited to give us assistance. They were sure we would fail. That is why they didn’t have a strategy of support for us. When we showed the whole world that we fight, when we showed our resistance, we understood that they don’t have a strategy on Russia. They would like to trade with Russia as business as usual. And we also heard realpolitik. Now realpolitik is the whole world watching online how we have been raped and tortured and killed. CJLPA : How should the world be supporting Ukraine? MI : Our humanitarian request is weapons. We don’t need masks, soap, food when we are under shelling, under bombardment. We need weapons. And sanctions. There are 330 Russian banks. Do you know how many were turned off from SWIFT? Six. Now after Bucha they increased, but not 330. They find loopholes. Why didn’t they sanction sooner? What about Russian information sources? Why are we not expelling Russian diplomats? At least half of them? And we still have discussions in the United Nations, to be or not to be. He [Putin] uses this weakness. He’s inspired by this weakness. I understand democratic procedures, but he is going crazy. He’s killing and attacking every day. Where is international order? Where are international rules? Why are we five steps behind? Why is he making the rules, setting the agenda? Why not strong democratic countries? What are you waiting for? CJLPA : Do you believe Ukraine will win this war against Russia? MI : We have already won. By spirit, by unity in our country. By being a brave nation. We will not fail. The alternative is we will be killed. We will not give up. This is why we’ve already won. We hear [Russia’s] is the second biggest army in the world, and our army has shown that when you have spirit and love and value freedom, you will fight. It’s a historical chance for all the world. We have repeated this historical circle for centuries. We need to get other nations to help prevent this and this criminal Putin, and that’s why we’re asking other countries that he needs to be completely isolated from the free world. And if the free world wants to do this, it’s their choice. But we will not give up. There is no alternative for us. What he’s doing to Mariupol, he will do with the whole of Ukraine. He wants to erase us from the whole world—our genes, our language, our land, our history. World—are you ready to respond? Fig 5. In Verkhovna Rada (Ukraine’s Parliament) Members of Ukrainian Parliament Mariya Ionova, Iryna Friz, Iryna Geraschenko, and Ivanna Klympush-Tsintsadze 2021 © Mariya Ionova. CJLPA : What else do you think Western audiences need to know about Ukraine? MI : The whole set of war crimes that are being committed in Ukraine now. We are not blaming the world. We are not making accusations. Everyone makes their choice. But if we all together share the same values and principles, then all together we need not only words, but also actions. We must be united and fight. We are committed to this fight because we don’t see another way. To be under the Russian Federation? No way! In Donetsk and Luhansk, Putin thought those were his people, but people were saying, no, we want to be here in Ukraine. You see, in Kherson, Putin failed. Ukraine is in favour of being our own country. We are a European, Atlantic country, in the European family. But if European countries share such values, they need to step up. We will do it ourselves if we need to, but the casualties will be huge. It’s a question of security for the whole world. We are protecting the European Eastern border with our lives. We appreciate that all the world is standing with Ukrainians. But words are not enough. We appreciate words, but we need action. We are fighting for the world. Russia’s war is against NATO also, it is against democracy. The best security guarantee is NATO membership. In this regard, I would like to take this opportunity and wholeheartedly thank the British people and the British government for their clear position on supporting Ukraine…and this position is becoming strong and stronger. Together we will prevail and of course Ukraine will win! This interview was conducted by Yevdokia Sokil and Constance Uzwyshyn. Constance is an expert on Ukrainian contemporary art. She founded Ukraine’s first foreign-owned professional art gallery, the ARTEast Gallery, in Kyiv. Having written a masters dissertation entitled The Emergence of the Ukrainian Contemporary Art Market , she is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge researching Ukrainian contemporary art. She is also CJLPA 2’s Executive Editor and the Ukrainian Institute of London’s Creative Industries Advisor. [1] Protests over then-President Volodymyr Yanukovich’s decision not to proceed with European Union integration in favour of closer ties with Russia, that resulted in his removal in 2014.