Vladislav Plisetskiy

‘What You Will Do When the War Starts?’ is the question that Vladislav Plisetskiy asked himself a month before the full-scale invasion, when Russia was rattling its weapons at the Ukrainian border. The artist found his answer and decided to make a movie — this is how the idea of a trilogy was born, in which he wonders about potential actions in case of the start, continuation, and the end of the war. What You Will Do When the War Continues? is the second part of the trilogy. The new work reflects how the chaos of the full-scale invasion is mounting, and affecting, among other things, the Ukrainian queer community, LGBTQ+ rights, and their involvement in the war.

The movie starts with a visual narrative of the artist’s own life. Growing up in Murmansk (Russia), he ended up in an orphanage when his father committed a crime. Later, he went to stay with relatives in Donetsk, and eventually arrived in Kyiv, where he joined the art and queer communities. For Plisetskiy, a phone conversation with his father becomes an introduction to the wartime events of the future, also highlighting the contrast between Ukrainian and Russian societies and their political sentiments.

What Will You Do If the War Continues? depicts the close ties between the personal and the political. The eccentric and transgressive performances, art, and parties in which Plisetskiy freely expresses himself and blurs the boundaries of gender identity are replaced by wartime turmoil and mobilization processes in society and artists’ close community. Here, different destinies and aspects of today’s reality intersect: the tragic and the comical, the everyday and the carnival. The movie ultimately captures the absurdity, the certain madness of this moment in history where hostile ideologies and life contexts coexist and confront each other against the backdrop of the war.