last supper before the war is a zine, created for the exhibition “War, what is it good for, absolutely nothing…” in Galerie Laroche / Joncas (Montreal, Canada), at the invitation of artist Craig Leonard. In late April, when Craig offered ist publishing to tell about the war, we considered different ways of narration that would be timely, open to the international audience, and accurate enough in detail.
Thus, the notion of the meeting became the unifying plot of the zine: on the night of 20–21 February, Liza Biletska invited her friends to the first pre-war dinner, which also became the last. After February 24, all communication moved to messengers, and works and texts became available through posts on social media. This zine compiles selected posts and publications of the authors just as they gathered around the table: Asia Bazdyrieva, Liza Biletska, Katia Buchatska, Katia Libkind, Filip Olenyk, Stanislav Turina, and Borys Filonenko (as the compiler of the zine).
Texts and works of art speak of the fluctuating experiences of the first months of the war, the search for a language capable of conveying these experiences (from archival works and found objects to a theoretical article on the double colonization of Ukraine-as-a-territory), new regimes and ways of talking about civilian life during the war.
