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“A Thousand Voices” VR Explorations by LIBá Collective at the London Art Biennale 2023

29 June 2023

Ivanna as a young woman: the archival portrait at the centre of LIBA Collective’s A Thousand Voices.
Two VR experiences by LIBá Collective are open to the public during the the Biennale

“A Thousand Voices” is a Virtual Reality exploration and exhibit that allows participants to create intimate and emotional connections with the memories of Gulag survivor and Ukrainian watercolour artist, Ivanna Maszczak.

On the 11th of April 1949, Ivanna was sentenced to ten years of hard corrective labour for supporting Ukrainian independence. She was transported over ten thousand kilometres from Kyiv to the coastal Gulag camp at Magadan, Kolyma, where she remained until her release in 1955.

VR experiences are free and open to the public during the following hours:

There will also be a talk by the lead designer Daniel Bacchus BA, MA, FHEA of Sheffield Hallam University and Ivanna Maszczak on Thursday 27th July, 5-7pm. Click here to RSVP

VR Experiences

  1. I Look For Them is a VR experience narrated by Ivanna herself inspired by anecdotes told of her journey across Russia and Siberia in 1949. Participants are invited to explore the virtual space, accessing scenes that are inspired by moments in her journey across Siberia to Magadan; a period of interrogation, transportation via train into the unknown, brief pauses in her journey at one of the many transit camps in which she was held, a dangerous voyage across the Sea of Okhostsk, and finally arriving at the endless expanse of snow on the shores of Magadan.
  2. Be That Ocean is a VR experience that immerses the participant in a dynamic, layered virtual landscape that offers a space of resonance with the memories of Ivanna Maszczak as she recalls transportation from Ukraine to the coastal Gulag camp, Magadan. Abstracted experiential fragments, created via Ivanna’s stories as context, merge and blend in unpredictable configurations, generating a non-linear and unique process where present experience and the memories of another become entangled. By experimenting with the unique affordances VR offers, the work invites immanent, affective resonance with the experience of another.

LIBá Collective is the collaboration of digital artist Danny Bacchus, filmmaker Dominic Green and multi-disciplinary artist Marcel Schreur.

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