On May 6, 2022, an explosion was heard in the village of Skovorodynivka, Kharkiv region, Ukraine. The National Literary and Memorial Museum of Hryhorii Skovoroda was totally destroyed by a well-aimed Russian missile attack.

Hryhorii Skovoroda (1722–1794) was a Ukrainian philosopher, poet, and composer. He was well-known because of his ascetic and nomad lifestyle centered around Sloboda Ukraine, and was compared to Pythagoras, Leibniz, and Rousseau. Skovoroda’s works were never published during his lifetime, and most of them, including “Narcissus. A Conversation About That: Know Thyself”, still haven’t been translated into English and other languages.

Starting from the reconstruction of the museum demolition act, the work refers to Skovoroda’s ideas and the philosopher’s Neoplatonic distinctions between the imperfect sensational world and the divine invisible world. In the context of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, they could be interpreted as an opposition between the outer destruction and the inner resistibility of the Ukrainian people.

A film by Elias Parvulesco
Idea by Olha Zhuk
3D modeling by Kateryna Tykhonenko
Sound by tlo (based on Cherubikon song by Hryhoriy Skovoroda)
Voice of Dmytro Buzynskyi recorded by the 'Phonation' studio with the technical support of Ivan Shapkin

The film uses the following audiovisual materials:

• footage from Skovorodynivka shot in the summer of 2022 by Timur Nusimbekov, journalist and editor-in-chief of the Adamdar/CA platform;
• images from social networks of the State Emergency Service in the Kharkiv region, Oleh Syniehubov, and Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation;
• images of maps from the website scribblemaps.com;
• fragments of the film "Hryhorii Skovoroda" (1959, directed by Ivan Kavaleridze);
• texts and images from the Ukrainian translation of Hryhorii Skovoroda "Narcissus. A Conversation About That: Know Thyself"

*** Russian Federation is a terrorist state that must be held responsible for all its crimes ***