Shattering the Darkness

The MOKO team created the audiovisual performance “Shattering the Darkness” for the first international conference, “Restoring the Rights of Survivors of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence: An Element of Peace and Global Security.” The performance’s goal was not simply to show the horror and pain of the trauma of sexual violence in conflict but also to encourage responsible representatives and civil servants to make appropriate changes to Ukrainian legislation and create tools to protect and support survivors.

Since the beginning of the Russian invasion, 321 cases of Conflict-Related Sexual Violence have been registered. But these are only the known cases where victims dared to express their pain to achieve justice and help others survive this trauma. And how many people in the still-occupied territories are not yet ready and unable to speak?

To demonstrate the horror and pain of the trauma of CRSV we decided to turn to the help of voices, sounds, and rustling. After all, such a trauma is often invisible from the outside, but it lives and grows inside. We created an audiovisual performance, “Shattering the Darkness,” divided it into two parts.

The first is a true and poignant story about the trauma that, like emptiness and darkness, captures the life of the victim. The second is about effective resistance that helps dispel the darkness and gives hope to the victims for the restoration of justice. For the first part of the performance, the MOKO team collected testimonies of women who suffered from CRSV from media stories and videos of the National Police and found intercepted conversations of criminals. 

For the second part of the performance, quotes heard throughout the conference were used. For example, theses from Olga Stefanishina’s speech about the interim reparations project. Each of these quotes is a turn of the gear, a mechanism for restoring justice for victims.