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Our flesh sweat sweet (Los roces), 2024

Los roces in Spanish means frictions. Taking this basic principle of physics, I observe the men around me. Especially those in their twenties, who blend into a slam dance where they feel accompanied, understood, and share this collective body-landscape: anger, brotherhood, grief, and joy. While I dance too, I begin to record their roces, their friction, and the sweat.

As I watch the images, I reflect on this gaze and wonder whether, by showing their intimate experience, I am appropriating their discourse — their language about what it means to be a man in a country at war. What I can say about this, and if I could, should I?

Here they are, dancing bodies in the now. I can't stop filming, but I sense the responsibility that this act implies.

The project itself has two names: Our flesh sweat sweet corresponds to the video recording, while Los roces aims to cover a wider work that is still in progress.

photo and video register
Filmed in Ukraine, 2024
With the support of Potuzhnyak, in memory of Yura Stetsyk
(Not fully published)