Jean-Philippe Miller-Tremblay // Transforming Weapons into Precious Objects during the War in Ukraine (2022 – Present)
It is well-known today that societies that endured or are enduring industrial warfare are surrounded by objects made from weapons. Considering that there is now a revival of this type of creation in Ukraine, there is urgent work to be done on these problematic fragments of war after the more than three years that separate us from February 2022.
In this project, I intend to study the “biographies” of some these objects. Writing these biographies requires an approach combining anthropology, history, art history and economics, as well as knowledge from metallurgy and the arms industry. Some of the stages of their ‘lives’ that will form parts of my inquiry are: the extraction of the ore and the subsequent metallurgical operations and the manufacture of the weapon itself; its use in warfare or not; the amateur or professional collection (by non-specialized soldiers or deminers, for example) of the weapon after its use; any operation on the latter, whether it involves neutralizing its active substances (such as explosives), melting, cutting or assembling it with other objects; finally, carrying it on one’s body or installing, displaying or exhibiting the finished object. A number of other intermediate operations are also to be examined, particularly economic ones, such as the sale or donation of raw materials or the finished work.
This study aims, first, to improve our knowledge on the (re)configuration, through arts and crafts, of societies that experienced or are experiencing war, and second, to examine the current emergence of a dialogue around a shared material culture of war that crosses social and cultural boundaries.