"Strange and Twisted Love": Researching Art Practices in Donbas through Collaborative Frames

From the production portraits of Soviet avant-garde artists 1920s to bleak depictions failing Donbas monotowns in cinema perestroika era, landscapes and communities have been repeatedly depicted as exotic abstractions, be wondered at, emulated, or feared by rest nation. In our role researchers such practices, we might consider ourselves stand outside frame, engaged a process objective deconstruction that exposes mechanisms power inform politics representation. this article, take issue with assumption, highlighting researcher's complicity perpetuating subject-object dichotomies, thus inequalities power, when write about cultural representations. We scrutinize roles constructing new frames for understanding region whose representations engage writing, especially through own practices curating creative community engagement projects. Drawing on methods reciprocal ethnography collaborative espouse more ethical, feminist approach topic, "writing with" rather than about" practitioners curatorial work has informed contemporary ideas Donbas. dialogue interlocutors collectively deconstruct identities explore shared reactions process. way, reflect framing exclusion we—as researchers, curators, art practitioners—inevitably work.