From Chernobyl With Love Лана Гоготишвили
Task
April 26, the day Chernobyl tragedy occured, is one of the most dreadful dates of the USSR history, but it's not fully reflected by post-soviet countries. Our main objective is working with historical memory. We wanted to recall to people these horrible events and show the mere people lives, full of love and simple pleasures, which were ruined by the accident. We want our audience to reflect on this experience and think overt the mistakes of the past in order not to repeat them
Ideas and solutions
The project provides real letters from Chernobyl, which its citizens wrote to their beloved before the nuclear accident ruined their lives. We gave our followers a chance to share letters with friends via social media & messengers and 50000+ of people excitedly did it. Also we present a large archive of photos, films and postcards from Chernobyl. https://chernobyl.takiedela.ru/ This project was released by media Takie dela, which covers social issues. Our aim was to find content and approach which helps the mass audience speak over the traumatic historical episodes. The real letters are based on words of love and friendship — these are the things the audience want to share. We gave the audience a medium which generated the new way to speak over the tragedy by sharing artifacts that illustrate the horror of the tragedy without naming its real consequences. We created a randomiser with real letters categorized to 4 topics (love, wise thoughts, life issues, "I miss you"). Users choose the topic and get one of real letters they can save or share with friends via social media or messengers. Then they are to immerse a huge archive of photos and postacards which have been collected by photographer Maxim Dondyuk in abandonded houses of Chernobyl for several years https://chernobyl.takiedela.ru/galleries/ The project was released before the Chernobyl series skyrocketed and attracted public attention to this problem. In Russian media the topic of Chernobyl is mostly ignored. Inspite of it, we reached a strong social impact. According to Google analytics, we had more than 120 000 visits, more than 55 000 of unique viewers and more than 60 000 of those who generated letters.
