Category: Projects

Support program 2023

The program supported individual applicants and creative teams with research and projects in the field of visual arts that comprehend processes in art and society, initiate and develop new ideas, formats, and approaches in culture. Projects based on a critical stance, questioning the boundaries of art, promoting social engagement, and interdisciplinary projects were welcomed.

12 projects were supported based on jury’s decision (15 artists and researchers a total). We received 153 applications in response to the open call.

Applicants were free to determine the requested amount of support based on the project’s needs. For ease of communication and reporting, we have developed a package of documents, including a memorandum of cooperation and two simple reporting forms.

Activities within the supported projects: development of a concept for a center for contemporary culture; opening a safe art space; creation of a stained glass workshop; residency to explore the local area; research on the activities of internally displaced artists and changes in the Lviv artistic environment after February 24, 2022; research on the practices of Ukrainian artists during the winter blackouts of 2022; research on the practices of participation during the war; a text on the history of colonization through the private stories of one family members; a book about natural environments that emerge on the sites of former industrial sites, a publication on strategies for overcoming dumbness through the practice of women’s writing; a photo series documenting the processes of war.

Within the competition 2023 the following artists, researchers, and collectives were supported: Olena Afanasieva; Yana Kononova; Mykhailo Kulishov; Oleksandra Kushchenko; Kateryna Levchenko; Larion Lozovyi; “Mizhkimnatnyi  prostir” (Denys Pankratov, Victoria Dorr); Magran Tata; Tamara Turliun; Asia Tsisar; Natasha Chychasova; Oleksandra Shchur.

Supported projects

Olena Afanasieva
REGARDLESS OF THE CIRCUMSTANCES. BLACKOUT
art book, 2023
The project accumulated the artistic practices and reflections of Ukrainian artists that emerged during the winter blackouts in the form of the art book Blackout, which was also created during the electricity outage. The visual content of the art book is based on two black-and-white photographs found in a 1983 album bought at a flea market in Ternopil. On each page of the album, these photos were manually reproduced in ink, visualizing the awareness of the value and importance of repetitive actions and rituals as a mechanism of psychological self-balancing and recovery. The textual content of the art book ``Blackout`` includes stories of artists - painters, playwrights, architects, actors - who described their ways of surviving the blackout and their new (or renewed old) artistic practices.
Yana Kononova
RADIATIONS OF WAR
photo series, 2022 — ongoing
The work on the Radiations of War series started in March 2022. On June 6, 2023, Russian forces detonated the machinery room of the Kakhovka Hydroelectric Power Station, destroying the Kakhovka Reservoir dam and subsequent ecocide—flooding downstream along the Dnieper River. To study the impact of this technogenic disaster, the author traveled to flooded areas near Kherson and researched the consequences of reduced water levels in the Kakhovka Reservoir further upstream along the Dnieper's riverside in Zaporizhzhya, Khortytsia Island, and suburbs. The photo series focuses on the spatial portrayal of war-affected milieux, contextualizing this imagery within Ukraine's industrial and geological history.
Mykhailo Kulishov
DONBAS: AFTER INDUSTRY
photobook, 2023
The photobook draws attention to the importance of preserving and restoring natural environments that emerge on the sites of former industrial facilities. The book contains archival photographs documenting the history and transformation of industrial and post-industrial landscapes in eastern Ukraine. The pictures illustrate the transformation of post-industrial landscapes into natural environments, demonstrating the possibilities of their restoration. The book can serve as a basis for further research and initiatives to preserve and restore natural environments in different regions of Ukraine facing similar challenges. The photographs collected in the book may become almost the only source demonstrating what industrial landscapes looked like before 2022.
Oleksandra Kushchenko
RESEARCH: OPEN CITY
research, 2023

This is an attempt to ``capture the moment`` and record the changes in the Lviv artistic environment after February 24, 2022. The set contains the wide range of experiences from apartment exhibitions, through independent art galleries to the largest private institution in the region, Jam Factory. Hopefully the attention to relocated artists by the local media will foster empathetic connections in the artistic community and help to strengthen artists. The interviews recorded as part of the research, personal communication, and statistics collected from open sources allow us to outline the benefits of horizontal connections, illustrate the importance of mutual support within the artistic community, point out weaknesses, and think about strategies for strengthening.

Kateryna Levchenko
THE FIRST PROJECT OF THE CENTER FOR CONTEMPORARY CULTURE IN KRYVYI RIH
residency, 2023
The first project of the Kryvyi Rih Center for Contemporary Culture was a ``residence`` for actors from the fields of culture, art, business, and civil society from Kryvyi Rih. The project participants learned about the experience of institutions from other cities of Ukraine, including the Jam Factory Art Center, Izolyatsia, Lviv Municipal Art Center, atelienormalno, Teple Misto, Platform for Interdisciplinary Practice Open Place, and Lviv Radio. The project provided a place, time, and space for public dialogue to define the mission, vision, and role that might have such a center in Kryvyi Rih.
Larion Lozovyi
PRACTICES OF PARTICIPATION BEFORE AND DURING THE BIG WAR
article, 2023
The text ``Practices of Participation Before and During the Big War`` was written based on a lecture of the same name and a study by Larion Lozovyi in the Kukhnia-Lviv volunteer community in 2023. ``Interaction with people is one of the cursed questions of contemporary art theory. It is hard to imagine a discussion that would not get bogged down in insoluble dilemmas of an ethical and aesthetic nature. Capable of having an undeniable impact, participatory art realizes it in a different way than visual art. Previously, my artistic practice was as far from participation and interaction as possible, and I could hardly imagine myself involving communities of people in it. However, with the beginning of the full-scale invasion of russia, I found myself in one of these communities. Participatory art, previously known as abstraction, has become a real factor in my (artistic) life.``
Magran Tata
GALLERY ``TVORCHE NEZHYT``
art space, 2023

A safe art space that allows young artists to exhibit their works for the first time, gain experience, and sometimes even sell their first works. Formation of a sustainable community of young artists and students. We achieved most of our goals: giving the artistic community and city residents a new lease on life, rebooting the formats of events, and making them more open. We managed to unite disparate creative bubbles, serving as a platform for mutual collaborations and performances - from performance and music to poetry and literature. Each opening and event served as a kind of networking. The fundamental format is pop-up exhibitions, which allow anyone, without exception, to bring anything on the day of the event and be sure that there will be no judgment and no fear of criticism.

Tamara Turliun
RESIDENCY AT DARNITSA
residency, exhibition, 2023
The residence in Darnytsia is a way to explore the area of the ``left bank`` in Kyiv, namely the place called Darnytsia, and its surroundings. During the tour, we got acquainted with the monumental heritage of the neighborhood: houses and mosaics. For a better acquaintance, we used materials from the book by S. Shyrochin and O. Mykhailyk ``Unknown Periphery of North Left bank of Kyiv``. The residency lasted for two weeks. The first week was dedicated to introductory meetings, excursions, and planning the route for the second week. During the second week, we followed a joined route, had dinner from Gostynets, and worked on the preparation of the exhibition. The residency ended with the exhibition Bychacha Krov (Bull's Blood).
Asia Tsisar
A GIRL WHO DREAMED OF A PLACE WHERE APRICOTS FALL ON THE STREET
essay, 2023
The essay tells the history of colonization through the intimate stories of one family's members. It marks a new level of social consciousness when we begin to talk about painful and uncomfortable topics in our families with our loved ones.
The essay is a part of the project ``Taking the Train to the East``, which aims to present and make visible the perspective of marginalized communities and cultures.
Natasha Chychasova
SILENCE FÉMININ
publication, 2023
The publication Silence féminin is dedicated to understanding the phenomenon of silence through the practice of women's writing. In the texts created in a dialog, the authors share their experiences, reflect on strategies for overcoming silence, and the limitations of the theoretical apparatus. Since the beginning of russia's full-scale invasion, this project has become a tool of support for the participants and a way to manifest their voices, postulating fragility and strength at the same time. The texts rethink the transformations that occurred to the authors due to the invasion that affected their perception of the phenomenon of silence and attempts to find their voice.
Oleksandra Shchur
OPENING OF A WINDOW
stained glass studio, 2023
As part of the funding, a stained glass workshop was created and equipped at the Kyiv Institute of Automation. The author created and installed her first individual monumental project, a window in the technique of classical stained glass, and gifted it to the local cultural space Spaska, whose activities and values are close to her. There was a ceremony of an official ``opening of the window`` which was attended by about 80 visitors.

Support program 2020

The program supported individual applicants and creative teams with research and projects in the field of visual arts that comprehended the processes in art and society, initiate and develop new ideas, formats, and approaches in culture. Projects based on a critical stance and interdisciplinary projects were welcomed.
We received 65 robust applications from the individuals and collectives. 14 projects were supported (a total of 17 artists and researchers).
The activities within the selected projects ranged from researching Ukrainian vernacular photography to studying the creative industries sector in Ukraine; from finding alternative methods of education to analyzing political and economic challenges; from working with memory to rethinking the myths that are being built in Ukrainian society.

The winners of the 2020 competition: Asia Bazdireva, Anatoly Belov and Viktor Ruban, Uliana Bychenkova and Anna Shcherbyna, Andrii Dostliev, Aleksandra Kadzevych, Yelyzaveta Korneichuk, Garry Krayevets, Polina Limina and Hanna Oryshchenko, Larion Lozovoy, Vasyl Liakh, Tonya Melnik, Lada Nakonechna, Valentina Petrova, Maksym Khodak.

Supported projects

Asia Bazdireva
INTRODUCTION TO THE WORK WITH ENVIRONMENTAL ISSUES IN THE UKRAINIAN CONTEXT
article, 2020
The text draws attention to important issues that should precede the simple appropriation of European environmental rhetoric. The test suggests looking at the narrative tool of catastrophe and the imagined end of humanity to draw attention to the non-universality of such concepts as time and imagination of the future. The peculiarities of European and Soviet modernity and the difference in their political and economic backgrounds should also be considered in criticism of the concepts of man and nature and their relationship. To ensure that the environment does not become an empty signifier, and that disaster is not the only operational scenario, we propose to focus on situated knowledge - naming the tangled experience of a particular land and its versions of time. They make possible not only alternatives to the Soviet version of history but also various possibilities for working with the imagination today.
Anatoly Belov and Viktor Ruban
RITUAL-FAIRY TALE FOR CYBELE
research, 2020
The project has the idea of replacing the mystical ritual with artistic and performative, giving the Phrygian goddess Cybele new qualities - the patroness and protector of queer people. The project addresses the problem of representation of the LGBTQ+ community in Ukrainian society, where this community is often closed and seen as the different sects of interest. The project aims to unite people in one safe queer space through the ritual fairy tale game, to get to know and feel each other. Together, in a common space without rigid gender and sexual roles, to practice our physicality through guided by performers and psychedelic electronic music. The project aims to increase the visibility of the LGBTQ+ community and its inclusion in the general cultural context of Ukraine.
Uliana Bychenkova and Anna Shcherbyna
READER
a series of reading meetings, 2020
The meetings are themed around the positional diversity of relations between textuality and materiality in the artistic and theoretical practices of contemporary feminist art. Possible positions: To delve in search of a different (not phallocentric) morpho-logic of expression; To incorporate text and reading into artistic practice by assigning them the status of a material object; To promote the practice of modesty of literature as a collaborator; To argue about the relationship between text and its maid illustration; Or other and other artistic tricks of mastering the relationship with the Theory. Joint readings and discussions are a space for engaging in dialogues between female artists and female theorists.
Andrii Dostliev
UKRAINIAN SOVIET PHOTOGRAPHY
zin, 2020
The project aims to assemble an archive of Ukrainian vernacular photographs that met the eye of Soviet imperial optics. They were either destroyed (often along with their owners) or removed from their original context and hidden in the archives. All the textual descriptions and a few images come from the dossier of residents of the Soviet part of Ukraine who were repressed in the 1930s. They are part of Ukrainian culture that vanished after decades of colonial rule. They are just traces of someone's family photos, but also traces of the colonial gaze, which was the last to look at these photos and was forever imprinted in them.
Aleksandra Kadzevych
KALININA, VYNOHRADNA, SADOVA
exhibition, 2020
The project deals with the dialectic of internal and external through the study of painting in relation to the surrounding space, as an object that can shape the perception of the territory and reveal its new complex meanings. Leaving her studio and her usual workspace, the artist decided to exhibit a new painting series in an unknown and almost uninhabited place, using the resources of this place, its territory, and its components. From being a passive participant in the exhibition, the artist becomes an organizer who shapes her own field and creates her own context.

Yelyzaveta Korneichuk
ON THE SHORES OF THE EOCENE SEA. ART IN THE KYIV MUSEUM OF NATURE
article, 2020
The project explores the visual component of the National Museum of Natural History's exposition —artworks by Ivan Yizhakevych, Fedir Krychevsky, Hennadii Hlickman, and other authors. The project resulted in the publication of the first descriptions of the works of Ivan Yizhakevych, Fedir Krychevsky, and Hennadii Hickman. The research materials were handed over to the museum team for further use and work with them. A discussion about Ukrainian paleoart and its further research has been started. The project contributes to the redefinition of the Museum of Nature as an art space and to the incorporation of its collection in an artistic context. The project outlined the first step in actualizing the museum as an alternative artistic platform. The team plans to continue working on unlocking the artistic potential of the Museum of Nature.
Garry Krayevets
CATALOG OF THE NOCH GALLERY
publication, 2020
Publication, which summarizes the three years of functioning of the NOCH Gallery. The publication includes texts by artists and curators about the significance and importance of this gallery, which in three years managed to accumulate a small cultural community and support the launch of some artists' careers. Creating self-published materials was another important experience of the project. Some of the books were distributed to artists. The publication will help reach an audience beyond Odesa and inspire self-organized and non-institutional initiatives in other cities to continue working in this direction, developing and enriching the art field.
Polina Limina and Hanna Oryshchenko
PROVINCIAL ART
research, 2020
How can we define Ukrainian art that was created away from the trends that prevailed in specific periods of time? Neither art brut nor naive art, outsider art, or marginalized creativity fully correspond to the local context. The project team chose the definition of provincial art to overcome a white spot in the country's cultural trends. During their expeditions to small towns and villages, they searched for artists whose works have their own logic and system but do not necessarily fit the tastes of elite art platforms. They researched and analyzed cultural life in Stryi, Smila, and Budy. The collected materials became the basis for the articles they wrote.
Larion Lozovoy
SYNERGY AND ENGAGEMENT: THREE STORIES ABOUT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BUILDING CAPITAL AND ART
article, 2020
``Synergy and engagement`` is an artistic study of the interconnectedness of gentrification, the expansion of developers' capital, the digital economy, and the cultural sector's role in these contradictory processes. The author examines key examples of ``adaptive reuse`` of former industrial sites, such as factories and plants, which have become creative clusters or have been converted into luxury housing. Culture plays a central role in legitimizing such projects, smoothing out the contradictions of their implementation. Contemporary art finds itself in a precarious position: its inherent sensitivity to context conflicts with the obviousness of instrumentalization, conditions in which roles are assigned in advance.
Vasyl Liakh
TREASURE
documentary film, 2020
The plot of the film was based on a family legend about the director's grandmother-in-law, who, in the 1960s, buried the medals of her father in the garden. The chatting about the family history helped to highlight the patriarchal domination as an important feature of the seaside town, its past and present. The film documents the daily life of a fairly typical Mariupol family in a neighborhood near the port and interviews the heroes and heroines about the past.
Tonya Melnik
SCARF-POSTER
workshops on batik technique, 2020
Scarf-poster is a personal attribute of a political statement on fabric that recreates an existing poster used at a particular political event that was essential to the person or one's own statement that can also be used as a poster. The workshop participants were allowed to work in a comfortable environment and friendly atmosphere, to master the batik technique, and to create a piece of clothing. A series of video tutorials on the batik technique was also created so participants could work remotely.
Lada Nakonechna
REPORT BY EUGENE HOLOSTENKO
artistic research, 2020
The research is based on the method that considers artworks as documents that testify to a specific social and political context. The basic assumption is that the aesthetics of socialist realism established a particular mode of vision. The project revealed the peculiarity of forming a disciplined vision, which historically occurred through the identification of the viewer's experience with the artistic image in the representational apparatus regulated by the one-party system. This process was facilitated by the artist's self-censorship, the adoption of a rigid representation policy, and self-imprisonment in perfecting the mastery of realistic style. Thus, art became a mechanism for taming the artist and the viewer. Lada Nakonechna created the series of drawings by copying black-and-white reproductions of painted landscapes from the Holostenko catalog.
Valentina Petrova
A SMALL TREE AGAINST A LARGER ONE
sculpture, 2020
In Oleshky Sands, a performative sculpture was created that is a monument to the landscape - in a very literal sense - not only as an artificially made object that, installed in a particular area, refers to it, marks it, but also as an artificially made object that repeats the landscape in which it is located. The material from which the sculpture was created (sand) is a physical dimension of the landscape. The elements that made up the basis of the sculpture (aircraft shell, sand, steppe vegetation) refer to the history of this area, to specific periods (including the present) filled with significant events. The form of the sculpture (three-layered, partially buried under the surface, rapid decay) is an allusion to time (relationships - past, present, future) and cyclicality.
Maksym Khodak
WARHOLA - ARTIST FROM NOWHERE
research, 2020
The project explores the current state of the neorusyn movement in the Zakarpattia region of Ukraine through the figure of Andy Warhol. The mockumentary resulting from this research will tell an alternative fictionalized story of Warhol's life. Andy does not die in 1987 but moves to Zakarpattia, the homeland of his ancestors, where he continues to engage in active artistic practice, reflecting on local processes. The author traces the use of the image of Andy Warhol as one of the national heroes of Rusyns.

Fresh Market

The first stories of Fresh Market were collected in 2017 in Warsaw during collaboration with labor migrants from Ukraine. It was an attempt to work with the issue not in an esoteric way. At the beginning we heard the stories of labor migrants from the employee in various organizations in Poland, which help to solve social and legal issues. We were looking for the opportunity to get access to the real people to hear from them about the problems they faced. When we have had a certain amount of stories collected in archive, we questioned ourselves what this archive is like, how do we relate to it? Do we believe that certain number of stories put together, make the work full?

The archive contains intimate stories of different people. We’re curating the way that information is coming to us by framing the experience through a series of questions. Currently, the archive has stories on emigration, violations of labor and human rights, patriarchal control over women, xenophobia, self-identification and identity, and other precarious conditions. An archive is a kind of mélange – a mixing of various narratives and social compounds, spectrum toward freedom and restrictions in the different sites.

In the archive we bring together different contexts and experiences by documenting and creating them. And, of course, the core is not in the number of stories we want to get or to reach the certain number, but in their totality, in how these stories give meaning to each other, how they relate to each other, how they make a conversation with each other. How one story answer the questions raised in another stories, and how together they create a certain narrative.

Another series of questions related to the form of the archive and its subjectivity. How should look a space where these narratives come out? Who are the final editor and storyteller? As the creators of the archive, we want Fresh Market to be more than a positing of a traumatic experience of the person whoever’s going to share a story, so that it can be an environment for collaborative work. We want to trace how the story is read and perceived. For this we use certain methodologies. Fresh Market is a nomadic archive that is filled in and worked on in the different contexts. To emphasize the multiplicity of interpretations, we use transparent layers that are imposed on top of the initial text, each time when it is read in a new context. We invite people to read the story and highlight what seems important to them. Selected fragments are placed on a separate layer that overlap the previous layer, the name of the person who read, and the date of reading is placed next to the reading results.

Discussions that are happened during the process of reading become a part of the archive as a separate text document.

Fresh Market Archive

Виставки:
Migration in Transition
Long Island City, New York
Flux Faxtory
November 15 – 20, 2018
Somewhere now
Lublin, Poland
Labirynt Gallery
July 21– August 12, 2018
Gotong Royong. The things we do together
Warsaw, Poland
U-jazdowski
October 19, 2017– January 14, 2018

Kitchen Orchestra

Interactive Installation

May – November 2013
Donetsk, Ukraine

This interdisciplinary project combined contemporary electronic technologies with objects of everyday life. The artists turned pans into percussion instruments. All of the objects through the system of sound pickups were connected to a metal gong, made of tank car.

Once participants picked up available drumsticks and began to make music, it became immediately clear that in order to avoid creating a deafening cacophony, they needed to find a common rhythm and tune. This created an opportunity for dialogue, interaction and artistic collaboration.

Exhibition

Meeting place
Donetsk, Ukraine
IZOLYATSIA. Platform for Cultural Initiatives
May 17 – November 3, 2013

Dotted Lines of Speech

Series of art interventions

November, 2006 – September, 2012

Project Dotted Lines of Speech is aimed to gain a practical and artistic experience outside, the gallery and studio space. This project, developed as a series of reversible art interventions, explores area of public communication, develops the concept of event-driven scenarios for their practical implementation in the public space.

People, who are open to the exchange of knowledge, willing to contribute to the changes of the matters of public spaces, are invited to participate in the project Dotted Lines of Speech. Some models and principles were tested in 2006 at Zhitny Rynok Kyiv, Ukraine, in 2007 at cafe of House of Writers Vilnius, Lithuania, and in 2012 on Dongdaemun Market Seoul, South Korea.

Often actions of the project Dotted Lines of Speech have impromptu character, and though the outlines agreed upon in advance, meanings are formed during the intervention. Invited people can play a part of their own stories, and people from the audience are encouraged to become the heroes. As the result we have a work, the form of which is similar to public happenings, but with a paradoxical form of thinking where joint actions and communications allows to get new experience forcing to grasp an everyday reality with new sensations, in a new way.

Events in the frame of project:
Intervention
Seoul, South Korea
Dongdaemun Market from 1pm to 4pm
September 02, 2012
Intervention
Vilnius, Lithuania
Café Grafoman from 9pm to 10:30 pm
January 29, 2007
Intervention
Vilnius, Lithuania
Bank of Neris river (Viliya) from 1pm to 2pm
January 28, 2007
Intervention
Kyiv, Ukraine
Zhitny Rynok from 1pm to 2pm
November 23, 2006

Between Revolution and War

Exhibitions and public interventions

August 2014 – January 2017

Project Between Revolution and War illuminates not only what is happening in Ukraine, but also look at the mechanisms that form the basis for most of the world’s conflicts, thus increasing awareness of both major political events and the personal life stories hidden behind all the impersonal statistics of war and the conflict’s wake.

Events in the frames of project:
Nomadic Park
Bialystok, Poland
mobile installation
August - November 2014
36 Stories
Bialystok, Poland
workshop, video
August 2014
Revolution and War
Stockholm, Sweden
exhibition
April 2015
Between Revolution and War
Skövde, Sweden
exhibition
September 22, 2016 - January 8, 2017

At the heart of community

It is not a revelation that today Ukrainian cultural institutions exist in a state of long-drawn crises so deep that the existence of these institutions, let alone their impact on society, is hardly noticeable. Today, a quarter of a century after the fall of the Soviet Union and at a time when Ukraine is still courageously fighting for its right to form a democratic state and civil society, there is a strong belief among Ukrainians that the complete lack of communication in the cultural sphere and the imperception of the value of the place people live, were the main triggers of the actual war that now impedes the successful transformation of the country. It is thus extremely important for the Ukraine of today, despite the difficulty of the political situation, to reconsider its cultural policy and to revitalize its cultural institutions.

During previous decades, certain countries saw the formation of a “new museology”; museological thought that criticized ossified museum practice, redirected institutional aims from the past to the present, and also pursued a strong social development agenda. Within the framework of At the heart of the community our aim was to attempt the implementation of these ideas in the Ukrainian cultural sector.

We believe that global, positive changes to social life can only be triggered by means of an unmediated contact with its individual members, the local communities they form, and through their active involvement in open dialogue and activities. In this respect, the choice of a local history museum as a platform for our project seemed to be the most natural and grounded option. On the one hand, local cultural institutions, which occupy the “lowest” position in the institution hierarchy, are the most marginalized, underfunded and “fossilized” entities, whereas on the other hand, they are by definition the places of first institutional-immersion for citizens; places of ever open doors, which were pushed into oblivion by unlucky historical circumstances. Thus, the main aim and challenge of our project was to bring such institutions back to the cultural and social maps of cities and towns, restore their own awareness of their mission in society, and provide them with the tools for effective development.

Events in the frame of the project:

Lecture
Leyla Ibragimova
Melitopol museum of local lore
March 19 , 2015
Lecture
Nataliа Dzyubenko
Strategy of Actuality: how museum can become a place essential for the local community?
March 19, 2015
Lecture
Maciej Wołosiuk
Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw. Radical museology
March 20, 2015
Lecture
Yuriy Kruchak
Architecture of Opportunities
March 21, 2015
Workshop
Yulia Kоstereva
Local is the New Global
March 22, 2015
Working session
Mykola Skyba
Museum as a storyteller
May 23-27, 2015
Working session
Oleksiy Radynski
What is society?
July 12-16, 2015
Workshop
Jana Salakhova and Nina Khodorivska
Theatre for Dialogue
July 26-30, 2015
Working session
Gabriela Bulisova & Mark Isaac
Festival of memory
August 7-11, 2015
Working session
Data Chigholashvili and Nini Palavandishvili
Food as the instrument of social engagement
August 21-25, 2015
Working session
Yuriy Kruchak and Yulia Kostereva
Museum as a creator of meanings
September 17-21, 2015
Exhibition
At the heart of the community
September 27 - October 29, 2015

Exhibition

Melitopol Museum of Local Lore
September 27 – November 29, 2015

Exhibitions At the heart of community sums up the project of the same name initiated by Open Place (Kyiv) Municipal Museum of Local Lore (Melitopol) and the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw (Warsaw). The main goal of which was an attempt to identify an effective model of socially oriented cultural organization and testing of certain aspects of this model in the Melitopol museum of Local Lore.

From March to September 2015, there were a series of meetings (lectures, workshops, working sessions)  in the museum aimed to establish the direct links between the museum and the local community, with the widest possible audience involvement in the process of studying the links between the development of cultural institutions and the development of society. Visitors became active participants in the process of rethinking the role of the museum in the life of the community, as well as their own role in the formation and development of the institution. As a result of the sessions were collected a variety of materials from diagram of the connections, video and photo documentation that illustrate the creative process during the sessions to the art objects, created both the invited experts and the participants themselves.

Among the most intriguing works on the exhibition, there are the pieces proposed by participants, the photographs representing the alternative to the permanent exhibition of the museum. These materials, along with archival documents from the personal file of the museum, telling about its history, formed the narrative of the exhibition.

Exhibition - "At the heart of the community"

Selected works

Gabriela Bulisova
and Mark Isaac
MEMORIA
photo, 2015

In August 2015, Gabriela Bulisova and Mark Isaac worked in the only penal colony in Ukraine for women ages 14-20, which is located in the southeastern city of Melitopol. The project, titled “Memoria” focused on the important recollections of the women who live in the penal colony. For 13 participating women, were created diptychs that include a portrait of each individual and an image of a place, object, photograph, or article of clothing that is particularly important to their memory. The women were also interviewed about the object they selected, and their explanations were included at the exhibition as text.

Larion Lozovyi
photo, 2015

Interview
Local Museums in a Dynamic World
Iryna Sklokina
November 23, 2015
The Museum – a Portal for Communication between the Community and the World
Мykola Skyba
May 27, 2015
War as a museum exhibit
Oleksiy Radynski
June 16, 2015
The Game of Life
Nina Khodorivska
and Jana Salakhova
June 30, 2015
Food for a Museum
Data Chigholashvili
and Nini Palavandishvili
August 25, 2015
Why collect stories?
Gabriela Bulisova
and Mark Isaac
August 11, 2015
A museum is about people
Yuriy Kruchak
and Yulia Kostereva
October 30, 2015
A museum is a soviet-style factory for producing culture
Denis Miroshnik
October 15, 2015
Fair competition can change museums
Mykhailo Sazhnev
October 25, 2015
Museum. A chance for restart
Maciej Wołosiuk
November 5, 2015

Publication

Publication - "At the heart of the community"

The texts and interviews collected in this book belong to our expert guests, who gave lectures and lead workshops at the Municipal Museum of Local Lore (Melitopol) from May to September 2015, but also to members of the local community who attended those meetings.

All of the authors included herein reflect on the general condition of cultural institutions in present-day Ukraine, as well as offering insight into the particular condition of the Municipal Museum of Local Lore (Melitopol). All agree on one thing: that reformation of such institutions is a pressing challenge.

Publisher: Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw
Edited by: Yulia Kostereva, Yuriy Kruchak, Katia Szczeka
Published: Warsaw, 2015
Language: english, ukrainian
Details: Softcover, 199 pages
ISBN: 978-8364177330
Category: Book
Design: Emilia Obrzut

Team

IRYNA SKLOKINA
Lives and works in Lviv, Ukraine
Historian, research fellow of the Center of Urban History of East Central Europe. Defended her dissertation about the official Soviet policy of memory of the Nazi occupation of Ukraine using the example of Kharkiv region. Graduated from V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University (major in history of Ukraine). Worked at Kharkiv National University and the Kowalsky Eastern Institute of Ukrainian Studies (Kharkiv). A member of the Kharkiv Historical and Philological Society. At the Center for Urban History Iryna Sklokina researches historical heritage, in particular industrial and Soviet heritage in Kharkiv and Lviv.

 

МYKOLA SKYBA
Lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine
Director of the “Agency for Cultural Strategies”, participant in the “Culture 2025” platform, specialist in creative economy. Graduated from the Faculty of History of the Kyiv National University. T.Shevchenko (2001) and postgraduate study in the specialty “Ethnology”. Investigates the processes of socio-cultural transformations of Ukrainian society and cultural codes of the economy. As an expert in cultural politics, he tracks the dynamics of values’ changing ​​and their impact on the development of society. He analyzes the development of the museum sphere and the processes of forming a creative economy and the creative industries sector.

 

OLEKSIY RADINSKI
Lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine
Filmmaker and writer. He is a member of Visual Culture Research Center, an initiative for art, knowledge, and politics founded in Kyiv, 2008. Since 2011, he has been an editor of Ukrainian edition of Political Critique magazine. His work deals with representation and misrepresentation of social movements and lack of thereof.

 

NINA KHODORIVSKA
Lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine
Cultural researcher and journalist. Graduated from the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Culturology. Got Master degree of Performance Studies from Helsinki University (Finland) and Warwick (UK). Member of the NGO “Theater for Dialogue”.

 

JANA SALAKHOVA
Lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine
Curator of the network “Diversity Initiative”. Joker in “Theater for Dialogue”, which operates according to the method of the theater of the oppressed. Specialist in combating racism and xenophobia, International Organization for Migration (IOM) Mission in Ukraine.

 

GABRIELA BULISOVA
Lives and works in Washington, D.C
Documentary photographer and multimedia artist. She was a Graduate fellow at the National Graduate Photography Institute at Columbia University in New York, NY. Her work focuses on underreported and overlooked stories affecting marginalized populations around the world and in the United States. She has numerous awards, among others: The National Press Photographers Association’s Short Grant, Winner of the 2013 Sondheim Prize, Open Society Institute’s Moving Walls 18, The Aperture Portfolio Review Top Tier Portfolios of Merit, A CEC ArtsLink Projects grant, The PDN Annual Photography Competition Winner, The CANON “Explorer of Light” award.

 

MARK ISAAC
Lives and works in Washington, D.C
Artist, working with photography, video, and installations. His work focuses on our capacity for positive change in an age saturated by electronic media and consumer culture.  Was awarded an MFA in Photography and Digital Imaging (2008) and an MA in Digital Arts (2007), both from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. He also studied extensively at the Corcoran School of Art and the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC.

 

DATA CHIGHOLASHVILI
Lives and works in Tbilisi, Georgia
He is working between social anthropology and contemporary art, exploring the connections between them through theoretical research and projects. He is mainly interested in the topics concerning visual and urban anthropology, ethnography, socially-engaged art practices, public space, memory, migration, foodways – some of which are usually interconnected in his collaborative work. Since 2012 he is affiliated with artist initiative GeoAIR.

 

NINI PALAVANDISHVILI
Lives and works in Tbilisi, Georgia
After studying Art History in Tbilisi, she graduated from the UdK Berlin in Faculty of Public and Industrial Communication. In 2006 Nini joined artist initiative GeoAIR and since then she is actively engaged in curating and organising international exchange project in Georgia and beyond its borders. Through her projects Nini researches on social and political contexts and its interpretation in the context of cultural production and contemporary art. She is interested in artistic practice that gives innovative forms and finds a language with which it is possible to speak about political and social matters

 

YURIY KRUCHAK
Lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine
Artist, curator, co-founder of the artistic platform Open Place. Graduated from Kharkov art-industrial institute and the National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture in Kyiv. His works in public space transform the audience into the actors, creating a community whose behaviour and interaction serves to interpret and reveal social structures in an urban environment.

 

YULIA KOSTEREVA
Lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine
Artist and curator. A Graduate fellow at the National Academy of Fine Art and Architecture, Kyiv, Ukraine (Graphic department). She is a co-founder and a member of the artistic platform Open Place. Her work explores motivation of people in their desire to make changes when apathy and acceptance of the existing situation turn to proactive position.

 

MYKHAILO SAZHNEV
Lives and works in Melitopol, Ukraine
A lecturer at Melitopol’s Bogdan Khmelnitsky State Pedagogical University. Mykhailo works at the natural-geographic faculty in the department of tourism, social and economic geography and regional studies.

 

DENIS MIROSHNIK
Lives and works in Melitopol, Ukraine
A lecturer who has long been interested in philosophy, religion, culture, archaeology, history and Buddhism: the latter has informed his lifestyle over the course of the last 15 years.

 

MACIEJ WOŁOSIUK
Lives and works in Warsaw,  Poland
Graduated from Cultural Studies of Central and Eastern Europe at Warsaw University. His interests lay in the area of mass culture in USSR and its impact on social relations. Maciej is currently working at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland.

 

KATIA SZCZEKA
Lives and works in Warsaw,  Poland
A collection specialist, cultural manager and curator currently working at the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw, Poland. She graduated from Warsaw University (MA in British Studies) and Sotheby’s Institute of Art (MA in Fine and Decorative Art).

Partners

Local is the New Global

Local is the New Global raises the question of how to translate the context and personal experience into a universal statement, which would understandable for a wide range of people. The conjecture, Local is the New Global, doesn’t aim to unravel all complexities of contemporary society and its components. Instead, it proposes a methodology when these complexities can become the basis of work, rethinking problems as themes, which are only then transformed into complete works of art or direct actions.

Local is the New Global contributes an exchange of knowledge and obtaining new experience. It facilitates self-determination. It develops a culture of dialogue. A common field of understanding between participants is created, priorities of the group determined, all in due process.

Events in the frames of the project:

Series of Interventions
Vienna, Austria
Island in the Danube
1 April – 31 June 2009
Series of the Workshops and Interventions
Lublin, Poland
suburbs and downtown
September 22 – October 8, 2011
Workshop
Kyiv, Ukraine
Park Pozniaky
July 16 - 23, 2014
Series of the Workshops and Intervention
Kyiv region, Ukraine
boarding school Trypillia village
October 13 – November 3, 2014

Architecture of Opportunities

Architecture of Opportunities is an applied study aimed at developing a strategy of activity of the artistic institution, where society is a co-creator of common values, artistic phenomena and cultural context, and the construction of three-dimensional concept of such an institution.

The series of working sessions Architecture of Opportunities aimed to start the new practice of collaboration between various activists, social, artists, and professional communities while elaborating a concept of a multifunctional cultural center. The results can be summarized as follows: activists consider the Center as an institution where horizontal links between different communities will be set up and developed. They prefer the cluster model, where each invited organization will have opportunity to work at least 2-3 years. According to the vision of the artistic community, connections can be built vertically. They see the necessity of “service structure” which will moderate the work of communities in the center. This structure can work on a permanent basis. Cultural managers in their turn consider the potential center as “service structure”. Kiev residents understand the future center as a meeting place of different communities. All four groups came together in two important issues, namely: the main function of the center should be educational, and the center should be a place to develop a new identity.

Architecture of Opportunities project, which began as a local event, was transformed into a global study of work within the society and with the society in establishing connections and meanings.

Working sessions:
Meeting with activists
Kyiv, Ukraine
Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art from 2pm to 6pm
April 1, 2013
Meeting with the art community
Kyiv, Ukraine
Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art from 2pm to 6pm
April 10, 2013
Meeting with cultural managers
Kyiv, Ukraine
Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art from 2pm tp 6pm
April 15, 2013
Public meeting
Kyiv, Ukraine
Foundation Centre for Contemporary Art from 2pm to 6pm
April 26, 2013

Interviews:
Thanks to interdisciplinary centers we’ll learn how to dream professionally
Iryna Solovey
Kyiv, Ukraine
April 15, 2013
Contemporary art it is the language of people, which they haven’t distinguish yet.
Monika Szewczyk
Tbilisi. Georgia
October 26, 2013
Our works become a part of our life
The Bouillon Group
Tbilisi. Georgia
October 26, 2013
Strategies and tactics of the multifunctional center
Kateryna Botanova
Kyiv. Ukraine
January 20, 2014
We were testing the ability of art to change the world
Vladimir Us
Bialystok, Poland
August 29, 2014
Food as the instrument of social engagement
Data Chigholashvili and Nini Palavandishvili
Bialystok, Poland
August 30, 2014
About the system of art institutions in America
Clemens Poole
Kyiv, Ukraine
October 28, 2014
The theatre, which changes laws and saves life
Nina Khodorivska
Kyiv, Ukraine
January 24, 2015
Swedish artist residences: how it works
Alvaro Campo
Stockholm, Sweden
April 13, 2015
The story about us
Daniel Urey
Stockholm, Sweden
April 17, 2015
Dependence on art
Natasha Danberg
Stockholm, Sweden
April 18, 2015
Project Space 1646 (The Netherlands)
Johan Gustavsson
Stockholm, Sweden
April 19, 2015
Criticality seems the only capital that we have
Renan Laruan
Warsaw, Poland
August 5, 2016
The lake saturated with people
Max Popov
Kyiv, Ukraine
March 1, 2017
Foundation of anarchytecture
Dana Kosmina
Kyiv, Ukraine
March 18, 2017
Architecture in search of value
Vlad Goldakovskiy
Kyiv, Ukraine
March 22, 2017
People start to feel tightly in the national frames.
Maria Vilkovisky and Ruth Jenrbekova
Kyiv, Ukraine
July 23, ‎2017

Workshops:

Artist vs Institution: who wins?
Kyiv, Ukraine
Osvtnya stancya 31v1
September, 2014
The Making of Collective Agencies
Warsaw, Poland
CCA Ujazdowski Castle
July 20, 2016

Start Time

The project’s objectives are to expand the field of artistic activity and to unite the different parts of society by means of art. The aim of Start Time project is, together with people resting in the park, develop the park, formulate its mission and the ways of development. The project discusses the questions – “What is the park”, “How it should look like” “What kind it should be”.

Developed as a series of reversible interventions, which combine the methods of sports contests, physical work, and art creation, the Start Time project establishes the links between past and present culture, as well as, ideology.

Events in the frames of project:
Intervention
Kyiv, Ukraine
Park of Culture and rest ``Hydropark`` from 3pm to 6pm
October 26, 2008
Intervention
Vienna, Austria
Prater Park from 10pm to 10:30pm
May 1, 2009
Intervention
Conches, Switzerland
Conches garden from 2pm to 5pm
October 3, 2009