Ukraine
THE CITY OF CHERNIVTSI UKRAINE Чернівці́ |Ukrainian| Cernăuți |Romanian| |Yiddish| Czernowitz|German| Черновцы |Russian| First mentioned : 1408 Administrative City rights: 14th center centuryof the Oblast (district) of Chernivtsi Administrative center of the Oblast (district) of Chernivtsi MOTTO Viribus Unitis Area: 153 km3| With Common Attempts Population (2014): 263.287 FIRST MENTIONED: Density: 1700/km2 1408 CITY RIGHTS: 14th century Medium wage: 2.924 UAH (120 EUR) AREA: 153 km2 level: 10,5% Unemployement POPULATION: 263.287 (2014) 4 Public and private universities: DENSITY: 1700/km2 ETHNICITY Ukrainians - 80% Russians - 12% Romanians - 5% Moldovans - 2% Polish and Jews - less than 1%
H. BARBUSSE ST., 25
MEDIUM WAGE: 2.924 UAH (120 EUR) UNEMPLOYEMENT LEVEL: 10,5% Kalunivskyi market is one of the biggest trade institutions; It provides work to 91.000 enterprises and pays 10% of the total yearly tax income of the city budget. PUBLIC AND PRIVATE UNIVERSITIES: 4 According to the rating of 2012 Chernivtsi was the most comfortable city in Ukraine to live.
LOCAL HISTORY MUSEUM
CINEMA UKRAINE
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ОВА ВИДИМІСТЬ | TEMPORARY VISIBILITIES ТИМЧАСОВА ВИДИМІСТЬ ТИМЧАСОВА | TEMPORARY ВИДИМІСТЬ VISIBILITIES | TEMPORARY
A project by: A project by: o | Laboratory Roșa of socio-spatial 54°+ |of CADAM. Collective |experimentation Laboratory of Roșa socio-spatial Collective experimentation | Laboratory of socio-spatial 54°+ | CADAM. 5 CADAM. | Laboratory socio-spatial experimentation 54experimentation + 4 – November 2015 November 2014 – November 2015 November 2014 – November 2015
Local participants: |Тимчасова видимість [Tymchasova Vydymist] began Temporary Visibilities|Тимчасова видимість [Tymchasova Local participants: Temporary Visibilities|Тимчасова видимість Temporary [Tymchasova Visibilities|Тимчасова Vydymist] began began видимість [Tymchasova Vydymist] began hen Nataliia Yeromenko from Roșa Collective (Ukraine), in November November 2014, when Nataliia Nataliia Yeromenko from Babiychuk Roșa Collective (Ukraine), in 2014, when Yeromenko inKateryna November from Roșa 2014, Collective when Nataliia (Ukraine), Yeromenko from Roșa Collective (Ukraine), Kateryna Babiychuk ė from Laboratory of socio-spatial experimentation 54°+ and Juliane Rahn from CADAM. Kotryna Valiukevičiūtė from Kotryna Valiukevičiūtė from(Germany), Laboratory of Kotryna socio-spatial Valiukevičiūtė experimentation from Laboratory 54°+ ofOleh socio-spatial experimentation 54°+ Oleh Barasii Barasii e Rahn from CADAM. (Germany) collaborate Laboratory of decided socio-spatial experimentation 54°+ (Lithuania) decided to (Lithuania), and Julianeto Rahn from CADAM. (Lithuania), (Germany) and decided Juliane toRahn collaborate from CADAM. (Germany) decided to collaborate Kateryna Barylo Kateryna Barylo of the program TANDEM – Cultural collaborate withinManagers theof framework of the program TANDEM – Cultural ManagersTANDEM within the framework theExchange program TANDEM within –Henrik Cultural framework Managers of theExchange program – Cultural Managers Exchange Katia the Katia Henrik intention was to stimulate the cooperation between Exchange UKRAINE. initialwas intention was to the stimulate the intention cooperation UKRAINE. Their initialTheir intention to stimulate UKRAINE. Their cooperation initial between was to stimulate the cooperation between Volodymyr Hutsul Volodymyr Hutsul in the Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi, the capital the between localactivists cultural in the Ukrainian city ofactivists Chernivtsi, the capital of cityAndrii local cultural inactivists theofUkrainian city local of Chernivtsi, cultural the capital in the ofUkrainian the of Chernivtsi, the capital of the Andrii Kuranov Kuranov the Ukrainian borderland with Romania. the region ofMoldova Bukovina in Ukrainian the Ukrainian borderland with Moldova Romania. region of Bukovina in and the borderland region of with Bukovina Moldova inand the and Ukrainian Romania. borderland with Moldova and Romania. Bohdan Liutyk Bohdan Liutyk heir diverse notions of approaching urban space, They aimed to to share share their diverse notions notions of approaching approaching urban space, They aimed their diverse They of aimed to share urban their space, diverse notionsViktoria of approaching urban space, Viktoria Medvedko Medvedko analysis of architecture and urban studies to the of ranging from political analysis of architecture architecture and urban studies to the the of architecture ranging from political analysis ranging from urban political studies analysis to and urban studies to the Alinaand Mitran Alina Mitran performative arts. arts. performative performative Zhan Pobe arts. Zhan Pobe Svitlana Prykazka Svitlana Prykazka March 2015, 15 young cultural activists in 15 After an open open call in inengaged March 2015, 2015, 15 young young cultural activists engaged in 15 young After an call March After cultural an open activists call inengaged March 2015, in cultural Skydan activists engaged in Mykhailo Skydan Mykhailo logical and social practice joined the ecological project. Asand thissocial arts, architecture, architecture, ecological and social practice practice joined the project. project. Asand this social practice arts, arts, architecture, joined the ecological As this joined the project. As this Andrii Strateychuk Andrii Strateychuk was still lacking common strategies, methods, and emerging community was still still lacking common common strategies, methods, and emerging community was lacking emerging strategies, community methods, was still and lacking common strategies, methods, and Illia Sturko Illia Sturko ctively, Temporary resources Visibilities pushed them to consider resources to to act act collectively, collectively, Temporary Visibilities Visibilities pushed them to to consider consider Temporary resources pushed to act collectively, them Temporary Visibilities pushed Andrii Tuzhykov Andrii Tuzhykov them to consider d self-managementtheir as acollaboration group. First ofand all self-management participants their collaboration and self-managementtheir as aacollaboration group. First First of ofand all participants participants as group. all self-management as a group. First of all participants abandoned places in Chernivtsichose and completed research collectively chose 11 abandoned abandoned places in in Chernivtsichose and completed completed research collectively 11 places collectively Chernivtsi and 11 abandoned research places in Chernivtsi and completed research g the research process participants attended on those those spots. During During theworkshops research process process participants attended workshops on spots. the research on those participants spots. During attended theworkshops research process participants attended workshops all over Europe andlead strengthened forEurope critical and lead by experts expertstheir fromideas all over over Europe andlead strengthened their ideas forEurope critical and strengthened their ideas for critical by from all strengthened by expertstheir fromideas all over for critical approaches: e.g. in and oral interdisciplinary history, creative approaches: mapping, and and interdisciplinary approaches: e.g. in in oral oral history, history, creative creative mapping, mapping, and ande.g. in oral history, creative mapping, and e.g. and interdisciplinary approaches: ond step aimed to performance. create collective interventions performance. The second step step on-site. aimed to to create create collective collective interventions on-site. The second aimed performance. The interventions second stepon-site. aimed to create collective interventions on-site. out of the 11 vacant places were finally Small In summer summer 2015, fourchosen. out of of the the 11 vacant vacant places were were finally chosen. Small In 2015, four out 11 In places summer 2015, finally fourchosen. out of the Small 11 vacant places were finally chosen. Small propriated them, initiating cultural pop-up actions on teams temporarily temporarily appropriated them, initiating initiating cultural pop-up pop-up actions on on teams appropriated them, teams temporarily cultural appropriated actions them, initiating cultural pop-up actions on ites “Barbussa, 25”the is now anOne open by the sites. One ofplatform the sites sites run “Barbussa, 25”the is now now anOne open platform run by sites. of the “Barbussa, 25” is sites. an open ofplatform the sitesrun “Barbussa, by 25” is now an open platform run by serves to support independent urban actors and the participants participants that serves totheir support independent independent urban actors and their the that serves to support the participants urban that actors serves and totheir support independent urban actors and their initiatives. initiatives. initiatives.
urban ernivtsi Nataliia t important e is the ment of a ity as well as ulture in the l and national ve aims to d practices from or those ones t of modern hout leaving
54°+ is a laboratory socio-spatial Roșa Collective is anofurban experimentation in Kaunas initiative based inbased Chernivtsi (Lithuania). Initiallyby formed as an (Ukraine), founded Nataliia informal collective, 54°+ was founded Yeromenko. The most important by two people, KotrynaisValiukevičiūtė goal of Roșa Collective the and Arnoldas Stramskas. Itof draws creation and development a on larger network of collaboralocal activist community as well as torsdevelopment and partnersof toculture research and the in the intervene in various urban and rural city, including a global and national settings,Roșa fostering interdisciplinary context. Collective aims to cooperation. bring experiences and practices from abroad to Chernivtsi for those ones who want to be a part of modern cultural processes without leaving the city.
CADAM. is an independent artistic Roșa is an 54°+ isCollective a laboratory ofurban socio-spatial organization of in five theater and initiative based Chernivtsi experimentation based in Kaunas dance scholars aimed at “Curating (Ukraine), founded by Nataliia (Lithuania). Initially formed as an Art and Developing Yeromenko. TheAlternative most important informal collective, 54°+ wasMotions.” founded It was in Munich (Germany) goal offounded Roșa Collective isValiukevičiūtė the by two people, Kotryna in 2011. In collaborative creation and development a and Arnoldas Stramskas.processes It of draws with dancers, performers, local activist community asand wellvisual as on larger network of collaboraartists, Anna the development of in and the tors andChristina partnersDettelbacher, to culture research Donderer, Müller, Juliane city, including a global and and national intervene inDominik various urban rural Rahn, und Anna Wieczorek create context. Roșa Collective aims to settings, fostering interdisciplinary concrete and metaphorical spaces to bring experiences and practices from cooperation. performatively challenge the relation abroad to Chernivtsi for those ones between developments who wanthistorical to be a part of modern and their contemporary local, political, cultural processes without leaving andcity. social consequences. the |03|
Local Katery Oleh B Katery Katia H Volod Andrii Bohda Viktor Alina M Zhan P Svitlan Mykha Andrii Illia St Andrii
54°+ is a is laboratory of socio-spatial CADAM. an independent artistic experimentation based in Kaunas organization of five theater and (Lithuania). Initially formed as an Art dance scholars aimed at “Curating informal collective, 54°+ wasMotions.” founded and Developing Alternative bywas twofounded people, Kotryna Valiukevičiūtė It in Munich (Germany) and Arnoldas Stramskas.processes It draws in 2011. In collaborative on larger network of collaborawith dancers, performers, and visual tors and partnersDettelbacher, to research and artists, Christina Anna intervene in variousMüller, urban and rural Donderer, Dominik Juliane settings, fostering interdisciplinary Rahn, und Anna Wieczorek create cooperation. concrete and metaphorical spaces to performatively challenge the relation between historical developments and their contemporary local, political, and social consequences.
CADAM organiz dance s and De It was f in 2011 with da artists, Donde Rahn, u concre perform betwee their co and so
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ONE-DAY INTERACTIVE MOVIE SHOOT SET Cinema Ukraine | Kobylianskoi St., 51 | July 18, 2015
Research, idea and intervention by: Katia Henrik | Bohdan Liutyk | Alina Mitran | Andrii Strateychuk | Andrii Tuzhykov
The buildingsince at the2000, center this Abandoned theofbuilding project servedofas one of theserved major at the center this project cinema theatres of the city during as a cinema during Soviet era the Soviet first decades of and in era the and first the decades of Ukrainian Ukrainian independence. It on hasabeen independence. It is located abandoned since 2000, even more though central street full of tourists; it is located on a central street full of than a thousand vacant square tourists.inMore than a thousand meters a very poor state of vacant squareare meters in afrom verythe poor state of repair hidden eyes repair with squeaking wooden floors of pedestrians. Its huge hall, three and decorations of white plaster floors, and a labyrinth of service moldings areserve hidden the eyes rooms could asfrom a perfect spotof pedestrians. Its huge hall, threeIt floors, for cultural and civic activities. was and aimportant labyrinth for of service rooms could very us to make local serve as aaware perfectofspot for cultural and residents the presence civic the activities. It was very aimportant and potential of such location. for us to makewe local residents aware Therefore decided to open theof the presencefor and the potential building the citizens andof tosuch test a location. Therefore we decided to open the idea of transforming the space the building forcenter the citizens and into a cultural through a to test the idea of transforming the space into one-day project-a movie shoot. a cultural center through a one-day project-a movie shoot. On the day of the intervention the citizens of Chernivtsi were invited Onenter the day the intervention the to theof building, participate in citizens of Chernivtsi wereand invited the making of the movie, stroll to enter the building, in through premisesparticipate accompanied theamaking of the movie, the andhistory stroll by guide who narrated through the premises of the building. Most ofaccompanied the visitors by a guide narrated the history were elder who and remembered the of the building. Most of the visitors cinema as an important meeting were elder the place from and theirremembered youth. For example, cinema an important meeting place one manastold the story of his father, fromwas theirresponsible youth. For example, one who for restoring maninner told the storydecorations of his father,after who the wooden was restoring the a fireresponsible destroyed itfor more than fifty inner wooden decorations after a fire years ago. During the day numerous destroyed it more than fifty years ago. memories were collected and in the During the numerous memories evening weday presented a trailer for were collected and in the we the movie, which was shotevening inside the presented a trailer for the movie, which cinema. was shot inside the cinema.
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MEMORY. LETTERS | AUDIO INSTALLATION Former center of the Jewish ghetto | Henri Barbusse St., 25 | July 19, 2015
Research, idea and intervention by: Oleh Barasii | Volodymyr Hutsul | Andrii Kuranov | Svitlana Prykazka
From the 15th century Barbusse Street was part of the Jewish quarter, which played an important role in the formation of Chernivtsi. The area was transformed into a Jewish ghetto during German-Romanian occupation in 1941-1942. We found out that a dwelling house was once standing on the nowadays vacant spot in Barbusse Street 25, which was demolished in late 1980s due to poor condition. While reaseaching the house and its inhabitants we got in touch with the prominent Chernivtsi historian Serhiy Osadchuk, who is a co-author of a book which contains archived letters of Jewish people displaced to Transnistrian labour camps. These letters in Romanian and German languages containing the pleads for support and help were sent to the relatives in Chernivtsi. However, the letters never reached their destination. We aimed to raise awareness and importance of Jewish history, which is now underrepresented in the local public sphere. We vocalised the never-read messages and made an audio installation in the vacant place. Serhiy Osadchuk kindly supplied us with the materials of his research as the basis for the installation. Twenty letters were voiced and recorded in original languages and translated into English and Ukrainian for the first time. During the opening of the intervention visitors were able to hear the recorded letters through speakers hidden in black tins that we had attached to a speciallycreated wooden structure. The sounds of vocalized letters, which we played simultaneously, were producing a mumbling noise that mantled the location with an uncanny atmosphere.
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LOCAL LEGENDS OF CHERNIVTSI Inner yard of Local History Museum | Kobylianskoi St., 28 | July 25, 2015
Research, idea and intervention by: Volodymyr Hutsul | Viktoria Medvedko | llia Sturko
Local History Museum in Chernivtsi is located on the main pedestrian street. The inner courtyard of the building had been closed and unused for approximately sixty years. We were eager to create access to that yard, thus our first goal was to establish a collaboration with the museum. In most cases people responsible for such institutions are highly conservative and they rarely welcome any “interruption” from the outside. Nevertheless, the collaboration with the museum administration was productive. After some negotiation, we started to work together and were given the permission to open the yard for a one-time event. The history of the museum itself offered a dense range of possibilities and we were unable to settle on a single idea. For instance, we wanted to recreate the planetarium within the inner courtyard that was once was located in the museum. At the end we decided to go deeper into the history of the building. The idea for the intervention arose from the fact that the city residents are acquainted with the big legends of the local history. However, there exists a deeper, little-known layer of events and prominent personalities, whose lifes were bound to the city. In order to revitalize them we invited local historians to recover untold narratives within an open discussion. Visitors were encouraged to construct their own legends by telling the history of different artifacts, which were placed in the inner yard. They could also learn biographies of famous Chernivtsi’s people, while reading the posters which were hanging on the walls. By screening the Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s movie “Bukovyna – the Ukrainian Land”, we aimed to draw connections between the history of representation in the past and present times. Fortunately, after our intervention Local History Museum decided to open the courtyard and it continues to function as a space for various cultural events.
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GUIDED TOUR AND MUSIC CONCERT Prut river quay | July 25, 2015
Research, idea and intervention by: Kateryna Babiychuk | Zhan Pobe | Mykhailo Skydan
During the Soviet period, area around Prut River was surrounded by factories, and the river was cut off from the city. Today most of the factories are abandoned. However, the Prut River remains somehow distant in the minds of the Chernivtsi’s residents even though it is only twenty minutes away from the very center. Due to this proximity to the city, it could serve as a perfect recreational zone and a space for numerous events. For the intervention day we organized excursions from the Central Square of Chernivtsi to the riverbank; stencils lined the route, indicating the time one needs to reach the river from different locations. In order to raise the curiosity of the city dwellers, we were telling short stories about the area. Due to the bad weather we were forced to move from the planned event location to another spot almost at the last moment; this challenged the visitors to act as a group and to help to move the equipment. After the discussion on the perception of the Prut River area, there was a short movie screening and afterwards everyone chilled out listening to the performance of indie-electronic band Grisly Faye. All in all, this experience has shown that the river area is rather easily accessible and may serve as a space for cultural events.
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A CONVERSATION BETWEEN: JAVIER FUENTES FEO AND NATALIIA YEROMENKO | JULIANE RAHN | KOTRYNA VALIUKEVIČIŪTĖ The following interview was prepared a few months after the project Temporary Visibilities had ended. It was conducted as an attempt to analyze what happened during the year and a half in which the project took place. How did the initial ideas change during the process? What internal and external challenges did the team encounter? What important topics were addressed, and which ones were not considered? How did the Ukrainian and Chernivtsi social, political, and historical environments determine its achievements and its failures? Javier Fuentes Feo is an art theorist and former director of CENDEAC (Center for the Documentation and Research of Contemporary Art, Murcia, Spain), who had been invited as an advisor midway through the project. He was asked to prepare this interview with the three project managers of Temporary Visibilities: Nataliia Yeryomenko, Juliane Rahn, and Kotryna Valiukevičiūtė. Coming from a different context (Spain), his position as an outsider was important in identifying some crucial aspects of the project and looking at what has been achieved with new critical parameters.
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WHAT AND WHY? This project was focused on empty and abandoned buildings or spaces in the city of Chernivtsi. Old cinemas, factories, and vacant plots were selected all over the city with the purpose of doing temporary interventions during two weekends. What was the aim of such interventions? To bring attention to the historical memory that those buildings embodied? Try to revitalize those spaces for contemporary citizens of Chernivtsi? Could you please explain those approaches and tell a bit about any possible debate that arouse during the process?
Juliane From the very first moment when we were introduced to the initial ideas of the local participants, we realized that they understood vacant spaces within the discourse of the city “beautification”: as events or tourist spaces. We decided to question this discourse and tried to add a second approach – to perceive these spaces as a resource for commonness and a platform for creative cooperation.
Nataliia In Chernivtsi there was a need for a common space in the form of an open social/cultural center where resources could be shared between independent collectives, individual actors, and activists that had emerged in the local scene in the recent years. Furthermore, there are a lot of underused, neglected and vacant spaces (e.g. Cinema Ukraine) in the very center of the city: structures that were public during the Soviet Union and are still owned by the municipality nowadays. We saw vacant spaces as great potential platforms for local collectives and activists to test and work with artistic experiments; something that couldn’t be done in an official environment. In addition, this project was a claim to the territories, a sort of a statement to preserve public spaces, which are always at risk of privatization and transformation into an expensive hotel or a cafe with beer umbrellas. The project started with such ideas. Later multiple discussions and perspectives were brought in by the three of us and local participants, which reflected the complexity and different ways of seeing the issues of vacant spaces and short-term appropriation.
Kotryna As we began to work on this project we started to be clearly aware that from the early 2000’s the interest in vacant spaces and their temporal reuse shifted from a marginal approach to a mainstream movement all around the world. Abandoned warehouses, disused factories and shipyards have been transformed into fashionable spots as bars, clubs, restaurants, and art centers, and are perceived today as defining characteristics of a creative and hipster city. In this sense, after getting to know the context of Chernivtsi better, another important question arose: if the local community needed a new social/cultural center, why did we have to build it from the scratch or even work in an old ruined structure? Would it not be better to collaborate with already-existing centers in the city and rethink them? Were we not being affected by this international influence of hipster approach to the past? Some of these questions were discussed between the three of us and with the participants during the process with very different conclusions.
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WHO? This project was developed by different collectives of young people who wanted to act in their city and generate some kind of social movement related to urban spaces. Could you please explain how many people participated in the project and what their backgrounds were? Did they know each other before? How well were they organized as collectives? Has the experience helped them to work together now and in the future? Nataliia | Juliane | Kotryna At the very beginning our goal was to create a “laboratory of collectivity” or a “simulation of a cultural center” while working with experienced local culture activists and managers who were mostly acquainted with each other. People aged 18 to 26 applied to participate in the local project after we launched the open call. Most of the applicants were young and still studying at university in different fields: e.g. architecture, literature studies, international relations, and marketing. When we talk about their backgrounds now, we don’t know whether we should be speaking about education or real occupation, which often differed. For example, there was a geographer that worked in a library, but identified himself as a photographer, or an accountant that worked as a designer. Most of them didn’t have any project management experience – some of them had only participated in singular activist actions. In the end, 15 participants were invited to join the project. For the majority of them the project was the first opportunity to cooperate and work collectively. Although participants started to work individually, at the end of the project four groups had emerged that developed four different interventions. We cannot think of all 15 people as a solid group now, but some participants bonded in particular and some of us, Nataliia especially, became close with them. Others are continuing group activities or just hanging out together, which is also important.
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ACTIVISTS? During the project you used the term “activists”, instead of “collectives” or “participants”. That word gave a sense of political engagement, which would create some kind of tension inside the city particularly in relation to rules or social structures. Now that the project has come to an end, would you say that this confrontation really took place during the interventions or that the project was quite compatible with the political status quo of the region? Juliane
In the case of Chernivtsi, the gesture of naming oneself an “activist” was a political act, and I think that the political significance of this selfdefinition within Ukrainian context may have been lost in other cultural contexts. So I was curious about the story behind this expression. It was even the conceptual point zero for our organizations’ followup project Vagabonds for the Art in Resistance program of this year’s (2015) SPIELART festival in Munich – an installation dealing with the issue of the highly irritating neologism “artivism”: how does this term structure and finally define us? I figured out that unlike artists and activists in Kaunas and Munich, those from Chernivtsi with whom we were working with, were the only ones considering themselves as “activists”. So they were very much sticking to the actual process of doing something new. Through their actions and interventions in the public sphere they let their fellow citizens engage with various issues and maybe participate in a new way. Could this be a new approach to political participation? And did they also create a new form of political participation in their very own collaborative process? >>
From my point of view the answer to these questions is yes, or at least they attempted to. And first attempts should never be valued according to their actual political changes, but by their political goals. >>
We barely used the neutral term “participants”. From the very beginning Nataliia referred to them – and also to herself – as “cultural activists”. I felt that this was very brave and very decisive: no hesitation, no compromises, no on-going self-reflection about what to call yourself, no sleepless debates with eclectic references that I witness in Germany all the time, and, as far as I can tell, are also common in Lithuania. These debates are definitely important, but at the same time they often postpone the action, delaying response, and stymieing the ability to act quickly and in response to the situation at hand.
Nataliia It’s a shame to admit it, but I feel that we failed to raise any broader discussion concerning city’s spaces: what we should and should not do with them, who can be called an activist, and so on. It wasn’t our conscious decision not to address these issues but rather how things “naturally” evolved - most ideas developed by participants were modeled to “help the society” in a very general sense, or were strongly influenced by notions of “beautification” and “revitalization” of the discovered spaces. Although we had conceived the idea of interventions as small-scale guerrilla actions, the concept wasn’t applied in reality. When planned and applied by the participants on site, “interventions” grew into well-programmed and PR-ed cultural events. Probably one of the reasons is that as coordinators we failed to recognize the realities of the local context and tried to make them fit into a pre-manufactured framework. So, surprisingly for us, the project has grown more into “event management” or “culture management”, rather than a framework to question and analyze the idea of vacant spaces in urban landscape. For me this phenomenon has demonstrated that local third-sector in Chernivtsi is not developed enough to distinguish activism, culture management, and professional NGO activities. The local media has always referred to us as to nameless “activists”, and we eventually internalized this label and started to use it for all kinds of civic activities, regardless of legal status or field. I believe that with the growing number of other cultural initiatives, this field will develop naturally and different clusters will appear.
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MUNICIPALITY I would like to build on my previous question, and please be as direct and sincere as possible: how would you describe the relationship of the project to the public sector (municipality in particular)? Did they think that the project was important in some way for the city? Do you think that they will maybe even get involved in future similar processes, or that they just liked it because it received media attention? What role do you imagine it could/should play in such processes? Juliane
Nataliia
Kotryna
I think we should ask ourselves if, during the project, there was a sincere dialogue with the municipality based on the idea of sharing, or was it much more a way for them to support the actions as events under their patronage, and not as possible interventions in public spaces? An agonistic dialogue, I think that was the missing interconnection between the cultural activists and the municipality: not a mutually neat acceptance but a further step into a mutually sincere approach as a base for change.
As the one who spent the whole time in Chernivtsi, I was the person in charge and in contact with the municipality. On one hand, my general impression of cooperation with the municipality is positive we didn’t meet any obstacles from their side (which one could expect, when initiating activities concerning municipal property in Ukraine), but instead received organizational and logistical support. On the other hand, I had a feeling that this project received “green light” only because supporting “young creative activists” was something that the municipality wanted to be associated with. Additionally, success of our cooperation was mostly personally driven - communications happened not between institutions (organization - municipality), but between people (manager of the project - mayor deputy). It created a risk for the whole project to fail if the deputy was changed. Although these personal relationships worked for us, it was generally a non-transparent practice, which promotes inequality and creates tensions between organizations, as they have to compete for personal attention from the mayor or his/her deputies. The question is: how do we treat this practice when it works in our favor but is still unhealthy for the whole society. And what do we substitute it with?
What Nataliia explains about direct personal relations and non-transparent organizational structures is something I have also seen in many other countries, such as Lithuania, Spain, etc. Nevertheless, it seems quite useful for any municipality that such projects take place under their symbolic support. These projects tend to bring international attention, promote visibility in media, generate activities in the city, and bring funding from abroad. But we should also be very careful and critical of our actions even though we receive public support for these projects. We must ask ourselves if we, so-called civic society, are overtaking the public sector’s responsibilities and duties (e.g. cleaning the abandoned buildings). I believe there is a closed circuit, such that the public sector should support the civic society and civic society should push the public sector to fulfill their duties. Whether through dialogue or confrontation, there are thousands of possible ways of achieving these goals.
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TANDEM UKRAINE These temporary interventions in the city of Chernivtsi, although developed by local collectives, were managed by three of you within the framework of a European funded project, Tandem Ukraine. Could you please explain how such a context defined the project? Could the project have taken place without this financial and organizational support? What did the project earn and loose due to this framework? Nataliia
Kotryna
The demand for this project had been growing for a while, and I had it vaguely in mind prior going to Tandem partnership forum. I don’t know if the project could have taken place without Tandem. But the truth is that the framework influenced the project’s development drastically. First and foremost, I was not the sole organizer anymore and shared responsibility for authorship with Juliane and Kotryna. We had to compromise a lot and find solutions that we all agreed on. It was a very complicated but beneficial process through which I have grown a lot. Decisions that the three of us made and the demands of the local participants sometimes contradicted each other, which made me feel like a mediator who translates some abstract ideas into a very practical, down-to-earth actions. These ideas weren’t always clear or acceptable. I often felt like we were trying to infiltrate some theoretical solutions into a context that we hadn’t really got to know. And it still bothers me, I must admit. Kotryna’s and Juliane’s remote presence was something that both supported me in our strategies and made me question them. This said, the project benefited greatly from the models offered by both of them.
On one hand, I believe that Tandem Ukraine program intensified Temporary Visibilities. Due to the international meetings and placements, it allowed us to see each other face to face and to meet interesting people that we invited as experts, such as Anna Donderer, Anna Wieczorek, from CADAM., Germany, and Laura Panait from Colectiv A, Romania. For two of us (Kotryna and Juliane) it also provided a crucial aspect of the project, namely the opportunity to experience Ukrainian context by visiting Kiev, Lviv, Uzhhorod, and Chernivtsi. On the other hand, reflecting on my other projects and offering a constructive criticism, I also have doubts about such project frameworks in general. They are usually short term, and afterwards the sustainability of ideas, teams, actions and, of course, finances, is in the air. The initial financial support and the circumscribed time period creates a very powerful impact, but what if we could perceive and use these programs as an actual starting point for the ideas and goals that need more time? What worries me with these kind of frameworks is that they might help to generate a system in which actors are jumping from one project to another just searching for financial and logistical support, becoming the “projectarian” by profession, instead of strongly promoting the work on the ideas (not projects!) that can be more or less sustainable, once the framework is finished.
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POST-SOVIETNESS I come from one of those countries that, in recent years have been part of a new critical and symbolic area in Europe: the “irresponsible southern states” or the PIGS. I remember that during my stay in Ukraine you were joking about being a part of another symbolic constellation, namely “the post-Soviet countries”. There are obviously some elements that could be used to generate a sort of unifying and simplifying image of those countries: Russian language, some traces of Soviet urbanism and architecture, personal memories about industrial goods (e.g. ice-creams, public buses, cars). But there are also infinite differences. How would you analyze this idea of the “post-Soviet countries” in a serious but also in an ironic way? And how do you think that image is related to and mediated by the influence of the European Union? Nataliia
Juliane
Kotryna
For me Ukraine’s post-Sovietness is a big source of inspiration. As I haven’t witnessed miseries of the Soviet Union, its evidences in architecture, clothes, language, and behavior models for me are signs of time, marks on the body of a city. Visual aesthetics and memes of the Soviet times are a code or a password that allows me to feel cultural intimacy with any person who can read them, wherever this person is from Russia, Lithuania, or Poland. But this desire to find similarities between otherwise different contexts bothers me and reminds me of the joy that Ukrainians feel when they accidentally meet abroad. Much too often our post-Sovietness is something that we want to use to distinguish ourselves from the other European countries, a mark, as I said, of a different, harder path to democratic society. Something that makes us so special in European context. I often find it is a way to say “yes, we may not be as successful and democratic, but we are cooler than you because we’ve suffered more”.
If I tell people that I come from Germany, I always get excluded from the post-Soviet story. I find it strange, as I grew up in a country that also does not exist anymore, the GDR. I probably feel very attracted to the region of Central and Eastern Europe because it reminds me of my childhood. For this reason, I never grasp the notion of “post-Soviet” ironically. Rather I relate to it nostalgically. But I think it is important to recognize that each of the Soviet state had different experience, and we cannot allow our nostalgia to cloud our sensitivity to the variuos pasts of the Soviet and post-Soviet states.
According to this narrative, the lack could then only be fulfilled by the “Western” orientation and its notion of individual freedom, progress, material security, etc. These thoughts arose after visiting the former Bukovyna Cinema in the remote Bukovyna district and becoming acquainted with the ideas for the action that the group of participants had. Bukovyna Cinema was built during the Soviet rule and used as a main cultural venue. It was abandoned and left in ruin after the collapse of the regime. When asked how the participants perceived the cinema itself, some of them answered that it was a “Soviet relict” that did not have any value or interest for contemporary culture.
Despite the “past” that is always full of struggle, I also think that shared, but maybe not identical elements and memories from the past - be they positive or negative, can help us to understand a context, to establish and create emotional bonds. How do we use the past? Do we deny it and try to focus only on the differences? Or do we try to use it, to analyze it, and keep what’s the best of it in our own time? How do we deal with the values and ideas coming from “the West”? When copy and pasting ideas into different contexts, do we really analyze them? The most general framework of transition to capitalism all over the post-socialist world was to dismiss everything that was built throughout those years. This radical dismissal served as an effective tool to dismantle societies, to make them feel inadequate and lacking. >> >>
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Kotryna
Coming from Lithuania, I easily understood the narrative and its contradictions of willing to erase some of the visible symbols of the Soviet period as emotionally old ones. While at the same time wishing to copy contemporary culture that is coming from London, Berlin, or Barcelona (depending which city is the hotspot now).
NATIONALITIES | ECONOMIES Another very important topic that we should address in this interview, is the fact that you come from three countries with very different symbolic, political, and economic positions. Juliane, you come from Germany, the most powerful country in the European economy,; Kotryna, you come from Lithuania, a country that has belonged to the European Union for ten years and that only last January (2015) started to use Euros. And Nataliia, you live and work in a country that does not belong to the European Union but that has borders with countries such as Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, and Poland that do belong to it. Have your varied national provenances affected the project in some way, taking into account that nationality is a relevant element when we attend a program like Tandem Ukraine? Nataliia
Juliane
Kotryna
Yes, I feel that it has influenced our cooperation in many ways. There were some untranslatable cultural differences, some prejudices and rigidness, but also joy of opening your culture to others. However, my conclusion is that the most solid basis for partnership is not cultural similarities, but honest communication, apprehension, and openness to disagreement and similar work ethic.
Probably. From my perspective, I wanted to negotiate certain issues that could have been reduced to typical issues a German comes up with. But that was me as a person, not me as a country. I concluded from these “intercultural experiences” that it is about the single person with whom you collaborate. His/ her’s cultural background is then sometimes used as an excuse for certain arguments and solutions.
This argument helped us to start a conversation about the different social possibilities that German, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian citizens have. We all agreed that receiving a student scholarship in Germany could support you in a way not possible in Lithuania or Ukraine. Did this also have to be considered in regards to the distribution of funding?
I, personally, would like to focus on the way in which national contexts are strongly determined by political and economic structures. While a friend of mine was walking in Uzhhorod (Ukrainian border city, near the borders of Slovakia and Hungary), he stopped to talk with some people who were participating in a political demonstration. They insisted that it was unfair that only a few kilometers from where they were, on the other side of the border, wages were much higher. In that sense, during this project we three also faced the topic of wages on a small, but symbolic level. The process of organizing the program made us discuss and analyze our own ideas about how to share the honoraria and agree on their fair distribution. At the beginning, we all agreed to share the money equally, based on the equal work each person would put into the project. But tension appeared when Juliane pointed out that, taking into account national living costs, 100 Euros in Germany was not the same as 100 Euros in the Ukraine. Therefore, from her point of view, the salary should not have been equal. >>
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Kotryna
We tried to find the hourly payment equivalent in our own countries to be as fair as possible. But, as we come from cultural self-organized collectives it was almost impossible to find the reference for the hours payment. Should we, for example, use the amount cited in the official documents or the amount that we actually earned during the last years (which included a lot of volunteer work)? Three of us agreed that it was a very challenging question, complicated by very different personalities. In the end, we didn’t find a good solution. Sharing of economic resources is a political issue on a large and small-scale picture. The questions of why, how, and when the finances are distributed from certain countries to other ones is a central one. What ideas and values come along those decisions? I strongly believe that we should address this topic more often and more seriously in the international projects. Moreover, we must ask ourselves if it would be possible to bring the discussions to another level, including the precarious working conditions in the cultural field. Would this kind of transparency make relations stronger or weaker, point out to limitations, or perhaps point to other possibilities for doing this kind of work?
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WAR Something we cannot (and must not) forget when we analyze this project is that the country in which it has taken place is going through a very extreme political situation in which, I assume, the word “war” remains ever present. Has this circumstance affected the project in any way? How did you three (coming from different contexts) feel and think about such a circumstance during all these months? Juliane
Nataliia
Kotryna
I know this is not truth but at the first glance, I do not feel that the war affected this project. People did not talk about it; the ideas they came up with were not connected to the state of emergency, and I did not feel like raising these particular questions. As someone who has worked in a post-war state, Bosnia and Herzegovina, often dealing with situations where I felt like asking questions about the war, I felt that it is better to let the locals initiate such discussions. But the lack of discussion may have reflected a desire to maintain the rhythms of everyday life in order to resist letting the war take over. So in fact, perhaps the project was deeply affected by the current state of emergency.
As a Ukrainian it is hard for me to talk about the war, I get very anxious and emotional. As Juliane just said, at first glance it seems that we persist with our normal everyday lifes, and the war did not change anything, although this is not completely true. But if I had to name some particular changes, I wouldn’t be able to do so.
I remember a couple of impresive encounters. For example, on the second day after we arrived we had an informal barbecue with the participants. The guys were sharing experiences from their daily lives. When asked about their studies, one of them, aged around twenty, replied that he didn’t want to pick up his official diploma. If he did so, he would be summoned to the army to lead a group of soldiers, as he would receive a rank alongside his diploma. Another, a bit younger, told about a friend who had been captured for several months and came back “psychologically broken”. While roasting the marinated chicken, the conversation then drifted back to how the locals like to prepare barbecues by the river.
The second thing is that I am frequently asked about the war by foreigners who are trying to comprehend the current situation in Ukraine. So I talk about it a lot, and this is the reason for my anxiety knowing the power of propaganda, I want to give these people a truthful, reasonable, and multidimensional vision of a situation that our country is experiencing. But I always feel like I am leaving something out, like I never can fully explain to them this very complex picture. I was happy that Kotryna and Juliane could see and experience the reality themselves, as it has simplified my role as a cultural translator. Kotryna At the beginning of the program war and crisis were present as a concept or as a conversation topic in general terms. Personally, I faced the immensity of the war during the placement in Chernivtsi and Kiev. Several encounters pushed me to raise a lot of personal and professional questions about the position and the role of culture in a time of crisis and normalcy. For an outsider, it was impressive to see how the war seeped into natural daily life and conversations, and how people adapted their everyday behavior in order to survive. >>
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There are two things that I can tell. Firstly I got used to the war on television, on the internet, in everyday discussions. For me it has become a background - something that, as I recall, has astonished Kotryna and Juliane during their stay here.
Two weeks later, when we were travelling back home, we took a night train to Kiev. We were waiting for a shuttle bus outside the train station in the early morning when we were suddenly surrounded by a big group of youngsters. It seemed that they were loitering without purpose, making jokes, pushing and challenging each other behind a kiosk. Some army officials appeared from time to time. With their untidy uniforms and their way of addressing the guys, it was difficult to know whether they were on duty or just messing around. We felt unsafe, as we didn’t understand what was going on. A few minutes later a higher rank officer came out of the station and shouted something. The guys then started to form irregular groups, with a pretense of order. And one by one, holding plastic bags with their belongings, they marched by us into several military buses, leaving the whole square empty for twenty minutes, when a new group started to fill up the square.
AFTERWARDS One of the biggest problems that generally arise when projects like this one take place under international support is related to their continuity in time. How do you see this circumstance, and what is your experience in this case? Has there been or will there be any continuity for the project?
Nataliia For me this project showed that the notion of “cooperation” often means simply help or assistance, where a single person is an author of the project and others work as support team. In contrast, the kind of working collectively that we tried to initiate is more about mutual responsibility and authorship. I am not sure if we communicated this goal properly or if, once again, it was lost in translation. >>
One of the main objectives of the project was to stimulate cooperation between local activists by creating a platform for it. For sure we succeeded in creating a feeling of attachment to a common project among the participants, and it has lasted beyond the framework. It was very visible after Temporary Visibilities had finished, and a small group of participants parted to create a follow-up and transformed a barren space they had been researching into a functioning public space. I assisted them with the management and we received a small grant from Goethe-Institut Bukarest and launched the initiative Barbussa, 25. At some point we were very late with preparations, I was away, so they decided to ask their former colleagues for help. I was very moved to see that almost all of the project’s participants came to carry heavy wooden blocks back and forth around the barren, flatten the gravel with rakes and collect trash. Another manifestation of the afterlife of this project can be seen with a beamer we purchased, which is now used by other Chernvitsi organizations. When we bought it, we needed it for our project but since then it has transformed into a community object. The question that remained after the project is about further cooperation among the participants. In our project, cooperation was one of the core elements, and it worked because a framework was offered. But the participants have expressed quite contradictory views on this question. Some of them said that the activist network is weak and ineffective, specifically because of communicational vacuum and lack of cooperation. The others believe that no additional stimulation for cooperation is needed, as it already takes place, and the ones who really need help just ask for it. >>
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ТИМЧАСОВА ВИДИМІСТЬ TEMPORARY VISIBILITIES November 2014 – November 2015
PROJECT
PUBLICATION
Managment Nataliia Yeromenko Juliane Rahn Kotryna Valiukevičiūtė
Concept and coordination Kotryna Valiukevičiūtė
Local participants Kateryna Babiychuk Oleh Barasii Kateryna Barylo Katia Henrik Volodymyr Hutsul Andrii Kuranov Bohdan Liutyk Viktoria Medvedko Alina Mitran Zhan Pobe Svitlana Prykazka Mykhailo Skydan Andrii Strateychuk Illia Sturko Andrii Tuzhykov
Texts Nataliia Yeromenko Viktoria Medvedko Juliane Rahn Javier Fuentes Feo Kotryna Valiukevičiūtė Photographs CADAM. Javier Fuentes Feo Ilia Sturko Volodymyr Hutsul English editing Nathaniel Prottas Juliane Rahn Barbora Valiukevičiūtė Graphic design Kotryna Valiukevičiūtė Elena Azzedin Risograph print KG press May 2016
TANDEM – Cultural Managers Exchange UKRAINE is an initiative of the European Cultural Foundation (Amsterdam) and MitOst e.V. (Berlin). TANDEM UKRAINE kicks off a collaboration process for Ukrainian cultural and civil society organizations and their counterparts from the European Union, resulting in a lasting network of knowledge exchange in community development, conflict resolution and democratic dialogue through arts. The program is implemented by MitOst e.V. and Insha Osvita (Kyiv) and is supported by the Federal Foreign Office of Germany (Berlin) in the framework of the program “Dialogue for Change”. www.tandemexchange.eu
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