Issue 20 - In Conversation with .. 9!

How can a country at war address
political, social, cultural and societal
issues?
Today, the experience of artists and cultural workers
in Ukraine is profoundly marked by war trauma,
displacement, lack of access to basic resources and,
in many cases, direct involvement in armed resistance
or the experience of life under military occupation.
This poses existential challenges for the future of art
and cultural production in Ukraine.
Europe-wide solidarity commitment of
various art institutions.
"Instead of abandoning the project and thus
submitting to the logic of war that attacks everything
civil, the 2023 Biennial draws upon its founding
idea: that of being a multi-centric initiative in a
European, interconnected and solidary form."—said
the organisers of the Kyiv Visual Culture Research
Center and the curators of the main exhibition,
Serge Klymko, Hedwig Saxenhuber and Georg
Schöllhammer, who had to plan the concept and
format of the Biennial on short notice and anew.
Art institutions in Ukraine (in Kyiv, Ivano-Frankivsk
and Uzhhorod) organise presentations and events in
their endangered yet working infrastructures. Despite
the late start of planning due to the war, museums
and exhibition halls in Vienna (the main exhibition
spot), Warsaw and Berlin, together with venues in
other European cities, have freed up their spaces and
platforms for exhibitions and events with Ukrainian
and international artists, as well as for discursive,
performative and educational activities.
Together, the institutions have formed a curatorial
consortium to jointly create a conceptual framework
within which they develop their respective Kyiv
Biennial programs.
Bridge between European and
Ukrainian artistic communities –
towards an emancipatory future
The Kyiv Biennial 2023 is aware of the special
challenges of the project. Its intention is to reintegrate
the Ukrainian artistic community, divided by the war
and scattered all over Europe, and to enable its
actors to work and reflect together with international
colleagues on the cultural, social and environ- mental
challenges Ukraine is currently facing, while at the
same time creating images and scenarios for an
open and emancipatory future of the country and its
cultural field in a global context.
The Kyiv Biennial´s strategy, developed in the
course of its four previous editions, merges artistic
production, critical knowledge and social engagement
in the times of emergency, where curatorship goes far
beyond its contemporary meaning of an artistic and
organisational practice and becomes resignified with
its original sense of restoration, rehabilitation and
relief, thus suggesting not a biennial, but a perennial
long-run international project, a “Kyiv Perennial.”
Kyiv Biennial 2023 is conceived and organised by the
Visual Culture Research Center (Kyiv) together with
tranzit.at (Vienna), tranzit.org (Bratislava, Budapest,
Bucharest, Cluj, Iași, Prague and Vienna), Museum of
Modern Art in Warsaw, Museum Crisis Center (Lviv),
Other Edges, Dovzhenko Centre (Kyiv), Asortymentna
Kimnata (Ivano-Frankivsk) and Sorry, No Rooms
Available (Uzhhorod).
Venues:
Kyiv, Ukraine:
The River Wailed Like a Wounded Beast
Curators: Stanislav Bytiutskyi, Aliona Penzii,
Oleksandr Teliuk
Dovzhenko Center, Vasylkivska, 1
Runtime: October 5 – December 29, 2023
Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine:
On the Periphery of War
Curators: Alona Karavai, Roman Khimei,
Yarema Malashchuk, Anton Usanov
Asortymentna Kimnata, Sichovykh Striltsiv, 15
Runtime: October 7–30, 2023
Uzhhorod, Ukraine:
Where Are We Now, After All Those Endlessly
Repeated Words?
Curators: Petro Ryaska, Daria Shevtsova
Sorry No Rooms Available, Intourist-Zakarpattia
Hotel, Ploshcha Kyryla i Mefodiya, 5
Runtime: October 8 – November 12, 2023
Vienna, Austria:
Main exhibition
Curators: Serge Klymko, Hedwig Saxenhuber
and Georg Schöllhammer
Augarten Contemporary, Scherzergasse, 1A
and independent spaces in Vienna
Runtime: October 17 – December 17, 2023
Warsaw, Poland: Museum Forum:
Ukrainian Museums In the War Between russia
and Ukraine: Professionalism, Cooperation,
Solidarity
Curator: Olha Honchar
Museum of Modern Art, Wybrzeże
Kościuszkowskie, 22
Event Date: October 23, 2023
Lublin, Poland:
This Is Just an Exhibition
Curator: Waldemar Tatarczuk
Galeria Labirynt, J. Popiełuszki, 5
Runtime: October 27 – January 22, 2024
Antwerp, Belgium:
DISPATCHES postcard project
Curators: Nav Haq, Vasyl Cherepanyn
M HKA (Museum of Contemporary Art Antwerp),
Leuvenstraat, 32
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