The Post-Soviet Generation and the Trauma of Decolonization
by Tamara Hundorova
The talk will focus on the formation of a new post-Soviet generation, that in the 1990s started with the feeling of homelessness and came to the responsibility for the “last territory” you have to fight for. In the center of this talk is the autobiography of this generation as it is reflected and depicted in Serhiy Zhadan’s texts. It will argue that this generation is one of the main symbolic targets that Russia wants to destroy and to colonize, erasing its memory and history.
Ukrainian Mass Culture and Symbols of Resistance to Russian Aggression
by Serhy Yekelchyk
This talk will analyze the nature of such iconic images of Ukrainian defiance as “the Russian ship” meme, Patron the mine-sniffing dog, the kitchen cabinet, and others. It will identify the cultural logic that endeared them to the mass audience, while other such cultural symbols never gained wide popular appeal or remained in the limelight only briefly.
The event will be streamed on Facebook and YouTube channels of the Biennale Warszawa.
Armed Democracy
Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which put its people under mass physical and political extermination, has forced the European continent to question the very foundations of the institutional order it had been based on since the end of World War II. In the situation, when not just the future but the very present of Europe at large has appeared under direct existential threat from the Russian fascism, all the basic categories that the post-Nazi world relied on, such as democracy and authoritarianism, historicism and neocolonialism, pacifism and demonstration of protest, require a profound revision and change. The system of ideological coordinates as well as the outlines of the political spectrum we have been used to operate in are to be rearranged to tackle a new catastrophic reality.
The fundamental difference that we face in Europe at the moment between the Western approach characterized by the pursuit of peace and the Eastern one focused on liberation and independence poses a dramatic challenge – in order to survive and progress, democracy as a political regime has to be capable of defending itself also in a military way. What changes does it bring to the idea of the nation-state and the principles of internationalism? How will the notions and practices of citizenship, rule of law and human rights and freedoms be altered? In what way does it affect an economic apparatus and constitute the modus vivendi of our societies anew? How could a new political paradigm be safeguarded against imperialist and fascist misuse to prevent political and military violence by the strong against the weak?
Conceived by the Kyiv Biennial and Biennale Warszawa from the East Europe Biennial Alliance, this special public program Armed Democracy, curated by Vasyl Cherepanyn within the 2nd edition of Biennale Warszawa, revolves around the concepts of imperialism, liberation, fascism, autocracy, revolution, and militarization in pursuit of the world to come on Europe’s burnt out land. The program is a first part of the series organized by the East Europe Biennial Alliance discussing Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine and taking place in Warsaw, Prague, Kassel, and Riga over the summer and fall of 2022.
Tamara Hundorova is Head of the Department of Literary Theory (Institute of Literature of the NAS of Ukraine), Associate Fellow (Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute) and Dean at the Ukrainian Free University (Munich). She is the author of The Post-Chornobyl Library. The Ukrainian Postmodernism of the 1990s (2019), Tranzytna kultura. Symptomy postkolonial’noji traumy (2013), Kitsch i literatura. Travestii (2008), Proiavlennia slova. Dyskursiia rannioho ukrains’koho modernizmu(2009) and other books as well as numerous publications on modernism, postmodernism, feminism, postcolonial studies and history of Ukrainian literature. Prof. Hundorova taught at Harvard University, Toronto University, Greifswald University, University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy.
Serhy Yekelchyk received a Ph.D. from the University of Alberta. He is the author of seven books on modern Ukrainian history and Russo-Ukrainian relations including the award-winning Stalin’s Citizens: Everyday Politics in the Wake of Total War(Oxford University Press, 2014). A professor of History and Slavic Studies at the University of Victoria, Yekelchyk is current president of the Canadian Association for Ukrainian Studies.
Vasyl Cherepanyn (Ukraine, 1980) is Head of the Visual Culture Research Center(VCRC), an institution founded in Kyiv in 2008 as a platform for collaboration among academic, artistic, and activist communities. He holds a PhD in philosophy (aesthetics) and has lectured at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), University of Helsinki, Free University of Berlin, Merz Akademie in Stuttgart, University of Vienna, Institute for Advanced Studies of the Political Critique in Warsaw, and University of Greifswald. He was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna in 2016. He coedited Guidebook of the Kyiv International (Medusa Books, 2018) and ’68 NOW (Archive Books, 2019), and curated The European International (Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, 2018) and Hybrid Peace (Stroom, The Hague, 2019) among others. VCRC is the organizer of the Kyiv Biennial (The School of Kyiv, 2015; The Kyiv International, 2017; The Kyiv International—’68 NOW, 2018; Black Cloud, 2019; Allied, 2021) and a founding member of the East Europe Biennial Alliance. VCRC received the European Cultural Foundation Princess Margriet Award for Culture in 2015 and the Igor Zabel Award Grant for Culture and Theory in 2018.