Friday, 3 July 2015, 19:00

Opening of Motherhood exhibition at Lviv Art Palace

Visual Culture Research Center and Feminist workshop in Lviv invite you to the exhibition Motherhood, which was exposed in March at Visual Culture Research Center (Kyiv) and now will take place at Lviv Art Palace from July 3 untill 19, 2015.

Exhibition Motherhood suggests a feminist perspective on such traditional woman «function» as giving birth and raising a child. Which maternal experiences are hidden from publicity? What efforts have to be made for the sake of formation and development of a new human being? How is the topic of motherhood revealed in the work of female artists, even though giving birth often makes them put creative work on the back burner? What does the potential opportunity of becoming a mother mean to every woman? These and other issues will be questioned in the works of artists from Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Moldova, Hungary, Austria, and Sweden.

Analyzing the role and status of mothers in the society, the exhibition represents motherhood as a hard corporal and mental work that makes our existence possible. The dialogue with mothers is a dialogue with the history of one’s own life, which deserves to be a public issue.

Participants:
Oksana Briukhovetska, Anna Fabricius, Tatiana Fiodorova, Marta Frej, Ksenia Gnylytska, Masha Godovannaya, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Alina Jakubenko, Alevtina Kakhidze, Alina Kleitman, Joanna Rajkowska, Emma Thorsander, Marina Vinnik, Anna Witt

Curator
Oksana Briukhovetska

Exhibition will be open every day at the address:
Lviv Art Palace,
Lviv, 17 Kopernika Street

Open hours: 11 a. m. – 6 p. m.
Monday: CLOSED

Admission is free

Organization partner – Feminist workshop

Supported by Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung in Ukraine, Kyiv

Contacts:

+38 (093) 5536109 (Anna Khvyl)
+38 (093) 8739046 (Julia Zakoliabina)

www.facebook.com/vcrc.org.ua
vcrc@vcrc.org.ua

Visual Culture Research Center and Political Critique invite you to a presentation of Ukrainian Night photo essay book and opening of Miron Zownir’s exhibition that will take place on Saturday, June 20, at 18:00. The exhibition will last until July 12, 2015.

Ukrainian Night is a photo essay book by Miron Zownir and Kateryna Mishchenko, which can be considered a snapshot of Ukraine that absorbed numerous stories of urban life and dramatic landscapes of different areas of the country. This is a journey to the edge of the society that is both radical and lyrical. The book was published in 2015 by a German publishing house Spector Books Leipzig in English-Ukrainian and German-Ukrainian languages.

In 2012-13 Miron Zownir and Kateryna Mishchenko travelled through Ukraine, exploring and documenting social margins and dark sides of everyday life of the country. Zownir took pictures of people, situations, urban landscapes, particularly homeless teenagers’ life in Odessa, vagrants at Kyiv railway station, drug addicts in Poltava, an orphanage in Chernivtsi, the last Ukrainian Victory Parade in Sevastopol on May 9, 2013, the devastated industrial landscape of Donbas, and finally, the Maidan in Kyiv in March 2014.

Zownir’s photography and Mishchenko’s essays form a poetic document of deep social disruptions, which can be read as an epilogue to the changes Ukraine undergoes today.

“Ukrainian Night” is the third exhibition by Miron Zownir at Visual Culture Research Center. The first exhibition in 2011 presented the best of Zownir’s works, made during the last 30 years, and was complemented by a retrospective of his films. The second exhibition “Okraїna” in 2012 presented photos from Kyiv, Łódź, Moscow, and Warsaw, and was devoted to “citizens of the margins,” urban outcasts rejected by the societies of Eastern Europe.

About the authors:

Miron Zownir is a photographer, writer and film director. He was born in Karlsruhe (Germany) in 1953 to a Ukrainian father and German mother. In the age of 20 he went to Berlin, where he independently taught himself to photograph and took pictures of active at that time punk movement. In 1980 he moved to the US and lived in New York, Los Angeles, and Pittsburgh for 15 years. There he made expressionist portraits of social outsiders. International exhibitions and publications revealed his stylistic closeness to such avant-garde artists as Nan Goldin and Cindy Sherman. In 1998 his photo-book Radical Eye was published, in 2010 – The Valley of the Shadow (both in Gestalten publishing house).

Kateryna Mishchenko is an essayist, publisher and translator, who lives in Kyiv. She is a co-founder and editor of independent publishing house “MEDUSA”. She taught literary history in Kyiv Linguistic University, worked as a translator and coordinator in social and human rights sphere, edited Prostory magazine. Mishchenko translates German literature (Alfred Döblin, Durs Grünbein, Günther Brus), academic and philosophic texts (Theodor Adorno, Walter Benjamin, Keti Chukhrov). Her essays were published in Ukrainian and international magazines, as well as in anthologies by German publishing house Suhrkamp, devoted to the Euromaidan and military conflict in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

Admission is free

A journey through Ukraine, preparation of book materials and its presentation take place within the framework of the Grenzgänger program, supported by Robert Bosch Stiftung

Supported by ERSTE Stiftung and Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

Media partners:

Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) was founded in 2008 as a platform for collaboration between academic, artistic, and activist communities. VCRC is an independent initiative, which is engaged in publishing and artistic activities, scientific research, organization of public lectures, discussions, and conferences. In 2015 Visual Culture Research Center received the European Cultural Foundation’s Princess Margriet Award.

Visual Culture Research Center (44 Hlybochytska Street (1st floor), Kyiv)

Contacts:

+38096 4929600 (Nataliya Neshevets)
www.facebook.com/vcrc.org.ua
vcrc@vcrc.org.ua

Wednesday, 20 May 2015, 19:00
Visual Culture Research Center (44 Hlybochytska Street (1st floor), Kyiv)

Visual Culture Research Center and Political Critique invite you to the exhibition “Some Say You Can Find Happiness There” at Visual Culture Research Center (Kyiv, Ukraine), which will take place from 20 May till 15 June 2015. Opening: Wednesday, 20 May, at 19:00.

Political map of the world may be understood as a museum of collective fantasies, which once gained a piece of territory for their realization. Some of them died, failing the reality-test, but continue haunting their demesnes like specters, some gave up their spaces to other dreams, some carry out expansion claiming new territories. However, there is also a map of imaginary world for the dreams of communities that have vanished or, on the contrary, are still emerging and keep struggling for their place in reality.

During the recent year our ideas about the state that used to seem obvious, have transformed into open questions. Maidan, which was compared to a utopian republic, questioned relations between the society and the state, and generated the surge of projects for its transformation. The change in the familiar contours happened before our very eyes, the common visual image of the Ukrainian state is now in conflict with its actual borders, and hundreds of thousands of people woke up in a different country. We witnessed how political utopias, multiplied by a potential of contemporary media, are being implemented, increasing the number of views in social networks, as well as the number of destroyed human lives.

Open questions demand answers. We have to look at the map of contemporary political imagination in order to see the ways we follow in search of the common happiness, in order to reconsider concepts and images, which today’s political relations, as well as our dreams and fantasies, are based on.

Participants: Atelier Populaires de Paris (France), Babi Badalov (Azerbaijan-France), Yael Bartana (Israel), Tatiana Fedorova (Moldova), Focus Grupa (Croatia), IRWIN Group (Slovenia), Nikita Kadan (Ukraine), Juan-Pablo Macías (Mexico), Serhiy Popov (Ukraine), Oleksiy Radynski (Ukraine), Tomáš Rafa (Slovakia), Mykola Ridnyi (Ukraine), Sean Snyder (USA), Haim Sokol (Russia), Vova Vorotniov (Ukraine).

Curated by Serhiy Klymko and Lesia Kulchynska

The exhibition will take place within the frameworks of the project “Exploitation of the Imaginary”, dedicated to the research of political imagination in the age of its mechanical reproduction and the capability of art to fight for its right to structure society.

Admission is free

The project is supported by Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung

Supported by ERSTE Stiftung and Charles Stewart Mott Foundation

Media partners:

Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) was founded in 2008 as a platform for collaboration between academic, artistic, and activist communities. VCRC is an independent initiative, which is engaged in publishing and artistic activities, scientific research, organization of public lectures, discussions, and conferences. In 2015 Visual Culture Research Center received the European Cultural Foundation’s Princess Margriet Award.

Visual Culture Research Center (44 Hlybochytska Street (1st floor), Kyiv)

Contacts:

+38096 4929600 (Nataliya Neshevets)
www.facebook.com/vcrc.org.ua
vcrc@vcrc.org.ua

March 21 – April 5
Visual Culture Research Center (44 Hlybochytska Street (1st floor), Kyiv)

International Documentary Human Rights Film Festival Docudays UA, Visual Culture Research Center, and Political Critique invite you to the exhibition Grozny: Nine Cities, which will take place from March 21 to April 5 at the address 44 Hlybochytska Street.

Grozny: Nine Cities is a joint project by Olga Kravets, Maria Morina, and Oksana Yushko, exploring specific aspects of Grozny’s aftermath through considering them as «cities» hidden within Grozny. Grozny, the capital of war-torn Chechnya, is a melting pot for changing Сaucasus society that is trying to overcome a post-trauma shock of two recent wars and find its own way of life in between traditional Сhechen values, Muslim traditions, and globalization, to cope with rapidly changing role of women, increasing contrast between rich and poor and political games.

The project Grozny: Nine Cities centers on the idea of nine cities being hidden in one, which gives us a concept to explore specific aspects of the aftermath of two Chechen wars considering them as «cities» hidden within Grozny. First city is the city that has ceased to exist – memory of Soviet multicultural Grozny that was bombed and burned down. Second city is the city of war, where violence has become a kind of background noise for locals. Third city is the city of religion, undergoing total Islamization conducted by Ramzan Kadyrov. The city of women and the city of men reveal gender problems connected with these processes. The city of strangers is a story about complicated ethnic relationships within the city. The city of oil is an economic base on which authoritarian President Ramzan Kadyrov builds his city of servants, loyal to his regime. Under the burden of threats and uncertainty, within the wind of rapid changes the city of ordinary people lives its everyday life.

Curator – Anna Shpakova

Exhibition is open every day, except Monday, from 13:00 to 19:00
Exhibition opening – March 21, at 17:30
Project authors Maria Morina and Oksana Yushko, curator Anna Shpakova will attend the opening.
On March 22, at 18:00 a tour around the exhibition will take place with the participation of the authors.

Admission is free

On March 22, at 12:00, Maria, Oksana and Anna will hold a meeting with the audience of DOCU/CLASS on «Group Project Grozny: 9 Cities – how to create and to present a critical project on the events in your country».

On the 5th of April, at 19:00 the discussion «Chechen Option» will take place. The discussion will explore the parallels between the counter-terrorist operation in Chechnya and anti-terrorist operation in the East of Ukraine.

Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) was founded in 2008 as a platform for collaboration between academic, artistic, and activist communities. VCRC is an independent initiative, which is engaged in publishing and artistic activities, scientific research, organization of public lectures, discussions, and conferences. In 2015 Visual Culture Research Center received the European Cultural Foundation’s Princess Margriet Award.

Contacts:

Visual Culture Research Center

+380631481204 (Nazariy Sovsun)
www.facebook.com/vcrc.org.ua
vcrc@vcrc.org.ua

Friday, 6 March 2015, 18:00
Visual Culture Research Center (44 Hlybochytska Street (1st floor), Kyiv)

Visual Culture Research Center and Political Critique invite you to the opening of exhibition Motherhood, which will take place on Friday, 6 March, 18:00.

Exhibition Motherhood suggests a feminist perspective on such traditional woman «function» as giving birth and raising a child. Which maternal experiences are hidden from publicity? What efforts have to be made for the sake of formation and development of a new human being? How is the topic of motherhood revealed in the work of female artists, even though giving birth often makes them put creative work on the back burner? What does the potential opportunity of becoming a mother mean to every woman? These and other issues will be questioned in the works of artists from Ukraine, Poland, Russia, Moldova, Hungary, Austria, and Sweden.

Analyzing the role and status of mothers in the society, the exhibition represents motherhood as a hard corporal and mental work that makes our existence possible. The dialogue with mothers is a dialogue with the history of one’s own life, which deserves to be a public issue.

Participants
Oksana Briukhovetska, Anna Fabricius, Tatiana Fiodorova, Marta Frej, Ksenia Gnylytska, Masha Godovannaya, Elżbieta Jabłońska, Alina Jakubenko, Alina Kleitman, Joanna Rajkowska, Emma Thorsander, Marina Vinnik, Anna Witt

Curator
Oksana Briukhovetska

Series of events related to feminist topics will take place within the frameworks of the exhibition:

7 March, 19:00 – Film screening in partnership with Festival of film and urbanism «86» – The Punk Singer by Sini Anderson
8 March, 20:00 – Feminist party W Sounds
12 March, 19:00 – Discussion Women, Parties, Quotas: How to Achieve Gender Equality in Politics
14 March, 17:00 – Lecture by Kateryna Dysa: Feamale Sexuality in the 18th century Ukraine: Non-Symmetrical Answers from Jurisprudence
18 March, 19:00 – Presentation of gender studies anthology Image. Body. Order with the participation of Mariya Mayerchyk
19 March, 19:00 – Closing film: The Motherhood Archives by Irene Lusztig

Admission is free

Supported by ERSTE Stiftung, Charles Stewart Mott Foundation and Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung Ukraine

Project partners:

Media partner:

Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) was founded in 2008 as a platform for collaboration between academic, artistic, and activist communities. VCRC is an independent initiative, which is engaged in publishing and artistic activities, scientific research, organization of public lectures, discussions, and conferences. In 2015 Visual Culture Research Center received the European Cultural Foundation’s Princess Margriet Award.

Contacts:
+380631481204 (Nazariy Sovsun)
+380964929600 (Natalka Neshevets)

vcrc@vcrc.org.ua
www.facebook.com/vcrc.org.ua

Superstructure, an exhibition of the most outstanding projects of post-war neo-modernist architecture in Kyiv, will take place at Visual Culture Research Center from January 28th until February 28th. An exhibition will feature accomplished and unaccomplished projects by the Kyiv architects of 1950-1980ies, as well as the transformation of their utopian ideas.

The exhibition will open on the 28th of January at 19:00

Superstructure exhibition is one of the results of a long-term research of the Soviet neo-modernism in Ukraine. Materials of this research, initiated by Georg Schoelhammer within Local Modernities project, were previously presented at the exhibition Soviet Modernism 1955 – 1991: Unknown Stories, curated by Ekaterina Schapiro-Obermair, Katharina Ritter and Alexadnra Wachter at Architekturzentrum Wien (2012); Trespassing Modernities, curated by Ruben Arevshatyan and Georg Schoelhammer at SALT Galata gallery, Istanbul (2013), and Parallel Modernities at the 31st São Paulo Biennial (2014). Superstructure exhibition will present this research with a focus on Kyiv for the first time.

Central place at the exhibition belongs to an architect Eduard Bilsky, who is an author and co-author of numerous significant neo-modernist projects in Kyiv, including the Palace of Pioneers, Central Bus Station, residential district Vynogradar etc. His sketches, drawings, and project materials show the scale of utopian thinking of Kyiv architects. Works by an architect Florian Yuriyev (author of the famous ‘Kyiv saucer’ building) serve as an example of “synthesis of arts” in architecture. Tragic history of the Park of Memory by Ada Rybachuk and Volodymyr Melnychenko will be represented in film The Wall by Israel Goldstein. Besides, projects by Mykhaylo Budylovsky, Anatoliy Dobrovolsky, Yosyp Karakis, Avraam Miletsky, Nataliya Chmutina, Volodymyr Shevchenko, Valentyn Shtolko, and others, will be presented at the exhibition.

“In the early 1960s Kyiv architecture started speaking an international language of post-war neo-modernism. The community of architects, artists, and engineers, for whom architecture and construction were one of the many elements of modernist thinking, were in the vanguard of this process. Architects claimed the role of the demiurges, who create total works of art, and artists aspired for being equal co-authors of architectural projects. It was an attempt to transform the city into the environment for materialization of artistic thinking – in contrast to the strict unification of city space by typical construction and residential blocks”. [From the curatorial statement]

Research group of the project – Oleksandr Burlaka, Oleksiy Bykov, and Oleksiy Radynski.

Exhibition is open every day, except Mondays, from 13:00 until 19:00

Admission is free

Exhibition takes place within the frameworks of Unrendered Spaces project supported by ERSTE Foundation

unrenderedspaces.tumblr.com

Project partner:

Media partner:

Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) was founded in 2008 as a platform for collaboration between academic, artistic, and activist communities. VCRC is an independent initiative, which is engaged in publishing and artistic activities, scientific research, organization of public lectures, discussions, and conferences. In 2015 Visual Culture Research Center received the European Cultural Foundation’s Princess Margriet Award.

Visual Culture Research Center (44 Hlybochytska Street (1st floor), Kyiv)

Contacts:

+38096 4929600 (Nataliya Neshevets)
www.facebook.com/vcrc.org.ua
vcrc@vcrc.org.ua

Thursday, November 6th 2014, 19:00
44 Hlybochytska Street (1st floor), Kyiv

Lockout. Opening of the Exhibition of Eastern European Critical Art

Visual Culture Research Center invites you to the opening of the exhibition Lockout, which will take place on Thursday, November 6th at 19:00. Curators: Oksana Briukhovetska (Visual Culture Research Center, Ukraine) and Stanisław Ruksza (Center for Contemporary Art Kronika, Poland).

Exhibition’s title Lockout refers to the work stoppage at the enterprise initiated by the employer – practice, which is forbidden in many countries but Ukraine. Curators consider this phenomenon a metaphor of the social situation in post-socialist world. Works, presented at the exhibition, reveal the hidden, or invisible, reality of labour as one of the most routine and important aspects of human life. Exhibition Lockout includes critical art works from Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and Hungary.

Exhibition participants: Anatoliy Belov (Ukraine), Oksana Briukhovetska (Ukraine), Anna Fabricius (Hungary), Rafał Jakubowicz (Poland), Taras Kamennoy (Ukraine), Lilia Li-mi-yan (Russia), Viktoria Lomasko (Russia), Yulia Mazurova (Russia), Anna Molska (Poland), Laura Pawela (Poland), Valentyna Petrova (Ukraine), Oleksiy Radynski (Ukraine), Mykola Ridnyi (Ukraine), Khaim Sokol (Russia), Iryna Stasyuk (Ukraine), Łukasz Surowiec (Poland), Piotr Wysocki (Poland).

Curators of the exhibition Oksana Briukhovetska and Stanisław Ruksza: “We can see how in Eastern Europe local phenomena correspond to the problems of the neighboring countries. Working with those, who are expelled from the world of wealth, artists make them visible. And this may become the first step towards important changes”.

Within the framework of exhibition meetings with its participants and film screenings will take place:

November 7th, 19:00 – screening of Fortress, Common Places by Mykola Ridnyi.

November 8th, 19:00 – screening of Integration, Referendum, Ukraine Goes To War by Oleksiy Radynski.

Exhibition is open from the 7th until the 30th of November, from 12:00 until 20:00, every day, except Monday.

Information about curators:

Oksana Briukhovetska – artist, curator at Visual Culture Research Center. Graduate of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture, Kyiv. Curator of the exhibitions Childhood. Uncensored and Ukrainian Body at Visual Culture Research Center.

Stanisław Ruksza – curator, art historian. Director of the Center for Contemporary Art Kronika (Bytom, Poland). Author of the numerous publications about contemporary art, coordinator of Political Critique club in Śląsk.

Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC) was founded in 2008 for the purpose of creating the interdisciplinary platform for analysis of the Ukrainian post-Soviet condition at the intersection of art, knowledge, and politics. Since its inception VCRC has organized over 150 debates, conferences and seminars with the participation of Ukrainian and international researchers, as well as nearly 20 art exhibitions.

Visual Culture Research Center (44 Hlybochytska Street, 1st floor, Kyiv)

Events will take place with support from: Krytyka Polityczna (Poland), ERSTE Foundation (Austria)

Exhibition Lockout is co-organized by Visual Culture Research Center and Center for Contemporary Art Kronika (Bytom, Poland) with support from Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of the Republic of Poland.

Information partners:

Contacts:

+38 096 492 96 00 (Nataliya Neshevets), +38 093 460 68 81 (Oksana Briukhovetska)
vcrc@vcrc.org.ua
www.facebook.com/vcrc.org.ua

19 October – 30 October
Petrivska 30/34

Visual Culture Research Center presents Un Chien (V)andalou exhibition by Vova Vorotniov and invites you to its opening on October 19, 18.00 at Petrivska 30/34, Kyiv.
Vova Vorotniov is one of the key figures of the Ukrainian post-graffiti scene. Working with subcultural codes and urban environment as public space of visual communication, Vorotniov gradually has expanded his horizon to exploring communication mechanisms of modernity.

The Un Chien (V)andalou exhibition is a homage to the surrealism tradition. Vorotniov uses surrealistic techniques of ready-made and collage for a vandal purpose: he snatches snippets of visual mundanity out of automatism of their routine and imperceptible functioning. Thus tries to expose their veiled symbolic mission as well as impose a new one, articulating different layers of signification. The artist returns formatted fragments to a viewer, modifying, step by step, symbolic mapping of our visual environment. Un Chien (V)andalou is a point of scattered interference, not expression, but ornament that like corrosion, erodes any totality and final meanings, causing anarchy in the field signification.

Vova Vorotniov is a conceptual artist with graffiti background, who continues to play with his “street” experience. Vorotniov explores the semiotic unconscious of everyday visuality, showing iconic structures and visual codes, which define our symbolic practices, but are left unreflected. Experimenting with mechanisms of production and broadcasting of signification in contemporary culture, Vova aims at provoking systemic failures in their concerted functioning.

Unrendered Spaces is a series of exhibitions dedicated to the strategies of perception of the urban and non-urban environment, the possibilities of its exploration by the means of art. Focused on the points of perceptive multiplicity of interpreting the living space, the project aims to play out the political, social and aesthetic zones of tension in its redefinition.

Visual Culture Research Center was founded in 2008 in order to create an interdisciplinary environment for the analysis of Ukraine’s post-Soviet condition in terms of art, knowledge and politics. Since then, VCRC has organized over 150 research and discussion events engaging Ukrainian and foreign scholars, and about 20 art exhibitions.
The exhibition is part of Visual Culture Research Center project Unrendered Spaces and is supported by ERSTE Foundation.

Opening hours: October 19 – October 30, Tuesday to Sunday, 13:00 – 19:00.
Address: Kyiv, Petrivska Str., 30/34.

Contacts:
vcrc@vcrc.org.ua
facebook.com/vcrc.org.ua
http://unrenderedspaces.tumblr.com/
http://vcrc.org.ua/

4th – 12th of October 2014
at Petrivska 30/34, Kyiv

Visual Culture Research Center presents
Killing Time in Web exhibition by Zigendemonic

“This work is about a state of mind that you experience when you are serfing internet way too long, about visual information overdose, about seeing hundreds, or even thousands of images everyday, which travel from real world to our consciousness. In moments of extreme fatigue, after another all day long internet blogs scrolling, you have very bright dreams. If dream deprivation exceeds normal borders – the flow of images appears, even if you close your eyes for a moment. This state is painful but at the same time beautiful. After some time you want to overburn yourself once more, to experience again those pseudo-hallucinations” – Zigendemonic.

«Killing Time in Web» is a hallucination and hypnosis at the same time. It’s not just telling you about overdosing of visual images, it is designed to invoke this overdose, to infect with those hallucinations, to penetrate dreams. Overdosing is just a method, way of producing visions, which tells about something intimate but so familiar to everyone.

Soundtrack by Myztical

Exhibition works on demand October 4 – October 12
Address: Kyiv, Petrivska Str., 34.

zigendemonic.org
vcrc.org.ua

July 10 – July 24 2014

Visual Culture Research Center presents Island, an exhibition by Ivan Melnychuk and Oleksandr Burlaka and invites you to the opening on July 10, 7 p.m.
at Petrivska 30/34, Kyiv

Fictitious architect, convinced modernist, once a skilled head of one of the units of the Soviet State Designing institute, after the years of inactivity is working on a project of private hacienda that occupies Trukhanov Island – green recreational territory in the centre of Kyiv. Context is neglected, disordered scrap of land that waits for somebody who can afford to turn it into a gem.

This is a real utopia. It is possible here and now. Perturbed unenlightened public reminds a passer-by that looks inside the hospital window and gives advice to the operating surgeon. And your personal opinion is an error which does not affect the result, trifle that can be disregarded to make this fragile utopia true in our rude, chaotic world.

The exhibition is part of Visual Culture Research Center Unrendered Spaces project and is supported by ERSTE Foundation.

Ivan Melnychuk was born 1982 in Lutsk, Ukraine, currently lives and works in Kyiv, Ukraine. Architect, artist, member of Melnychuk-Burlaka group, Grupa predmetiv group, Art Workers’ Self-defense Initiative. He specializes in documenting and studying of urban transformations.

Oleksandr Burlaka was born 1982 in Kyiv, Ukraine, where he currently lives and works. He graduated from Kyiv National University of Construction and Architecture in 2005 as a Master of architecture. Architect and artist; member of Grupa predmetiv group, Melnychuk-Burlaka group, interdisciplinary curatorial association Hudrada.

Ivan Melnychuk and Oleksandr Burlaka’s practice is a critical reflection on how the architectural heritage and the urban context in the post-Soviet space are transformed in, and sometimes erased from, our collective memory. Trained as architects they question and study the role, ideology and responsibility of architects today.

Unrendered Spaces is an ongoing exhibition project, which includes a series of expositions dedicated to the strategies of perception of environment inside and outside the city, the possibilities of its exploration by the means of art. Concentrated on the points of perceptive conflict, multiple interpretations of the living space, the project aims at playing out the political, social, aesthetic zones of tension by redefining it.

Visual Culture Research Center is a platform for collaboration of artists, activists and academics founded in Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in 2008. Since its inception VCRC had organized over 150 debates, conferences and research seminars, nearly 20 exhibitions and a series of street protest actions.

Opening hours: July 10 – July 24, Tuesday to Sunday, 3 p.m. – 7 p.m. 
Address: Kyiv, 34, Petrivska St.

http://unrenderedspaces.tumblr.com/
http://vcrc.org.ua/