Visual Culture Research Center at The Third International Arsenal Book Festival
presents

31 May, Friday, 19:00
Book Arsenal, 10-12, Lavrska St., Hall 1

HATRED FOR THE ART
Presentation of the closed exhibitions research project and Ukrainian Body catalogue

The project In-hibition by Visual Culture Research Center exposes the stories of exhibitions that were closed in Ukraine during the last twenty years, attempting to explore what exactly needed to be suppressed, which fears and anxieties stood behind the acts of shutdown, why art was deprived of the right to be visible. A shutdown of an exhibition is always a reaction to the intolerable, which indicates that art is being experienced as dangerous, threatful for the comfortable viewer’s position. The project was first introduced at the exhibition Ukrainian News at the Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowsky Castle (Warsaw, Poland).

Presentation of the catalogue for the exhibition Ukrainian Body, which was closed in February 2012 at Visual Culture Research Center that was based in Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, will take place. The edition describes the story of the exhibition, its participants and the position of Ukrainian Body in the contemporary Ukrainian art context. The project In-hibition and the publication Ukrainian Body track the most significant manifestations of intolerance towards art while depicting the most vulnerable points of Ukrainian society.

Participants: Oksana Briukhovetska, Oleksandr Ivashyna, Serhiy Klymko, Lesia Kulchynska, Oleksiy Radynski.
Moderator: Vasyl Cherepanyn.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS INVOLVING ARTISTS AND GROUPS:

29 May, Wednesday

11:00-13:00 – zigendemonic
13:00-15:00 – Anatoly Belov and Alina Kopytsia

30 May, Thursday

10:00-14:00 – Oleksandr Burlaka
14:00-18:00 – Oksana Bryukhovetska, Mykola Vlasov

31 May, Friday

14:00-19:00 – KYIV AIR Artist Residence participants

1 June, Saturday

13:00-18:00 – Feminist Ofenzyva

2 June, Sunday

13:00-18:00 – Feminist Ofenzyva

Changes and additions in this schedule could be made.
For more information please visit facebook page.

SCHEDULE OF EVENTS:

22 May, Wednesday

13.00-18.00 – Tenpoint group. Penetration
13.00-15.00 – Stanislav Silantyev. New Language

23 May, Thursday

10.00-13.00 – Maria Matiyenko. The Drawing of Movement
13.00-18.00 – Anna Zvyahintseva

24 May, Friday

12.00-18.00 – Nikita Kadan. Certain Cases

25 May, Saturday

10.00-14.00 – Volodymyr Protsenko
14.00-18.00 – Paulina Antoniewicz. Rainbow

26 May, Sunday

10.00 – Oleksandr Dolgiy, Dmytro Korniyenko
10.00 – Ivan Melnychuk
14.00 – Vova Vorotniov & ETC

Changes and additions in this schedule could be made.
For more information please visit facebook

National Art Museum of Ukraine, Polish Institute in Kyiv and Visual Culture Research Center

Invite to the opening of the
DRAFTSMEN’S CONGRESS
Concept by Pawel Althamer

May 18, 20:00
6 Hrushevskogo St., Kyiv

The Draftsmen’s Congress initiated by the artist Pawel Althamer, will take place from May 18 until June 8, 2013. During this period the premises of the National Art Museum will turn into a platform for free public communication through drawing as a principal means of expressing one’s opinions, passions, and having a discussion.

Draftsmen’s Congress in Kyiv opens on the Museum Night on May 18, 2013 at 20:00. Artist Pawel Althamer, the members of ESC social center (Rome), as well as Ukrainian artistic and political initiatives Hudrada, R.E.P., Direct Action, Feminist Ofenzyva, and everyone interested will participate in the opening of the Congress.

Draftsmen’s Congress is a meeting of people who communicate by images instead of words. Any eager to participate can join the discussion through paint, charcoal, collage or other traditional materials and techniques in order to express themselves on the topics of their concern.

During Draftsmen’s Congress one of the rooms of the Museum will turn into a platform for continuous visual communication. The Museum’s walls and floor will be covered with white surface, which the visitors together with Ukrainian and foreign artists, architects, designers will gradually fill with their drawings. Over the period of three weeks anyone will have a chance to leave their own trace within the walls of the most honored art institution in Ukraine.

Not happy with what other people paint? Use a paintbrush to cover their images or draw your comments next to them. Together with Pawel Althamer we encourage everyone to have an honest talk. Be polite or politically incorrect, delighted or indignant, and fight others in an image battle. Picture your emotions, convictions and demands. Spit out the truth and speak out!
We oppose the hierarchies of qualification and popularity that dominate in the art world with access to public visual communication, which is free and open to all. Politics, religion, economic issues, ideological and aesthetic opinions can become the points of intersection within the discussion unfolding in the Museum. No opinion will be in a privileged position, for anybody can react and transform it beyond recognition or cover it up entirely.

Representatives of different social groups with different interests, views and convictions will be invited to participate in the dialogue and encouraged to communicate in a nonverbal way. Such visual conversation is destined to overcome the barriers that usually occur in an oral discussion.

Parallel program that will accompany the Congress in the Museum will include video screenings, presentations, debates, and workshops with the participation of Ukrainian and foreign artists, curators, activists.

Draftsmen’s Congress was for the first time initiated by the artist Pawel Althamer within the 7th Berlin Biennial of Contemporary Art in 2012 (curated by Artur Zmiewski). One of the nonworking churches in Berlin (Elisabethkirche) was transformed into a platform for common drawing. Its success with the audience of the biennial incited Pawel Althamer to develop the idea and to make such congresses in Rome, Warsaw and Kyiv.

Pawel Althamer is an artist, sculptor, performancist, representative of Polish critical art, winner of the Vincent Van Gogh Award. For many years he is teaching art lessons for the excluded social groups (disabled people, inhabitants of poor districts). His works have been at Documenta X, Manifesta 3, Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), Deutsche Guggenheim (Berlin) etc.

Special partner:
Centrum Sztuki Współczesnej Zamek Ujazdowski

Project partners:
Foundation for Development of Ukraine
ARTTECHNOLOGY
Stedley Art Foundation
Caparol
Azur

Media partners:
ART UKRAINE
Kievreport
Наш Киев
WHAT’S ON
ПЛАТФОРМА
Political Critique

Contacts:
VIsual Culture Research Center::
Lesia Kulchinska, kulchinska@gmail.com, tel. +38 093 0400548

Polish Institute in Kyiv::
Tetyana Artushevska, tatiana.artuszewska@instytutpolski.org, tel. (044) 288 0304

National Art Museum of Ukraine::
Nataliya Mykhaylova, namumuseum@gmail.com, tel. (044) 278 7454

On the 27th of April the screening ‘The Collection’ takes place on Nyzhnyoyurkivska 31, Kyiv. The program includes short Dutch experimental films & animations by Mels van Zutphen, Mark van der Maarel, Anton Setola, Koert Davidse, Katelijne Schrama, Pim Zwier, Leo de Boer. The films seek to tell stories by balancing between documentary and fiction, using archive material, still images and text.

A premiere screening of Artur Żmijewski’s November 11  film series on Friday, December 28th, 19.30 at Visual Culture Research Center (Zhovten Cinema, “Classic” hall, 26, Kostyantynivska St.).

Every year Artur Żmijewski films street manifestations in Warsaw on Independence Day, the 11th of November. In recent years this celebration in Warsaw was marked by radical right marches leading to mass riots, clashes with the police, hate campaigns in the media, as well as big anti-fascist counter-actions. In his series of films, Żmijewski traces the evolution of the street confrontation for the last four years: radical nationalists’ march in 2009; attempts of blocking the far right march in 2010 and 2011; many thousand strong March of Independence on November 11, 2012 ending up with the foundation of the radical right “National Movement”, which defined its goal as to “overthrow the republic” in Poland.

November 11 series of films makes an ending to Artur Żmijewski’s long-term project Democracies exposed at the exhibition of the same name in Kyiv at the VCRC in October 2012. Democracies project consists of nearly 30 nonfiction films documenting political events and actions all around the globe. In December 2012 Żmijewski announced the end of his work on the project.

Artur Żmijewski – director, curator, writer. He participated in 51. Venice Biennale (2005), Manifesta (2004) and Documenta (2007). In 2012, he curated the 7. Berlin Biennale. In his films Zmijewski studies the current social antagonisms, problems of political representation and collective imaginaries. Zmijewski is an artistic editor of Political Critique magazine.

Program of screening:

National Radical Camp March (2009)

The Ghosts March (2010)

The Rainbow Independent (2011)

Independence March (2012)

28.12.2012, 19.30, Zhovten Cinema, “Classic” hall, 26, Kostyantynivska St.

This screening takes place within Culture of Transformation project, supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland.

Project partners:

Zhovten Cinema, Polish Institute in Kyiv

Media partners:

ARTUkraine, Korydor, TeleKrytyka, VideoTeKa

December 7^th, 2012, 20:00   Muscut and Visual Culture Research Center present experimental electronic music concert at “the plate”.  Participants: I/Dex, Andrey Kiritchenko, Petrov, Nikolaienko.

The concert hall of the Institute for Scientific-Technical and Economic Information (“the plate” near Lybidska metro station) was built in 1971 by a famous architect-inventor, composer, musician, scientist, physicist Florian Yuriev. His innovative solution of placing a ferroconcrete lens with a metal dome in the base of “the plate” helped to create a room with almost perfect acoustics. Yuriev’s plan was to locate a spherical lecture and cinema hall there, and a light-and-music theatre.

“The plate” is one of the most peculiar Soviet Modernism’s “second wave” buildings, created between 1961 and 1991. Despite the constantly growing international interest for the architectural heritage of the 1960 – 1990s, the building has not yet been assigned an official status of a monument, which puts its existence under a threat.

Experimental music concert at “the plate” is not only a chance to test the unique acoustic designing of the 1970s, but also an attempt to transform “the plate” from a half-ruined facility which is only known among few groups into a popular cultural location.

Live:
I/Dex (Minsk)
http://unsound.pl/en/festival/program/artists/2011/show/385

Andrey Kiritchenko (Kharkiv)
http://www.nexsound.org/wp/akir/

Petrov
http://www.discogs.com/artist/Alexey+Petrov

Nikolaienko
http://muscut.org/nikolaienko

Contribution: 40 UAH

http://www.last.fm/event/3445877+I-Dex+(Live)

Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/440408746007143/

On November 28 – 30, 2012 the Days of Political Critique will take place in Kharkiv. Political Critique is a magazine, which is being published by the intellectual community of Visual Culture Research Center (Kyiv). The programme of events includes: presentation of the fourth issue of Political Critique, play reading of Rainbow Sector by Paweł Demirski, lecture by the theatre critic Igor Stokfiszewski on How Theatre Changes Reality?, and a discussion: Love and Hatred for the Other.

On November 28^th, at 19:00, presentation of Political Critique magazine will take place at Yermilov Centre (4, Svoboda Square). Participants: Lesya Kulchynska, Mykola Ridnyi, Nazariy Sovsun, Igor Stokfiszewski, Serhiy Zhadan.

The newest issue of Political Critique is about art as a tool for struggle, social critique and political statement. This issue contains chapters dedicated to the analysis of the Pussy Riot affair, and talks with politically engaged artists conducted by the artistic editor of the magazine Artur Zmijewski. Ukrainian translation of the play Rainbow Sector by Paweł Demirski, as well as a special project – artworks by Ukrainian and Polish artists inspired by the Euro-2012 football championship are also included in Political Critique #4. Some of the authors of the issue: Yevhenia Belorusets, Vasyl Cherepanyn, Keti Chukhrov, Mykyta Kadan, Zhanna Kadyrova, Tomasz Piatek, Oleksiy Radynski, Mykola Ridnyi, Oleksandr Volodarsky, Serhiy Zhadan, Artur Żmijewski.

On November 29^th, at 19:00 Paweł Demirski’s Rainbow Sector play reading will take place at the theatre-studio Arabesky (25/5, Hromadyanska Street).

The play Rainbow Sector is the result of a massive mystification prepared by the radical Polish dramatist Pawel Demirski before the Euro-2012 championship. He started a media campaign on behalf of an anonymous group of Polish homosexual football fans for making a special stadium section for the homosexually oriented football fans. This issue had huge feedback in Polish society, becoming the material for the play Rainbow Sector, which appears to be extremely relevant in today’s Ukrainian situation, taking into account the present legislative attacks on the rights of sexual minorities.

After the play reading Igor Stokfiszewski will present his statement on How Theatre Changes Reality?,  and a debate moderated by Zurab Alasania will be open.

On November 30^th, at 17:30 the discussion on Love and Hatred for the Other will take place at Kharkov City Gallery (15, Chernyshevska Street) with Kateryna Mishchenko (Prostory magazine), Anastasia Riabchuk (Commons magazine), and Nazariy Sovsun (Political Critique magazine). The editors of three Ukrainian intellectual periodicals will talk about the possibility of turning the intolerance into solidarity in the political, social, and cultural fields.

The events take place within the framework of Culture of Transformation project, co-organized by Visual Culture Research Center and Political Critique magazine, supported by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland.

Project partners: Polish Institute in Kyiv, Zhovten Cinema.
Media partners: Art Ukraine, Korydor, Telekrytyka, VideoTeka.