The events of the programme will take place between 31 May and 6 June. In addition to a series of installations and film screenings, an important part of the programme will be discussions with artists, curators, and experts that will help make sense of the presented artworks and art practices.
“We continue to focus on artistic work with archives. This year it includes the personal archives of the artists and different approaches to them: documentation, diary, and commemoration. As part of the programme, we will work with guest curators: a series of audiovisual installations by the Ukho Music Agency in the House of Cinema, and a film selection from a Berlin initiative which creates common spaces for working with cultural memory and its diversity,” comments Oleksandra Nabieva, the curator of the DOCU/SYNTHESIS programme.
Anthology of Ukrainian Cuisine 2022–2024
Installation by the artist Volodymyr Kuznetsov, created from a documentation of life stories and acts of solidarity and based on video materials from the Ukraine War Archive, as well as video and audio recordings by the artist. The project recreates the moments of volunteering and social mutual support which testify to the tireless work of volunteers during the war.
It has been created in collaboration with the composer Maryana Klochko.
The space of the Zhovten Cinema,
31 May–6 June.
Free entrance.
Listening to absence: Sound archives of (non-)empty rooms
A series of audio installations based on field recordings collected in Kyiv and nearby during 2011–2024.This is a programme of installations by the Ukho agency (curator — Sasha Andrusyk) which consists of three parts that differ both in terms of the timing of the collected recordings — Kyiv before the full-scale invasion, Kyiv after it, and Kyiv in the moment of transition — and in terms of the way the recordings are treated.
The peaceful pre-2022 Kyiv, which has now disappeared, is the subject of the Kyiv Eternal audiovisual installation by Oleh Shpudeiko. Fragments of field sound are developed via artistic techniques (such as ambient composition), forming ‘memory cycles’. The installation uses a video work by Kachna Baraniewicz and Maryna Osnach, mapped by Illia Kovalenko / ctrl-i.
Kyiv after the invasion is the subject of the Death in June, an audio documentary by Ian Spektor, based on his field recordings collected in Kyiv, Chernihiv and Volodarka. It is a private diary of loss, but at the same time a sound imprint of Kyiv in the spring–summer 2023.
The third part is a small archive of home music recordings created by kyivites in the spring of 2022 and collected by the Ukho agency.
House of Cinema,
31 May–2 June; On 4 June, at 18:00 — Field recordings as soundscaping of memory: witnessing and artistic practices(moderated artist talk).
Free entrance.
Fragments from SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA.
A film programme of archival films from the curatorial duo of Galo E. Rivera and Bethan Hughes from the SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA initiative. We will watch and discuss the films Guestworker’s Road by Tuncel Kurtiz (Sweden / Turkey, 1978) and One Hundred Children Waiting for a Train by Ignacio Agüero (Chile, 1988).
SİNEMA TRANSTOPIA is a cinema as a social place that is simultaneously committed to local and international communities, one that regards film-historical work as the work of cultural remembrance, and which is dedicated to a diversity of film culture and film art. It borrows its name from the term used by migration researcher Erol Yıldız to describe spaces where “transnational ties and connections converge, are reinterpreted, and condense into everyday contexts.”
Zhovten Cinema,
1–2 June.
On 2 June, at 18:00 — thematic discussion Spaces of the Common. SINEMA TRANSTOPIA with the participants of the initiative.
Entrance to the screenings requires a festival pass or tickets.
The detailed schedule is here.
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The events of the DOCU/SYNTHESIS Interdisciplinary Art Programme will be held in Zhovten Cinema and the House of Cinema on 31 May–6 June. The exclusive partner of the programme is ArtsLooker, a bilingual media outlet about Ukrainian art. The partner of the programme is Suspilne Culture, a Ukrainian public broadcaster and online media outlet about contemporary culture.
The 21st Docudays UA is held with the support of the Embassy of Sweden in Ukraine, the US Embassy in Ukraine, International Media Support, the Embassy of the Kingdom of the Netherlands in Ukraine, the Embassy of Estonia in Ukraine, the Polish Institute in Kyiv, Institut français d'Ukraine, Danish Cultural Institute, the Czech Centre in Kyiv, and the Embassy of Hungary in Kyiv. The opinions, conclusions, or recommendations do not necessarily reflect the views of the governments or organisations of these countries. Responsibility for the content of the publication lies exclusively on the authors of the publication.
