A reflection on exhibition making amidst war, ways of practicing with at-risk institutional
archives, and the role of the artist as a witness. The program will feature a curatorial introduction to the exhibition projects
from the Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture (DCCC) and Asortymentna Kimnata, Ivano-Frankivsk.
The program will feature a curatorial introduction to the exhibition projects from the Dnipro Center
for Contemporary Culture (DCCC) and Asortymentna Kimnata, Ivano-Frankivsk.
Everything for EverybodyConversation with the Curators of the Dnipro Center for Contemporary CultureThe first part of the evening
addresses the theme of heritage under threat, the precariousness of archives, and the ways in which artistic practice can
resist destruction while fostering new forms of collective memory.
Curators Kateryna Rusetska, Victoria Donovan,
and Natasha Chychasova, together with colleagues from the Pokrovsk Historical Museum, Tetiana Kostiuchenko and Anhelina Rozhkova,
will discuss the research foundations of the exhibition “Everything for Everybody”, developed for the Kyiv Biennale 2025 in
collaboration with the Dnipro Center for Contemporary Culture (DCCC).
The exhibition framework consists of archival
sources from the Franki Raffles Photography Collection at the University of St Andrews, and the photographic archive of Mykola
Bilokon, preserved by the Pokrovsk Historical Museum. Raffles’s Soviet Women series documents labor and gender across the
late Soviet Union in 1989, while Bilokon’s photographs portray everyday life in Pokrovsk during the collapse of the Soviet
Union and Ukraine’s early independence.
In 2024, Pokrovsk was destroyed by Russian bombs, forcing the evacuation
of the museum’s collections. The exhibition traces this story of fragility and displacement, bringing Bilokon’s archive into
dialogue with Raffles’s images to reflect on how we document and remember places that are endangered or erased entirely.
Do Toads Sing in the Walls?Conversation with Olga Poliak and Alona Karavai, curators of
Asortymentna Kimnata, Ivano-FrankivskThe second conversation turns to “Do Toads Sing in the Walls?”, a project
developed by Asortymentna Kimnata in Ivano-Frankivsk, which established a dialogue between artists serving on the frontline
and those remaining in civilian contexts.
Curators Olga Poliak and Alona Karavai will present the project through
photographic documentation of exhibitions first realized in February 2025, alongside close readings of selected works from
the exhibition they brought to Vienna from Ivano-Frankivsk.
Guest speaker Klementyna Kvindt, drone operator, poet,
and ornithologist, will join via Zoom to share her reflections on displacement, resistance, and service in the Armed Forces
of Ukraine.
The title comes from the song Evening of Toads by Stanislav Krul and colleagues, written with the help
of AI.
The evening will end with a live sound performance by Anton Lapov (Anton Makarevych), a Ukrainian media
artist, computer musician, and curator. Lapov is the coordinator of the media-art collective Art Cluster R+N+D and founder
of the digital record label BOCTOK.
About this programmeThe programme is initiated by Office
Ukraine Vienna in collaboration with the Kyiv Biennale and Asortymentna Kimnata, with support from ERSTE Foundation.
It will continue on 14 Nov at mumok Kino with a special screening program curated by the Dnipro Center for Contemporary
Culture and Asortymentna Kimnata.
Further information and linksMore
info about Kyiv BiennalMore
info about Asortymentna KimnataMore info about Office Ukraine. Support
for Ukrainian Artists 
