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 
