Sunday, 9 February 2025

Conference Acceptances


I am delighted to be attending and presenting work at three fantastic conferences this year. The first, in May, is the ASN Annual World Convention co-hosted by the Harriman Institute at Columbia University in New York. I visited the institute in 2023 as a result of a travel stipend I was awarded by HREC to atttend the conference “The Assault on Culture in Ukraine: The Holodomor Years”.


The Thinker by Rodin at Columbia University. Photo: Author, 2023.


In July I travel to London to take part in the ICCEES XI World Congress. The congress is hosted by the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES), the UK’s largest institution for research and teaching on the region. I will combine my visit with archival work at LSE, to read the diaries of Beatrice Webb.


In October I am very excited to be attending and presenting at the Dmytro Shtohryn International Ukrainian Studies Conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The thematic focus is on ‘continuities and ruptures’ across disciplines on topics related to Ukraine. For all three conferences I am presenting my new work, documented on this blog – visualisations of testimony from the Holodomor from the letters of Jerry Berman.


Sunday, 2 February 2025

Berlin

I have been in Berlin this week for the superb 18th British Shorts film festival. The festival was the festival premiere for 90 Years from Holodomor, which appeared at City Kino Wedding to a sell out audience of 200 people. Because of demand, the same screening ran as an identical programme at Sputnik Kino on the same night, so my work also appeared in front of audiences across Berlin.

British Shorts filmmakers dragon


90 Years from Holodomor at British Shorts Berlin


The event was Short Film Screenings (Animation Special) & Audience Award. The programme was excellent, it was a huge compliment to make selection. The stand out film for me was And Granny Would Dance by Maryam Mohajer. A brilliant, character portrayal about memory, childhood and culture, beautifully constructed and produced by Animate Projects and the BFI. The film came third in the audience award which followed the animation screening. The winner was Previs by Ruaidhri Ryan, which I also loved.


And Granny Would Dance by Maryam Mohajer


I had a new life experience on my way to Berlin in the form of an emergency (unscheduled) landing at Heathrow due to an engine problem on the plane I was on, due to fly from Manchester – Munich. I downloaded the flight data – at first the huge drop in speed at 2.00am (all time in EST rather than local time) – almost half was alarming. Thanks to the brilliant flightradar24 site I was able to watch the full flight playback including the point at which the emergency was declared, the drop in speed was simply the aircraft turning over the channel. I also got the full details of the error messages and emergency codes (PAN PAN) online which is fascinating. The landing was a precaution, as was explained by the pilot at the time. I rebooked a flight from Heathrow to Berlin as soon as the plane landed and actually arrived in Berlin earlier than I would have done via Munich and the train. Below is my breakfast courtesy of Michelberger on my return journey.



FlightAware Flight Track Log



FlightAware Flight path.

A photograph of the plane landing at London Heathrow from the AIRLIVE website

Michelberger breakfast on the train from Berlin – Munich




Wednesday, 8 January 2025

Meeting notes with Lisa – 8 January 2025

 


Abstract revisions, Jerry Berman’s letters in the Holodomor Museum collection, my involvement, working at Harvard, inter-disciplinary connections across departments, Comay, uses of quotes and language, adding a time plan, visualisation and organising principles, Holocaust, literature of atrocity, Langer, next project, editing sections, Ukrainian heritage, my interest in the project, visual arts and graphic design, motion graphics, technical skills, teaching work, access to collections, making the letters available for other scholars, writing edits for chapter, structure, research questions and where, separating modular outcomes, biography and PhD, publishing, contributions to MAPA and other projects.

Monday, 7 October 2024

Lost in the Archives

Archival research and theory. I am interested in digital archiving, artistic practice and in particular the work of Rebecca Comay. In early September I visited the library at the Universität der Künste Berlin to find a copy of Comay’s collection of essays Lost in the Archives. In her introduction Comay defines the archival experience, through technology, archival practice and literature. I returned to the text at Leeds Beckett library in late September and read an interview with Geoffrey Hartman from 2000: The Ethics of Witness. This documents work in Yale’s Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. Through the website I discovered the work of Lawrence L. Langer and I am now reading The Holocaust and the Literary Imagination. Langer’s ideas centre on what he describes as the ‘literature of atrocity’, where historical fact meets the artistic imagination.


Tuesday, 1 October 2024

Meeting with John Vsetecka

Meeting with John: 30 September 2024.

Proposal ideas, fellowship, MAPA, people, CV, digital humanities, storytelling and mapping, disciplines, archives, Arc GIS, future-proofing, software and hardware independence archives, Jerry Berman, Holodomor Museum, international research, The Holodomor in Global Perspective, publishing, next steps, second project – history of 20th century graphic design in Ukraine using postcard collection at HURI, visits, events, fellows, next steps – written version for 11 October.



Monday, 2 September 2024

Eneida

I now have my own copy, thank you to my wonderful colleague and friend Yana Hrynko, of Eneida, Aeneid by Ivan Kotliarevs’kyi. The original text is from 1798, written in vernacular Ukrainian. This edition is from 1968 with illustrations by Anatolii Bazylevych.

 

Eneida, by Ivan Kotliarevs’kyi.

Eneida, by Ivan Kotliarevs’kyi.

 

Eneida, by Ivan Kotliarevs’kyi.


 Eneida, by Ivan Kotliarevs’kyi.


 Eneida, by Ivan Kotliarevs’kyi.

I first discovered this work through the Ukrainian Institute London, a lecture at Literatura by Rory Finnin in 2023. By complete coincidence after collecting the book I bumped into Sasha Dovzhyk, special projects curator at the institute who organised the seminar and gave me a tour of the new Index offices in Lviv.



Sasha Dovzhyk, Programme Director, Index, selfie at the new Index office

The illustrations were inspiration for my 2023 film ‘90 Years from Holodomor’. Preliminary research in Ukraine included visual materials and interviews. My proof of concept screening took place at the Bury Art Museum in November 2023. The full film is online.

 

90 Years from Holodomor: film still.



90 Years from Holodomor: proof of concept short, 2023.



Sunday, 25 August 2024

Scientific Library of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

Scientific Library of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv 
 
Scientific Library of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

This week I have been working in the Scientific Library of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, one of the largest and most ancient scientific libraries of Ukraine, founded in 1608. A beautiful space, my thanks are to the librarians and team for hosting my visit. 


Scientific Library of Ivan Franko National University of Lviv

I am working on a new project. An introduction to XML work, learning to code with Unicode. In transcription terms, the benefits of this work create archival resources independent of software and hardware for legacy and future use.

The project takes inspiration in part from a collection of Samuel Beckett’s work online: The Samuel Beckett Digital Manuscript Project. The website includes a practical guide to digital genetic editing with introductions to XML, working with transcripts and the concepts of ‘exogenesis’ and ‘endogenesis’. Both external project sources, reference materials and the interior, work produced as a result.