Mentoring meeting with John Vsetecka

Holodomor100 project, archives, coding, notebooks and pens, processing time, using archives, efficiency, US and Canadian archives, testimony, publishing schedules, archival research, Maniak collection, keywords, beta, non-catalogued letters, visual style, envelopes, poems, searching archives, schedules, catalogues, photographs and reading, narrative structure, themes, voice over, collective and individual voice, narrative, concept, pilot study, research paper, documentation, donating notebooks to archives, visual codes and highlighting, visual style, metaphors, monochrome, printing, book arts, newspapers, Beale, Berman, witnessing, contemporary Ukrainian literature, arts, Kentridge, Moth, simple images, drawings, person walking down a street, bread cards, graphic language, typography, newspapers, reading list, documentary, film, Portelli, Langer, Holocaust testimonies, *distributing, source and archives.

 

 

Rozpad – Розпад

 

On Wednesday 17 June Manchester Met and SODA are co-hosting a screening of Rozpad at HOME Cinema in Manchester. 2026 marks 40 years after the disaster at the nuclear power plant in Chornobyl in Soviet Ukraine in 1986. Rozpad, which translates to English as Decay is the first feature film about the disaster at the power plant by Mykhailo Bielikov, 1990.

Paralleling the radioactive “decay” in the fallout of the disaster with the halt of modernity and the failing Soviet state, Rozpad explores relationships during the end of an era.

The screening includes an introduction by Stanislav Menzelevskyi (Indiana University Bloomington) and a post-screening discussion with Professor Olya Onuch, Professor in Comparative and Ukrainian Politics (University of Manchester, chair), myself and Olia Fedechko, Organisation of Ukrainian Women Manchester.

Thank you to HOME, and in particular Rachel, Phil and Laura for their involvement in the event. The screening is presented in partnership with BASU, The British Association of the Study of Ukraine, HOME and the Ukrainian Institute London. The event has been supported by the ENGAGE Fund from Manchester Metropolitan University. A particular thank you to the BASU Arts & Culture Working Group: Lauren (co-chair), Jeremy, Constance, Dasha and Vika.

Tickets are available on the HOME website here: https://www.homemcr.org/whats-on/rozpad-18-discussion-q1mz

Motion: Inaugral Lecture by Professor Lisa Stansbie

 

Motion Talk.

Interactivity, networks, rituals and practice, the methods behind work. Swimming, sport and leadership, postcards, lists and archives, voice over, post-production, documentation, physical effects, inter-disciplinary and literature, Perec, Oulipo, Void, the letter e, gallery and digital artworks, machines, sculpture, the relationships between visuals and sound, simultaneous writing, conferences and swimming communities, practice, research, connected research environments, career trajectories, academic leadership, Leeds Met, Huddersfield, Gaddings Dam, outdoor swimming, learning new things.

Two Exhibitions and a Symposium

Two current shows in the North West and a recent symposium. Beneath the Great Wave: Hokusai and Hiroshige is at the Whitworth in Manchester until November. The exhibition is exhibits of two artists from the turn of the 18th century in Japan. Most of the exhibits are glorious ukiyo-e prints, woodblock prints that capture moments in time and travels as well as physical locations. I loved the rain and water depictions, and the sketchbooks are glorious.

Tenma Bridge in Settsu (c.1833–34) and Driving Rain at Nihonbashi (c.1832–39) by Katsushika Hokusai.

 

 

Sketchbook (c.1817–1819) by Katsushika Hokusai

Self-Defined. New Stories from Archives is at the Open Eye Gallery in Liverpool until 7 June. The exhibition is work from East (or Central) Europe about family stories and archives. The exhibition is curated by Viktoria Bavykina and Max Gorbatskyi who co-curated Net Making at La Biennale di Venezia in the Ukrainian pavilion in 2024.

 

Crimean Counter-Archive From Below, 2026, Crimea, Ukraine, by Emine Ziyatdin.
 

 

Death of Lucretia (Sviatohirsk School of Photography), 2026, Ukraine, by Andrii Dostliev.

The exhibition is a collection of work by four artists: Karolina Gembara, Emina Ziyatdin, Andrii Dostliev and Lia Dostlieva.

The Impact of Four Years of Warfare on Ukraine is the 2026 Petro Jacyk Symposium in Ukrainian Studies. This was an interdisciplinary event including scholarship from history and humanities, political science, demographic studies and economics.

I finished this week in Blackpool.

Shirin Neshat: Turbulent, Rapture, Fervor

Thank you to a meeting with Professor Lisa Stansbie at De Montfort University in Leicester this week, I am exploring the work of Shirin Neshat. In particular, the artist’s trilogy of films, Turbulent, Rapture, Fervor.

 

Shirin Neshat: Rapture. Photo by Devon Hugdahl. Source: https://www.mmoca.org/events/shirin-neshat-rapture/

Turbulent (1998) was the first of the series, exploring “the male-female dynamic in relation to social structures in Islam, specifically in Iran” (Neshat, 2000, p. 20). Rapture (1999) continues the focus, both use the idea of “opposites”, in the artist’s works: “I presented the idea of “opposites” visually, spatially, and sonically” (p. 21). The ideas appear as contrasts on two screens. Fervor (2000) instead focuses on “commonalities”. In the final work, instead of the screens appearing in the gallery opposite each other, the work is on adjoining screens. All three use a common audio track, inviting the viewer to ‘edit’ the work by shifting their attention from one screen to another (p. 21). The idea of dialogue, films talking to each other is relevant to the films I am making on the Berman collection. Lisa described the films in Neshat’s trilogy as films that ‘wait for each other’. Using a shared, common audio track, and visuals in dialogue with each other will be a way for me to represent the ‘characters’ in the Berman story. I am focusing on Jerry Berman, his brother Israel, and Jerry’s friends, Meyer and Sonia Fortes. I presented my work in progress at BASEES Annual Conference on Friday at the University of Birmingham.

 

 Jerry Berman Digital Letters from Ukraine in the Holodomor: Network Diagram. Source: Author, 2026.

 

Night

 

Night is an account of Elie Wiesel’s experiences in the Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald. It was first published in French in 1958. The edition I read was translated by the author’s wife Marion Wiesel published by Penguin in 2006. I became aware of Wiesel’s work through Lawrence L. Langer. Langer writes about orientation and atrocity and uses Night as an example of a volume that confronts the reader directly with death (Langer, 1975, p. 75). To Langer the book is a sequel to Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl (p. 77). The title, Night, refers to the endless darkness of the atrocities and specifically to two nights, one at the beginning and one at the end of the author’s account. The book opens with the experience of Wiesel who was a child at the time, and his family travelling to Auschwitz. He describes his disorientation on arrival. “When had we left our home? And the ghetto? And the train? Only a week ago? One night? One single night?”  (Wiesel, 2006, p. 37). The unreality of the experience was true also in my reading of his initial journey. Towards the end of the book Wiesel describes the march he, his father and other prisoners took to Buchenwald. Again the night is poignant. “And the night seemed endless” (p. 103). This is just before his father dies. Elie Wiesel won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1986. His acceptance speech appears at the back of the edition I read. He died in 2016 aged 87. My reading is part of the questions I have relating to Jerry Berman’s experiences and the Holodomor more broadly. How and where to confront audiences directly or indirectly with atrocity. 

Dissent!

I had a fantastic time at two events at the University of Manchester last week. Resilience of Art & The Art of Resilience was a discussion and Q&A with Olesya Ostrovska-Lyuta, the former Deputy Minister of Culture of Ukraine and Director General of “Mystetskyi Arsenal” in conversation with Olya Onuch at the University of Manchester. This fascinating discussion focused on professional and personal decision making regarding cultural artefacts in times of war.

On Wednesday and Thursday 25 and 26 March I attended parts of Dissent! Museums and Political Disagreement in a Time of Culture Wars and Conflict. My particular interest was the Roundtable on Ukrainian Museums with Olesia Ostrovska-Liuta and Yuliya Vaganova (The Bohdan and Varavara Khanenko National Museum of Arts), facilitated by Olya Onuch at the University of Manchester.

This was a fascinating discussion including the practicalities and responsibility of museums in times of conflict.

I met with Viktoria Bavykina and Viktoria’s partner Max Gorbatskyi who co-curated ‘Net-Making. The National Pavilion of Ukraine at the 60th Venice Biennale’ in 2024. Vika gave me a copy of this fantastic catalogue which I look forward to reading. This year there was an announcement of the participation of the Russian Federation at the forthcoming 61st Venice Biennale. An open letter is available to sign on Change.org here: https://www.change.org/p/61st-venice-biennale-stop-the-normalization-of-war-crimes-through-art

Image: Antenne Books