The City / Misto. 1928.

 

The City is a Ukrainian novel by Valerian Pidmohylnyi, 1928. This edition is translated with an introduction by Maxim Tarnawsky, 2025. Set in Kyiv, the main character is a student who has arrived from his village. The book opens with an unexpected horizon. The main character, Stepan, looking into the distance. As Stepan finds his way through his world the author gives a glorious account of the city in the 1920s.

The existential parts of the text reminded me of my student reading. The connection between Pidmohylnyi and his main character includes Pidmohylnyi’s work in Kyiv and arrival from a village. The city and the village are a central theme of the novel.

Other city literature includes Christopher Isherwood’s novels about Berlin in the 1930s. Isherwood saw his role as a camera-like observer. His biography is written in the third person and deliberately objective. There are also connections to The Outsider by Camus. One of my favourite descriptions of Camus’ work is by Christopher Bollas who describes the detachment of the main character from his emotions and the link the author makes to time in the novel. In a brilliant description of the main character observing the street around him, Bollas describes the pace of the novel and the relationship between time and space in the book. According to Bollas, the connection to Baudelaire’s ideas about city life is important to analyse The Outsider (The Stranger) because Camus’ work adds an important dimension: “he splits the viewer’s self in two: an alive observer, a dead self. The prose is animated but Meursault is not; just as he is removed from the people he sees, he is a “stranger” to the very prose that describes him” (Bollas, 2018, p. 28). I am collecting ideas about observation and witnessing for a roundtable I have been invited to present at next week. I am exploring witnessing, in relation to testimonies from the Holodomor and to the Full-Scale Invasion by Russia in Ukraine.

Bollas, C. (2018) Meaning and Melancholia: Life in the Age of Bewilderment. Routledge.
Isherwood, C. (2012) Christopher and His Kind. Vintage.
Pidmohylnyi, V. (2025) The City. Translated with an introduction by M. Tarnawsky. Harvard University Press.

Research meeting: Professor Lisa Stansbie

 

Toronto, archives, cataloguing, data themes, words and expressions, uses of language, preparation, film production, reading lists, digital archives, language and machine learning, models, transcription, text mining, Berman, bridges, Ukraine, interactive digital film space, gallery, performance, public and private, split screen work, instructions, website, community involvement, dissemination, distribution, visual style, narrative production, website, publicity, Rozpad, postcards, inquiry testimonies, audio tapes, uncatalogued archives, visuals, animation, sources, digitisation of tapes, machine collection, what technology to take, Torgsin, bread lines, fields, bread cards, fingertips, bridges, Berman’s bridge, project completion, time, animation, slow, preparation, schedules, changes in memory over time, stories, research, oral testimony, oral histories, Portelli, Thompson, online learning, HREC course, production, pauses, Alexievich, documenting pauses, how people use their voice. Students.

Rozpad symbolism

Rozpad discussion at HOME. From left to right: Professor Olya Onuch, Dr Sara Nesteruk, Mrs Olia Fedechko. Photography: Stefan Okopskyj.

The notes below are from the post-screening discussion of Rozpad at HOME on Wednesday 17 June.

Rozpad (1990) is full of symbolism. To relate to my own work on the Holodomor, one early narrative focuses on soil. The main character returns from a holiday in Greece and forgets to bring back with him some soil from his father’s ancestral homeland. Instead he goes to a nearby building yard and lies to his father about the origin of the earth. Soil and earth are important symbols in Ukrainian culture. In part because of the Holodomor, the attachment and potency of the land, the earth and the fertility and history of farming. Chornozem (black soil) which is strong, fertile land represents a lot in Ukrainian history and culture. In this particular situation the physical soil represents a deceit which runs through the entirety of the film. The main character lies to his father. It is a small lie about something very significant and meaningful. The main character in turn is being lied to by his partner who is almost casually having an affair with a school friend. These intimate deceits exist throughout the whole social network in the film. Nameless government officials minimise the impact of the Chornobyl nuclear power plant accident. At points officials deny completely anything happened. This, as we know now is true to the reality of the Communist government response after the accident at the nuclear power plant.

Deceit and deception highlight the role of arts and culture. Why art is important, even critical throughout history in Ukraine and other places. Art, culture, poetry, literature, film, visual arts and culture can make visible stories and meanings which otherwise can be lost to time. The invisible stories or narratives that have been hidden, oppressed or obscured from view can feature in a physical, tangible articulation within arts and culture.

Rozpad opens with the main character on a train, sharing a small carriage with an older man. Reflecting the decay or disintegration of the film, this older man is physically decaying. His teeth are in a glass in the carriage. The train abruptly comes to a stop because there is no more track. In literature and film the train is one of the great symbols of modernism. Representative of future, progress, technology, driving change, Rozpad takes the metaphor and brings modernism to a halt. Nuclear power is part of the modernist narrative. The great future connected to the Soviet experiment and other visual metaphors in the film. There are some glorious shots of modernist architecture in Prypyat shown from aerial view which have been abandoned. It is possible to argue the film represents a turning point. The end of the modernist ideal and the halt of the train at the start of the film represents the end of modernity in a broader social context.

Later in the film two young lovers who are about to get married disappear into the forest around Prypyat. The forests then and now have become symbols of the nuclear accident and are important in the region. One of the great Ukrainian poets and authors Lesia Ukrainka wrote The Forest Song which reflects the importance of the forest as a metaphor. In Rozpad the forest is a location for the characters’ innocence, naivety and love. Almost biblical. The two main characters disappear into the forest to be alone with each other. There are points where the shots are almost identical to shots in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, a classic Ukrainian film. In Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors the two main characters play in the forest as children. After the female dies the main character, Ivan, calls to his lover in a scene that is almost identical in Rozpad where the man shouts to his lover through the trees. The difference here, in Rozpad, is the forest, rather than a symbol of nature, all that is natural and naivety, is toxic. The animals are dead. In the background people wearing hazmat suits are putting up radioactive signs. A reference to previous Ukrainian film highlights the toxicity and invisible decay and danger in the natural environment.



The event was fantastic. A really brilliant discussion with Professor Olya Onuch, one of the founders of BASU and on the executive committee and Professor of Comparative and Ukrainian Politics at the University of Manchester. The discussion was with myself and Olia Fedechko from the Organisation of Ukrainian Women in Manchester who spoke about Ukrainian communities in Manchester and the British responses to Chornobyl after the accident. A huge thank you to everybody involved in making the screening a success. To the team at HOME, the funders – ENGAGE, Stefan for photography, the Dovzhenko Film Studios and Centre, Vera from Sunflower Manchester, BASU and all of the individuals who contributed to marketing, publicity, assistance and support on the day. I would love to do more of these screenings.

Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies

 

This week I have been in Latvia and Estonia to attend the Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies at the University of Tartu. I travelled to Estonia by train from Riga.

My paper was “Archives Across Borders: Animated Testimonies from Ukraine in the Holodomor”. I presented work in progress from three interactive digital films, exploring the digital space of a website as a space for editing. In a similar way to a viewer moving around split screen work in a gallery. The work is inspired by Shirin Neshat and Lev Manovich and Andreas Kratky’s approaches to ‘soft cinema’, using interactive ‘layers’ to build stories.

I was discussant for a panel about Soviet-Era Heritage, military sites and modernist architecture in two sites in Latvia and in Uzbekistan, with a focus on Tashkent. Connecting themes of the three papers included responses to dissonant or ‘difficult’ heritage sites and the narrative surrounding architectural legacy.

I read two papers while I was away. One was a pre-read of an article by Yuliya Yurchuk, who I met at ASN in New York this year. The second paper was Epp Annus’ paper: “Inter-imperial invisibility and the logic of extractivism”. Annus uses eco-social approaches to argue that environment and living beings are linked, and describes Russian colonialism and extracting opportunities from land and cultures in Ukraine and Estonia. The principle of ‘invisibility’ applies to the colonising state only recognising what is of benefit, and without dignity. Annus uses two case studies – one is the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine, the other the Sillamäe uranium plant in Estonia. I have been thinking, and researching nuclear power and the Chornobyl plant ahead of the Rozpad discussion on Wednesday.

Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999

Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999 is a striking long term exhibition of performance works at Dia Beacon. The gallery is a former box-printing factory on the Hudson River east bank, north of New York City. Tehching Hsieh is a Taiwanese American artist who makes work about time “the absurdity between life and time” (Heathfield and Hsieh, 2015, p. 334). Six works appear in the exhibition, five from the series One Year Performances which were made and executed in New York between 1978 and 1986. Following a tradition of ‘Happenings’ and conceptual art at the end of the twentieth century, each piece includes a statement of the artist’s intention and documentation of the execution. One Year Performance 1981–1982 involved Hsieh living outdoors for one year in New York City. Maps document the artist’s day to day activities, sleeping and eating locations and costs of food.

 

One Year Performance 1983–1984. Photo: Author, 2026.

One Year Performance 1981–1982. Photo: Author, 2026.

One Year Performance 1980–1981. Photo: Author, 2026.

One Year Performance 1978–1979. Photo: Author, 2026.

Over twenty years after creating the works Hsieh spoke about his vivid memories of the pieces. “For me, when dealing with memories the biggest matter is not about their accuracy. Rather, it is about how to manage and rearrange these fragments of memories, transfer them into language and a process of discourse” (p. 330). Using art to record time and document memory relates to my work with testimonies from archives. Hsieh documents time as an abstract concept, he uses his experience to comment on time passing. In this way, the audience becomes a witness to human experience.


Dia. 2026. “Tehching Hsieh: Lifeworks 1978–1999.” Accessed June 6, 2026. https://www.diaart.org/exhibition/exhibitions-projects/tehching-hsieh-lifeworks-19781999-exhibition

Heathfield, Adrian and Tehching Hsieh. 2015. Out of Now: The Lifeworks of Tehching Hsieh. MIT Press. 

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