London

I spent a day in London on Saturday – the 21st March in glorious sunshine, with great company and saw some fantastic art. The day started in Elephant and Castle where I used to live and work. I wanted to see the redevelopment. I found recently plans for the Heygate Estate I photocopied in Southwark Archives around 15–20 years ago. We had breakfast in Cafe House Restaurant, a classic on the Walworth Road.

Archive images: plans for the Heygate Estate in Elephant and Castle from Southwark archives.

Elephant and Castle

Cafe House Restaurant

 

Breakfast in Cafe House Restaurant



The day included eight exhibitions at five galleries. The exhibitions were: Nigerian Modernism at Tate Modern; Tracey Emin: a Second Life at Tate Modern; Yin Xiuzhen: Heart to Heart at the Hayward Gallery; Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life at the Hayward Gallery; Tetsumi Kudo: Microcosms at Hauser & Wirth; Takesada Matsutami: Shifting Boundaries at Hauser & Wirth; Seth Price: Redistribution 2026–2007, Sadie Coles HQ and David Hockney: A Year in Normandie and Some Other Thoughts about Painting, Serpentine North Gallery.

Threads of Life by Chiharu Shiota at the Hayward Gallery



‘There’s a lot of money in chairs’ by Tracey Emin (1994), Tate Modern

‘The Last Supper’ (detail) by Bruce Onobrakpeya (1981) Tate Modern

Chiharu Shiota: Threads of Life at the Hayward Gallery



An empty room at Sadie Coles HQ

David Hockney ‘A Year in Normandie’ at the Serpentine.



Of them all, my current favourite is the Hockney show. A glorious panorama describing a year in the life and work of the artist in France. The concept reminded me of Oliver Grau’s work in Virtual Art (2003). Grau argues the idea of immersion and illusion goes back to painted illusion spaces and in particular the panorama from the 18th century. According to Grau these spaces create illusion in a similar way to the technology available today with which the user can experience interactivity (pp. 4–5).

 

 Agenda

Tartu Conference, Shevchenko Scientific Society Webinar, Europe in a Time of War

 

I am delighted to announce I have a paper accepted and I will be presenting at the Tartu Conference on East European and Eurasian Studies. The conference is at the University of Tartu, the programme is online and includes a fantastic mix of work from area studies, politics, history, cultural studies and other disciplines. My paper is “Archives Across Borders: Animated Testimonies from Ukraine in the Holodomor”. The conference will serve as a deadline for me to complete stage one of the practical work on the Berman archives.



 

 

On March 7 I attended the XLV Annual Shevchenko Scholarly Conference Webinar online from the Shevchenko Scientific Society. The conference, in English and Ukrainian, included opening remarks from Vitaly Chernetsky and presentations from Rory Finnin and Михайло Назеренко. The discussant was George G. Grabowicz.

 

 

Last week I watched a recorded talk from March from the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute online, Anne Applebaum in Conversation with Serhii Plokhii: Europe in a Time of War. This was a compelling discussion focusing on autocratic regimes and the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine. A genuine conversation between two scholars in historical studies and journalism. Anne Applebaum wrote the foreword to “The Holodomor in Global Perspective”. I wrote the final chapter to the book, which is now available from ibidem Press and Columbia University Press online here: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/the-holodomor-in-global-perspective/9783838219530/

SODA Salon: 18 February 2026

 

This week I presented my work at SODA Salon. The event is a platform for staff within the School of Digital Arts (SODA) at Manchester Met and postgraduate researchers to share and receive feedback on projects and work in progress. The Q&A was fantastic. I received questions about the nature of the Holodomor, who Jerry Berman was and the role of the other letter senders and receivers in his network. There were questions about the narrative in Russia, both past and present, my future plans for the project, whether it is a historical or creative piece of work and the idea of letters as dialogue. I spoke about the imperialist narrative from Russia and the relationships between the Holodomor and Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the significance of Jerry Berman’s letters and the insight, and methods Israel used to document his brother’s testimony and distribute it to friends and family. I spoke about my future plans and the work I am intending to complete this summer as part of the HREC Research Grant I was awarded. Critically I spoke about the role of art. What creative practice brings and the inspiration from Langer’s work following the Holocaust. I want to include the gaps in knowledge, the archival gaps and the gaps in memory in my current and future work. I also spoke about the long term plans, the development of the project as a commemoration for the Holodomor in 2032. The project I presented was ‘Memory, Testimony and the Imagination: Jerry Berman’s Letters’. The presentation was the work I presented at the RUTA Annual Conference at Uzhhorod National University in June 2025. 

 

Conference Acceptances

I am delighted I have received acceptances from three fantastic conferences. In April, I am presenting new work at BASEES Annual Conference at the University of Birmingham. I have been invited to join a roundtable at RUTA Annual Conference 2026. The roundtable is “Both Sides Face East: Dis(b)orders, Crossings, and Chimeras”. I will be speaking alongside Julia Yuliya Sushytska, Christian Alonso Fernandez Huerta, Alisa Slaughter and Tereza Hendl. I have a paper accepted at the ASN 2026 Convention at the Harriman Institute, Columbia University in New York. My paper titles is Embodied Archives: Animated Testimonies from Ukraine in the Holodomor. I look forward to rich discussions and inspiration.

 

 

 

Kodak Charmera

 

 

Kodak Fling 200. Source: Science Museum Group https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co203447/kodak-fling-200-disposable-cameras
 

 

The Kodak Charmera is a tiny (58mm) collectible camera. It comes in a blind box, with seven designs. I got my favourite, the yellow design to mimic the Kodak Fling from 1987. The images are also tiny, 1.6 megapixels with 12 modes and filters inbuilt into the camera. I documented my entire week. The memory card holds 100,000 photos and there is something disposable in comparison to working with 35mm film. A particular highlight of my week was the fantastic TCUP 2026 Conference on 30 and 31 January. I loved all of the panels, a highlight was an incredible keynote lecture by Maksym Butkevych who spoke on hatred, captivity and how a person has to preserve themselves, the importance of the inner world. 

HREC Research Grants 2025–26

I am delighted to annouce I have received a HREC Research Grant for 2025–26. The grant is an annual competition from the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, a project of the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS) of the University of Alberta. My project “Embodied Archives: Animated Testimonies from Ukraine in the Holodomor” is to inform the creation of 100 stories from the Holodomor using novel approaches to archiving, drawing and film. This is to include research of survivor testimonies in collections at the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre (UCRDC) in Toronto. The final result will be a feature-length animated documentary.

https://holodomor.ca/grants-opportunities/research-grants/research-grants-2025/

Interview with Andrew Jameson

 

On Sunday I was in the beautiful Malvern Hills to conduct an interview for a book I am writing – a forthcoming manuscript project. The interview was with Andrew Jameson, a former academic from Portsmouth Poly and the University of Lancaster, whose work I encountered at the SCRSS in London at a talk in 2020. Andrew spoke about his expertise in the development of Russian and Slav languages, myth and the traditional stove in culture, poetry and storytelling. This included tales of Baba Yaga, and a brilliant story of the ‘Domovik’ or the spirit of the household realm – important in Ukrainian folklore. Andrew told me a story of ‘transferring’ the spirit using a ritual, a clog behind the stove and an oral invitation for the spirit to ‘move house’ with the owners to keep the household a happy one. I acknowledge and thank funding from Manchester School of Art Research fund, which allowed me to document the interview, and thank you to Emily Davies (BA (Hons) Music and Sound Design) for sound design and recording the audio.