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The Institute for Human Sciences (IWM Vienna) is founding a new institution in Ukraine — INDEX: Institute for Documentation and Exchange.

The Ukrainian film 20 Days in Mariupol, which documents Russian crimes against humanity, won the award for Best Documentary Film at the Oscars 2024. Mstyslav Chernov, Evgeniy Maloletka, and Vasilisa Stepanenko’s film has been shown around the world and used as evidence of Russian aggression. How did the journalists produce this film? How did they select the stories and find the most precise, essential words of support for their heroes? And, indeed, how have they consistently found the right words to communicate the ongoing tragedy in Ukraine to people worldwide? Exclusively for Suspilne Kultura, Ievgeniia Gubkina, a Ukrainian architect, architectural historian, and curator from Kharkiv specializing in 20th-century architecture and urban planning in Ukraine, spoke with the film's producer and journalist Vasilisa Stepanenko. They discussed preserving empathy during wartime, the themes of humanity and anger, and the making of the film 20 Days in Mariupol.

Ukrainian Warchive has published its first book, 13 Stories of War, to mark the second year of the full-scale Russian invasion. The book features individual visual essays created by 13 Ukrainian photographers and artists, each with a companion text. Their photographic testimonies defy conventional narratives and together with text they give readers a nuanced and personal perspective that goes beyond typical media coverage. The essays delve into themes of resistance, loss and hope, and provide a vivid account of the human experience in the midst of conflict.

Kyiv Biennial, a project of the Visual Culture Research Center, is an international forum for socially and politically engaged art. In 2023, the fifth edition of the Kyiv Biennial began in different venues around Ukraine and Europe, putting Ukrainian artists displaced by war and their foreign counterparts in conversation. The main exhibition was held in Vienna – a city with great ties to the history of the Biennial – and featured works from nearly sixty Ukrainian and international artists exploring the topics of authoritarianism, colonialism and war.  This year, Kyiv Biennial program continues in Berlin, marking the tenth anniversary of the Revolution of Dignity and the Russian war against Ukraine. With the title Kyiv Perennial – lasting, persisting – the Berlin edition of the Biennial aims to reflect on the events of the Ukrainian past, as well as envision its future. The IWM’s Documenting Ukraine program is a partner of the Kyiv Perennial, continuing the IWM’s nearly decade-long collaboration with the Kyiv Biennial, stretching back to the first edition in 2015.

Life in War, a project of the Public Interest Journalism Lab, is a media platform that explores the transformative influence of War on Ukrainian society, culture, and lifestyle. The platform was launched in March 2022 in partnership with the Documenting Ukraine initiative of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna. So far, the project has published its materials on the pages of Ukrainian media, produced videos for the Austrian public broadcaster ORF, and maintained an online chronicle of materials created by international, national, and regional editorial offices and independent authors with the support of the IWM. Now, Life in War is launching its own platform, which will focus not so much on the news in the traditional meaning of this word, but more so on stories, analytics, in-depth reportage, and documentaries.

Since 21 November last year, the same date the Revolution of Dignity began on Maidan Nezalezhnosti in Kyiv in 2013, Ukrainians have marked a string of anniversaries. Ten years since the people of Ukraine won the right to choose a future in democratic Europe. Then ten years since protesters on Maidan were killed by special forces on 20 February 2014; later they came to be called the Heavenly Hundred. On that same day, Crimea was annexed by the Russian Federation. These are national anniversaries that Ukraine never celebrates; they are days that will be forever marked in black in every calendar, regardless of how many years have passed.   This is how the “Ukraine crisis” began a decade ago. This was the start of an internationally unrecognized hybrid war waged by Russia. It lasted until the events of 24 February 2022 shook Ukraine with massive explosions. This date, this “youngest anniversary,” marks Ukraine’s most profound grief in modern history.

Along with the experience of Russia's full-scale invasion, for many Ukrainians, the experience of international contacts has increased in the form of supportive calls and messages, invitations and trips abroad, organization of volunteer assistance, wide media attention, etc. The forced migration also acquired a cross-border dimension because many people have to leave their homes and seek safety in the countries of the European Union and beyond. Documentation of the war also became international from the very beginning. Already established professional collaborations and private friendships became more active with offers of support and project organization. New situational contacts and collaborative long-term initiatives emerged even more frequently, as did new support programs, grant funding, and fundraising opportunities, as well as expedition trips that combined documentation with volunteering. New institutions, digital environments, and publications in media and academic publishing houses have been established.

The debut documentary by Ukrainian journalist Mstyslav Chernov is gaining momentum among audiences and critics alike. On February 18, the film documenting the siege of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, won the BAFTA Film Award in the Documentary category. 20 Days in Mariupol not only shows the true face of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but also invites foreign audiences to engage with other Ukrainian films.  The reception of the film, both domestically and internationally, opens a wider discussion about Ukrainian cinema, its promotion abroad and the relationship between Ukrainian filmmakers and their foreign counterparts, the role of the state in the cinema industry. In her column for Suspilne Kultura, film critic and cultural journalist Daria Badior reflects on the future of Ukrainian cinema and the importance of 20 Days in Mariupol being nominated for the Academy Awards 2024.

The Russo-Ukrainian War is considered one of the most documented conflicts in human history. With thousands of terabytes of materials already existing, questions about preserving and comprehending this data will inevitably begin to arise, which is a massive endeavor for Ukrainian Studies.   

On 21 February 2024, the documentary 20 Days in Mariupol will be screened in Vienna at the Votivkino. We are marking the second anniversary of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine with the film that documents the first 20 days of the siege of Mariupol. Since then, things have only got worse. The debut film by an award-winning war photographer that illustrates the reality of war was recently nominated for the 2024 Academy Award. Let's hope that it will become a call to action.

What is the unifying role of culture during wartime? Maria Semenchenko reflects on the meaning of home that people find inside them and everywhere in Ukraine. Member of the PEN Ukraine and an author of the best interview according to the contest „Honor of the Profession“ 2022, she talks and listens to people traveling across the border of Ukraine and shares her insights with Suspilne.Kultura, in collaboration with the Documenting Ukraine program.

Ukrainian philosopher and writer Volodymyr Yermolenko became the president of PEN Ukraine in November 2022. In 2020, he co-founded the Kult podcast with journalist and literary critic Tetiana Ogarkova, where they discuss Ukrainian and global culture and how it figures in the context of world intellectual history, the impact of war, and a post-colonial perspective. Yermolenko is a winner of the Yuri Shevelov Prize (2018) and the Petro Mohyla Prize (2021), he was a Ukraine in European Dialogue Visiting Fellow at the IWM in 2021 and in 2022 became a grantee of the Documenting Ukraine program. He is the author of numerous articles on Ukraine, Europe, and global processes in Ukrainian and international media. He is also a frequent speaker on Ukrainian cultural processes in the West. Currently, he serves as the editor-in-chief of UkraineWorld.org. Speaking exclusively with Iryna Slavinska for Suspilne Kultura, Volodymyr Yermolenko discussed the impact of war on Ukrainian culture, volunteering, and the need for a new social contract.

The Lviv project Jam Factory can confidently be called one of the longest-running artistic construction projects in Ukraine. The transformation of the space of the former jam factory into a multidisciplinary cultural center began in 2015. The process was interrupted, transformed, and finally, in the fall of 2023, after eight years of work, the project was publicly presented to the world.  In an interview for Suspilne Kultura, Documenting Ukraine grantee Anastasiia Platonova spoke with Bozhena Pelenska, the director of Jam Factory, about what it was like to launch a massive cultural institution in the second year of a full-scale war, the ambition required to develop Ukraine’s artistic ecosystem, and future plans for the Jam Factory.

We are witnessing history in the making. As we screen films that show what has already happened, we remain mindful that other events are taking place right now. The filmmakers whose work is presented within the program entitled “The Context of Truth”, began instinctively recording what they saw and came to realize that they were capturing something that—most probably—will be gone forever. They are not just recording the war, but keeping alive the memory of what has been lost: places, people, normality. Even during the war, people in Ukraine are dining in restaurants, getting haircuts, dancing, and watching films. But when they leave the dark cinema hall, they return to a life full of almost the same images that they just saw on the screen. Katherine Younger, a Permanent Fellow at the IWM, and Kseniya Kharchenko, Documenting Ukraine Project Manager, in a conversation on the careful choice of messages about the careless reality of war. 

“People of Culture Taken Away by the War” is a series of literary portraits designed as an online project and launched by PEN Ukraine and The Ukrainians Media. While working on the stories, the project team researches the fallen heroes’ heritage and talks to their relatives and colleagues. The special project is aimed to preserve the memory of the people of whom the war has deprived the Ukrainian culture and to testify about Russia’s genocidal intentions.

Sasha Dovzhyk, Ukrainian writer, literary scholar and curator of culture projects, Documenting Ukraine grantee and a former fellow at the IWM—about the work of memory and creating the chronicle of the losses of Ukrainian culture.

At this year's this human world – International Human Rights Film Festival a program titled "The Context of Truth," dedicated to Ukraine will be featured. In her curatorial statement, Olga Birzul reflects on how the entire world has become hostage to Russian propaganda, the crisis of empathy, and the power of solidarity in resisting Russian aggression.

Yuri Prohasko is a Ukrainian literary scholar, psychoanalyst, and publicist from Ivano-Frankivsk. Among other works, he has translated Rainer Maria Rilke and Franz Kafka from German, Deborah Vogel from Yiddish, and Leszek Kołakowski from Polish into Ukrainian. Aliona Karavai is a cultural manager from Donetsk, co-founder of the media outlet post impreza, and the director and curator of the Assortment Room in Ivano-Frankivsk. At the request of Suspilne Kultura, Aliona Karavai and Yurko Prokhasko spoke about loneliness, love, and how war vividly illustrates virtues and vices.

According to the Ukrainian activists documenting graffiti left by the Russian occupiers in Ukraine, the devil is in the details. In times of war, even such seemingly mundane things as writings on walls and even school boards help us in creating the profile of the aggressor, decoding their motives and nature, as well as proving that the Russo-Ukrainian War is far more than the war of Vladimir Putin, the only person responsible for it.

Aliona Karavai, a contemporary art curator, discusses the situation surrounding the exhibitions "As Though We Hid the Sun in a Sea of Stories: Fragments for a Geopoetics of North Eurasia" and "The Assault of the Present on the Rest of Time" in Berlin. 

Roman Khimey and Yarema Malashchuk are known for their experiments with the forms of video and cinema, which have become iconic in art and film. Their documentary film "Zarvanytsia" (2021) was featured in several film festivals. Khimey and Malashchuk are winners and laureates of awards, and their artistic works have been exhibited in numerous exhibitions in Ukraine and beyond. In June 2023, they participated in the exhibition "Documenting Ukraine: Bearing Witness to War" with a short film about the looted Kherson Museum (which recently received an award at the 4:3 Short Film Festival in Ivano-Frankivsk). 

Zhenya Oliinyk, an illustrator and cartoonist from Ukraine, wrote a story about the female evacuation right after the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine started. Women drove various vehicles, taking their families, pets, friends, and those who asked for help as far from the war as they could. Many then said that driving was a life-saving skill worth getting only for this unbelievable—who believed that "big war" is possible in the 21st century?—purpose.

Sasha Dovzhyk is a Ukrainian writer, literary scholar, and curator who explores the past through literature and documents the present via eyewitness testimonies of survivors of the Russo-Ukrainian war. In her opinion pieces and essays for foreign audiences, she reflects on the changes that have taken place in Ukrainian society in recent years and the impact of Russia’s full-scale aggression, including her personal transformations. In this candid interview that was taken in November 2022, presented as a monologue, Sasha reflects on the ways for her to contribute to Ukraine's victory and on the traditions of Ukrainian resistance. Dovzhyk is a grantee of the Documenting Ukraine program at IWM who participated in a series of discussions under the title "Documenting Ukraine: Bearing Witness to War."

Volodymyr Rafeyenko, award-winning Ukrainian writer, poet, translator, literary and film critic, and author of the novels The Length of Days and Mondegreen: Songs about Death and Love, reflects on the true meaning of the word "freedom" and how independence is being shaped.

The chief editor of The Ukrainians and cultural manager Bohdana Neborak writes about ‘ours’ and ‘theirs,’ as well as what modernity is and why the ideas of Shevelov and Malaniuk are still fresh.

In her text, curator and cultural project manager Oksana Shchur reflects on the project "Ukrainian Songs of Love and Hate," featuring Lyuba Yakymchuk, Irena Karpa, Yuriy Gurzhy, Grigory Semenchuk, as well as translators Oleh Kolesnikov and Anna Paschenko, and visual artists Grycja Erde and Yevheniy Arlov.

Deception, speculation, and fears regarding the possibility of a terrorist act at the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant (NPP) — in a column from Sasha Dovzhyk, special projects curator at the Ukrainian Institute London and associate lecturer in Ukrainian at University College London.

On 2 June 2023, the exhibition “Documenting Ukraine: Bearing Witness to War” will be officially opened. The exhibition, organized in cooperation with Bildrecht and FOTO WIEN, will be held from 2 June to 1 July 2023 at Bildraum Studio. 

Serhii Korovayny has been documenting the Russo-Ukrainian War since its start in the Donbas in 2015. His wide-ranging work, which has been supported by Documenting Ukraine, captures daily life during wartime, Russian atrocities in Ukraine, environmental issues, displaced people, and healthcare topics, among other themes. His photographs will be presented as part of the exhibition Documenting Ukraine: Bearing Witness to War at Bildraum Studio in Vienna from 3 June till 1 July 2023.

On 9 May, Oleksandra Matviichuk, Head of the Center for Civil Liberties, delivered this year's Speech to Europe on Vienna's Judenplatz. Under the banner “No Peace without Freedom, No Justice without Law,” the Ukrainian lawer and human rights activist underlined the importance of international solidarity and resistance against injustice. Read the full transcript of her speech in English here.

On 8 April, a terrorist attack struck the Kramatorsk railway station. Russian troops shelled civilians who wanted to flee to safe regions. The enemy’s two Tochka-U cluster missiles killed 61 and wounded 121 people. Among them are the heroes of this article: Anastasiia Shestopal, Vladyslav Kopychko and Kateryna Iorhu. They were severely wounded, and subsequently underwent painful surgeries and rehabilitation procedures. Below is what happened to them during the six months following the terrorist attack that changed their lives forever. The material was created for Svoi.City within the framework of the Life of War project supported by the Public Interest Journalism Lab and the IWM. 

As a result of Ukraine’s first counteroffensive in September 2022, the Armed Forces of Ukraine liberated nearly the entire Kharkiv region, one-third of which was occupied by Russian forces. Liberation revealed similar sights to what the world had witnessed in Bucha and Hostomel in the Kyiv region in April 2022; torture chambers and mass graves were found in towns and villages. These findings are not the only evidence of massive atrocities that took place under occupation in Izium and Balakliia. Seven months have passed since the liberation of the Kharkiv region; as Ukraine prepares for another counteroffensive, it is a fitting moment to recall the sorts of experiences they are liberating Ukrainians from. Here we look back on what Ganna Sokolova, a journalist with Zaborona Media, found upon first coming to the liberated territories.  This is the first in a series of blog posts that will highlight the work of Ukrainian media organizations as part of the joint project Life of War, implemented by Ukrainian journalists in collaboration with PIJL and the Documenting Ukraine program at the IWM. Life in War focuses on capturing human stories and documenting the modern history of Ukraine against the backdrop of the Russo-Ukrainian War.

Anastasia Vlasova was one of the first photographers who came to Kherson right after its deoccupation on 11 November 2022. Born and raised in Kherson, she used to refer to her hometown as "a small city where nothing ever happens" and then admits, "until last year, obviously."

Within hours of the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, the IWM made a commitment to increasing our support for Ukrainian intellectuals, building on our tradition of practical solidarity with societies fighting for freedom and our longstanding engagement with Ukrainian academia and civil society. We recognized that chronicling the Russo-Ukrainian War was something that the IWM was uniquely positioned to contribute to.

There has not been a moment since the morning of 24 February 2022 left untouched by the Russo-Ukrainian War. A wry commonplace among Ukrainians is that February 2022 still hasn’t ended – we are now in its 13thmonth. It feels both impossible and essential to reflect on the past year, to think about where we stand now, and to envision the future. Here we present a selection of publications by members of the IWM community tied in some way to the anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, in English and German. Many of the authors represented here are part of the IWM's Documenting Ukraine program. New items are added on an ongoing basis. 

People who experienced the Russian occupation of Bucha and other towns in the Kyiv region in February-March 2022 are now trying to save themselves mentally rather than physically, seeking refuge from their memories. The rapid reconstruction of the city, which so captivated outside observers, is also a way to try to return to “pre-February 24” Bucha. The archivists and regional experts who lived through all these horrible events are forced to bring together their personal experiences and their professional duties. The employees of the Archive Department of the Bucha City Council, where documents of the National Archives are held, have spent every day since the very beginning of the full-scale invasion recording events on the spot, taking photographs, capturing video footage. Now the Archive Department is cataloging these materials and providing information to journalists, to legal experts who are investigating war crimes, and to other interested parties. The head of the Archive Department of the Bucha City Council, Ihor Bartkiv, discusses his experience in Bucha under occupation by Russian forces.

The IWM launched Documenting Ukraine in March 2022 to contribute to creating a record of the Russo-Ukrainian War, capturing the human experience of that war, and making it accessible and comprehensible to the broader world. Since then, we have supported 192 projects proposed by Ukrainian scholars, creative professionals, journalists, public intellectuals, and preservation experts that establish and preserve a factual record or bring meaning to events through artistic interpretation and intellectual reflection. Ultimately, the materials collected and produced through these projects will be housed in a complex, transdisciplinary archive.

“ïzhakultura” is an independent project about food culture that was founded by Olena and Artem Braichenko in 2017. It is the first resource in Ukraine dedicated to the history of Ukrainian cuisine, where scholars, chefs, food critics, and food anthropologists discuss history, culture, and art through the prism of food. Over the five years of its existence, ïzhakultura has included gastronomy research, the publishing house ïzhak, and numerous thematic events, which not only deepen Ukrainians’ knowledge of their own culture, but also tell the world about Ukraine. Here Olena Braichenko talks about ïzhakultura’s work since February 24.

Since February 24, 2022, Kharkiv, the second-largest city in Ukraine with a population of 1,5 million, has been undergoing daily shelling, missile attacks, and unprecedented destruction. Only 40 kilometers from the Russian border, the city was considered an easy target for the Russian forces, who expected the largely Russophone residents to welcome them as liberators. Far from that, the city mobilized to fight the invaders and resists heroically for nearly ten months of the war. 

University professors teaching classes from trenches, children doing homework by candlelight, teachers giving lectures after being evacuated from their hometowns – this is the new “normal” of Ukrainian education. According to the Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, as of late October 2022 2,677 schools and universities have been damaged by the war and 331 have been destroyed. More than half a million students and over 25,000 teachers fled abroad as refugees.  But while the education process continues online and in hybrid forms, there is an acute need to understand and assess the experiences and needs of students and faculty. Documenting Ukraine supports several initiatives that collect testimonies and record such experiences.