This year’s Book Arsenal will take place in Kyiv, from 29 May to 1 June 2025, with a focus theme Everything is Translation. Documenting Ukraine is supporting the implementation of the focus theme and is proud to co-organise the panel titled Building Bridges.
The focus theme, curated by writer and Europe’s Futures alumna Oksana Forostyna and historian Marci Shore, explores translation as a metaphor for understanding across languages, cultures, and experiences. It delves into questions of linguistic untranslatability, the complexity of dialogue between societies, as well as the ways power dynamics and hierarchies influence communication.
Everything is Translation originated from a series of conversations between Forostyna and Shore on the brink of Trump’s re-election. Their dialogue is informed by personal encounters with various languages, literatures and philosophical concepts. Among topics discussed is the hegemony of English from a perspective of a native speaker who came to Eastern Europe before it became a dominant language and a Ukrainian for whom it was a bridge language allowing engagement with a wider intellectual community.
This year, the event will feature discussions, book presentations, workshops, public interviews, exhibitions, and much more. IWM fellows and Documenting Ukraine grantees are featured as speakers and moderators in different panels throughout the event. The program of this year’s focus theme is:
Thursday, May 29, 18:00-19:30, Main Stage.
Everything Is Translation: Intro. Between No Limits / поміж без меж: Both Sides of the Border Face East.
Participants: Iya Kiva, ariel rosé, Ostap Slyvynsky.
Moderated by Carl Henrik Fredriksson.
Friday, May 30, 12:00–13:30, Main Stage.
Muttersprache/Mördersprache: Ukrainian-Russian Self-Translation.
Participants: Olena Stiazhkina, Andrei Kurkov, Gleb Gusev.
Moderated by Oksana Forostyna.
Friday, May 30, 15:30–16:30, Main Stage.
Translating Experience: Is a Language Enough?
Participants: Natalka Marynchak, Yevheny Volodchenko, Olena Apchel, Oksana Stomina.
Moderated by Ivanna Skyba-Yakubova. Co-organizer: Radio Khartia.
Friday, May 30, 17:30–19:00, Main Stage.
Building Bridges.
Participants: Nataliya Gumenyuk, Terrell J. Starr, Babak Vahedi, Oleksandra Matviichuk.
Moderated by Carl Henrik Fredriksson. Co-organizer: Documenting Ukraine, a project of Institut fur die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM Vienna).
Saturday, May 31, 13:00–14:00, Main Stage.
Portraits Summoned from Contaminated Soil: On the Exhibition ‘The Landscape of our Memory’.
Participants: Natasha Chichasova, Gabriela Bulisova, Mark Isaac, Nelia Vakhovska.
Moderated by Kateryna Botanova.
Saturday, May 31, 14:00–15:00, Main Stage.
Literary Languages under Bombs: Translating Foreign Literature in Wartime.
Participants: Iaroslava Strikha, Yurko Prokhasko.
Moderated by Anna Vovchenko.
Saturday, May 31, 18:30–20:00, Main Stage.
The Poetry of Suffering, the Poetics of Empathy.
Participants: Amelia Glaser, Ilya Kaminsky, Ostap Slyvynsky.
Moderated by Krzysztof Czyzewski
Sunday, June 1, 12:00–13:00, Main Stage.
Yiddish as a Ukrainian Language.
Participants: Dov-Ber Kerler, Amelia Glaser, Leonid Finberg, Velvl Chernin.
Moderated by Tetiana Nepypenko.
Sunday, June 1, 14:00–15:00, Main Stage.
Taking Evil out of Scare Quotes: Hannah Arendt and the Problem of Evil in a Postmodern World.
Participants: Marci Shore, Volodymyr Yermolenkо.
Sunday, June 1, 18:00–19:30, Main Stage.
Untranslatable Words, Our Keys to Secret Doors.
Participants: Roksolana Sviato, Krzysztof Czyzewski, Claudia Dathe, Constantin Sigov.
Moderated by Oksana Forostyna.
The International Book Arsenal Festival, an annual project of the Mystetskyi Arsenal, is an intellectual event in Ukraine where the publishing, literary and artistic scenes develop and interact with each other, and important issues of human existence, as well as society and culture, are raised.
