“Non-farmstead” ideas from a farmstead

Recently, the Cabinet of Ministers adopted decree No. 953 which foresees the involvement of 150 million dollars of investments into the implementation of the project “Village of the Future.” The name of the project is pretentious and promising, especially in the conditions of rapid decrease of the number of villages in Ukraine. However, it turned out that the “Village of the Future” is not a separate nationwide project, but a part of the national program “Revived Cattle Breeding.” According to it, a model high-technology agro-industrial complex for the production of meat, dairy, fruit, and vegetable produce and up-to-date infrastructure and utilities for the staff is to be built in Kharkiv oblast. But is this enough to create a real “village of the future” and shape a new quality model of the modern village?

When it comes to the countryside development, the cultural compound is left out of the context in most cases, even though it is a sensitive indicator of the living standards: those who have to survive do not care much about art and cultural leisure. Today, economic influence of culture on competitive ability of territories is only acknowledged in the context of tourism in Ukraine, thus narrowing its real abilities to consolidate and motivate the population of rural areas. But it is not the proper way it should be.

From the remotest times, Ukrainian village was something more than just agricultural lands. When developing his “rustic philosophy,” Panteleimon Kulish wrote that it was at the countryside, but not in the city, where a person could reveal new sense of existence: simplicity, integrity, honesty of everyday life, rootedness into authentic ground. This is where creativity inspired by nature, God, and genetic memory awakens. A modern creative and thinking person can obtain new opportunities from a village, the ones that have never been considered in this context before. And in its turn, the appearance of such person in a village may trigger its revival and development. And there already are successful examples of that: art farmstead Obyrok, Lehedzyne village, Alevtyna Kakhidze’s art residence in Muzychi village. As our heroes say, today, it is the person but not the place that is important. It is possible to create a powerful cultural and artistic center in a remote farmstead: thanks to the Internet, knowledge and information can be accessed from everywhere, and there is much more creative space in a village than in a city. Kulish wrote in his Rustic Philosophy and Poetry, Remote from the World: “going to the city for money, and to the countryside – for wisdom.”

The Day tried to investigate if it was possible to revive Ukrainian village through cultural and artistic factors.

GOING BACK TO THE ORIGINS: HOW TO CREATE A MODERN FARMSTEAD

Not so long ago, art farmstead Obyrok was one of the many abandoned and almost extinct villages in Chernihiv oblast. Five years ago, film director Leonid Kanter with his wife Diana Karpenko, who are famous for their travel actions “To the Ocean with a Chair,” founded an art eco-village there. “More than 3,000 guests from 15 countries have visited the village since then. Most of them came straight from the airport, passing the capital and other large cities. Because all the best is concentrated there, the village is free from urban filth, cigarette butts, and drunkards,” Kanter tells The Day.

Today, a total of seven families live in Obyrok, including the Kanter family. They have their own movie theater, which is called Film Shed, where Ukrainian films are regularly shown. By the way, Obyrok dwellers were one of the first to see Mykhailo Illienko’s film Firecrosser. Leonid and Diana bring up their two daughters Mahdalena and Patahonia in the spirit of natural freedom and organize an annual artistic camp for kids “Children of Nature.” In general, artistic life at the farmstead never stops: various art actions, theater performances, festivals are held there. For example, the village hosts a now traditional “Carols International,” a joint project of street artists and folk bands from Ukraine, Russia, Belarus, Finland, Lithuania, France, Italy, Israel, USA, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, and other countries.

“Every two months, or even more often, we hold art festivals, celebrations, meetings for people from different countries to participate and share their unique experiences. This motivates us to develop the village, and it becomes an example for others. Thus, Belarusians, who were inspired by the Ukrainian example, created a similar settlement,” Kanter says. Director and traveler is convinced that in order to revive the cultural environment of a village, the desire and determination of a few enthusiasts and artists is enough. “Each village can become like ours! This is not the Crimea or the Carpathians, but everyone who visited it, loved it here! The success depends on people who create these settlements,” the new farmer says.

ON CREATIVE CONSEQUENCES OF THE “RURAL ROMANCE”

Lehedzyne village in Cherkasy oblast is another place, the success of which was built on creative activity of caring people. It is here that the local history teacher Vladyslav Chabaniuk has been heading the amateur film studio Malva for over 15 years now. During this period, six films were released there, including Oira, The Janissary, and Ripened Apples. During the past few years, a movie based on Sashko Lirnyk’s Tales of the Black Cossack was shot here. The locals acted in crowd scenes, and treasures from their wardrobes and chests were used as props.

Each year, the reserve “Trypillia Culture,” which is also headed by Chabaniuk, hosts a fair. “The museum is still unfinished, and the absence of funding makes us come up with different ways of involving people who would contribute to the construction. People from various parts of Ukraine come to the fair, and we have even had foreign visitors. Locals also started participating more actively in it, though they still treat our initiatives warily,” Chabaniuk says. “The initiative has to be started by the villagers themselves. But for the most part, these are conservative people, and they view new people as strangers. When somebody from their own environment starts doing something, it is accepted in a more positive way than when an ‘outsider’ starts it. We need people to want to change things themselves, because we are always waiting for something: for a new president, new government, for a miracle.”

Artistic environment of Lehedzyne, which was formed by creative and active people, gradually attracts new participants. Naomi Uman, American experimental film director, is one of the village dwellers. She bought a house there a few years ago and started living in the Ukrainian countryside. Rural “romance” and new experience inspired Uman to shoot documentaries about the village and the life in it. The director’s own exhibit of works, created in the style of naive folk art, is another evidence of the fact that Lehedzyne is a powerful source of inspiration.

The experience of Lehedzyne shows that if local residents are interested in this creative activity, if they become involved and motivated, they will accept these “innovators” to their established community. “It is important that they are the active participants of the event, not just witnesses,” Chabaniuk explains. This is not a one-day process, but there is also a lot of space for action: countryside areas often lack conditions for cultural leisure, even the movies are not shown there anymore. And this gives a lot of opportunities to those who want to revive rural cultural environment.

Thus, the new farmers of the art eco-village Obyrok immediately found a common language with local dwellers. Local villagers are not just watching creative actions and festivals with curiosity, but also love to participate in them. “These are elderly people, the youngest of them are around 60. Once, when the band Perkalaba was performing here, the forester and his wife danced as if they were students. Even granny Uliana, who is over 80, and who locks the house after 6 p.m., even she danced till midnight, and then she went to the Film Shed to watch the movie,” Kanter shares his experience of friendship between the new and old Obyrok residents.

ALEVTYNA AND MUZYCHI: AN ART RESIDENCE IN A VILLAGE

Sometimes, an initiative “from the outside” is more effective, especially when a village cannot show its cultural, historical, or natural wealth. An international art residence has been opened in Muzychi village, which is located 19 kilometers away from Kyiv. The residence was founded by the famous Ukrainian artist Alevtyna Kakhidze and her husband Volodymyr Babiuk. This is an art platform for artists in the broadest meaning possible. Painters, directors, and theorists from all over the world come to live there and immerse themselves in art. “Our project is called ‘The Extended History of Muzychi.’ The idea is that someone comes to the village, lives and creates there, and this becomes the reason for pride for the village dwellers. On the other hand, they do not even know who these people are, and get no knowledge for their own lives from it,” Kakhidze explains to The Day. The village is famous around the world, because artists that visited it, tell everyone about it after they go back home. A total of eight artists from Singapore, Switzerland, Germany, and Poland have visited Muzychi during these years.

“I have traveled a lot and participated in different international residencies, that is why I came up with an idea to create something similar here, in Muzychi. It is extremely hard to find additional space in the city, and there is plenty of it in the village. I was born and raised in a rather small town Zhdanivka in Donetsk oblast, and when I started making art projects, I realized that intervention into such complex space as that of villages and small towns is a very delicate matter,” Kakhidze says. According to her, children are always the most open to everything new. And Muzychi is no exception in this. “Children often hang around my residents, they know who they are. A residence for foreign artists is an ordinary and understandable thing for them. I think this will become a norm for the young generation,” the artist sums up.

PEOPLE WHO MAKE THE WORLD REVOLVE AROUND THEM

All these stories demonstrate that the presence of creative people who are not afraid to implement the ideas is one of the most important conditions for the revival and development of the countryside.

“Such villages become famous with the appearance of someone who starts creative work there and makes the whole world revolve around those places. There are quite a few such villages in Ukraine, because there are a lot of talented people who create their circles, and when these circles become big enough, they meet other circles just like them. This is how we create the new Ukrainian community,” Olha Hodovanets, journalist, photographer, and producer of The Tales of the Black Cossack explains to The Day. Concerning Lehedzyne, Hodovanets is sure that the success of the village was determined by its inhabitants. Especially, by Chabaniuk, who “was born with the understanding that there is much more to the world than what can be seen from a window, and now the whole world is trying to look inside the window of his house.”

And though such art villages as Obyrok and Lehedzyne are still rare on Ukrainian map, Kanter is sure that it soon will become a positive trend. “We have to let everything that wants to die, move to a large city, or dreams of an apartment in a skyscraper, disappear from the countryside, so this space can be occupied by young people full of inspiration and with a new mindset. This is not just a Ukrainian tendency, this is a global process. A green revolution has begun on the planet,” Kanter sums up.