Donbas: to feel and breathe in

This event is held at Kyiv’s museum “Spiritual Treasures of Ukraine.” The organizers have prepared cinema, literature, music, and fashion programs. The forum also features debates and master classes at the backdrop of pictures and photographs on the life in eastern Ukraine. This high-profile event was initiated by the Corners auction house.

“The theme is so topical that we prepared the forum in a record two and a half months,” Olha SAHAIDAK, co-organizer of the forum “Doncult – Depths of Art” confesses. “More than 200 items are on display, and about 80 events are being held. We would like to trace the region’s evolution: the emergence of the Donbas as an industrial region in the late 19th century, Yuzivka, cultural upsurge, and a reverse wave – degradation of the people and industry.”

The region’s existence was researched through, among other things, its “icons.” The image of St. Barbara, the patron saint of miners, hangs next to the “Life of a President” by Ksenia Hnylytska, where Viktor Yanukovych is the hero. Between these works is Roman Minin’s picture “Temptation of the Good Shubin,” in which fairytale-style folklore is combined with depiction of hard work in a coal mine. The visual side is complemented with Minin’s bold verses, such as “Whoever was born a miner bears no grudge against his parents.”

A major part of “Doncult” is about the legendary film director Sergei Parajanov. The forum displays the artist’s collages Self-Portrait and Taj Mahal, and has shown his film Flower on the Stone and the documentary Parajanov. This attention to the famous film director is explained by the fact that he served a prison term near Alchevsk, Luhansk oblast. “Fliur Karachurin, who established the Parajanov Museum in Alchevsk, is coming to us from the Luhansk region. There will be a sharp debate between him and Olena Fetysova, director of the film Parajanov,” Sahaidak promised.

Some artists are coming to the forum right from the “hotspots.” The Donetsk-based composer Yevhen Petrychenko has traveled to the capital to deliver a lecture, “The Pessimistic Reflections of an Optimistic Person, or What Should and Should Not Be Expected from the Donbas’ Musical Art.”

“Whenever the Donbas art is presented in Kyiv, you look at it differently,” PETRYCHENKO says, sharing his impressions. “We will perhaps turn into sort of Bremen musicians who will be giving guest lectures and concerts. The current art situation in the Donbas reminds me of the 1920s-1930s, when culture was subservient to ideology. All that we used to do in the east was of no use there, but now it is of no use at all!”

The discussion platform is one of the forum’s key elements. The curators of this field – Maria Lanko and Lizaveta Herman – have planned a series of lectures and debates, with the roundtable “Local Self-Organized Initiatives vs. the Imported Cultural Product. What Cultural Institutions Does the Donbas Need?” to be held on November 6 being the central event. “People are taking an active part in the discussions, although they respond differently to the Donbas’ art. It is important to us that eastern artists should understand that Ukraine shows interest in them and participation in the forum is sort of a rehabilitation for them,” the forum co-organizer Sahaidak confesses.

The forum also holds a place for classics. On November 7, stage director Vlad Troitsky showed a fragment of his new opera Coriolanus based on Shakespeare’s tragedy. In general, the theatrical program is full of high-key productions. In the end, the forum will show a mystery drama, Transforma, which involves several music ensembles and a female choir. The initiators aspire to feel the Donbas with all their organs of sensation. The forum even presents a special aroma based on the smell of araucaria, the tree whose remnants formed coal millions of years ago.

Several thousand spectators visited “Doncult” in the first week. “We want to see a lot of young people who would hear and analyze what is going on,” Sahaidak emphasizes. “We are pleased to see people visit our events more than once. I think we will manage to cause forum guests to somewhat change their attitude to the events in the east. Television keeps showing armed monsters, which creates an impression that there are only bandits with assault rifles in the Donbas, but we want to show the east’s intellectual potential.”

The national forum “Doncult – Depths of Art” will end on November 11.