CALENDAR OF EVENTS ACCOMPANYING THE EXHIBITION:

November 10th, 4 PM
BLC business centre, Donelaičio g. 60, Building A

Discovering Ukraine (from outside and from inside)

Ukraine is still something to be explained for many, and while it appeared on the maps as an independent country more than thirty years ago, it took some time for most people to get an idea of what Ukraine was, some got it earlier, and some looked closely just recently. The dynamic is an interesting issue, but not only abroad: many Ukrainians needed to take their time too. Both for Ukrainians and for foreigners, Ukraine is also an idea and an intellectual adventure. Our speakers came from very different places, and they have very different experiences in regard to Ukraine, but a lot in common to conceptualize it.

Carl Henrik Fredriksson is a Swedish author, editor, and translator living in Vienna, Austria. Co-founder and, from 2001 to 2015, editor-in-chief of Eurozine. Former editor-in-chief of Sweden’s oldest cultural journal Ord&Bild. He is an author of numerous publications on literature, art, philosophy, media and politics. He is a Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Media and Communication Policy (Institut für Medien- und Kommunikationspolitik) in Berlin and the Programme Director of Debates on Europe, a cooperation between the S. Fischer Foundation and the German Academy for Language and Literature.

Vakhtang Kebuladze is a Ukrainian philosopher, writer, and expert in translations of philosophy texts. His own translations of German philosophy to Ukrainian include books by Husserl and Nitzsche. While Vakhtang is a co-chairman of Ukrainian Phenomenological Society, and a Professor at Kyiv Shevchenko university, a member of editorial boards of academic journals in Ukraine and other European countries, his essays gained popularity far beyond academia, and his book was awarded by PEN-Ukraine.

All the discussions are in English language, broadcasted live on “Kaunas 2022” Facebook page.
Participation at the discussions is free of charge, but registration is required by filling in the registration form.

November 11th, 4 PM
Kaunas bus station, Vytauto pr. 24

Dancing with Empire, Falling for Empire

A lot was said about how long it takes and how difficult it is for a colonized to get back their agency and to change their perspective, and how long a shadow an empire casts. Empires stay with us even after we have survived and overcome them, and not only as nightmares, but also as a part of who we are, as an aftertaste both toxic and sweet. Our speakers Jacek Dehnel and Iaroslava Strikha were exploring that in their works, literary and academic respectively. Together they will try to conceptualize the imperial charm and how it works for art in our part of the world. 

Jacek Dehnel is a Polish poet, writer, translator, and painter. His first collection of poems was the last book recommended by the Polish Nobel Prize winner, Czesław Miłosz.
A prolific author of nine books of poems, five novels, a few collections of short prose, columns and essays, Dehnel has also translated works of (among others) Philip Larkin, Henry James, Edmund White, Francis Scott Fitzgerald, J.M. Coetzee. His own works were translated into over a dozen of languages, and in English are available his two novels, Saturn and Lala, and the two volumes of a crime series he writes with his husband, Piotr Tarczynski, under a pen name Maryla Szymiczkowa (Mrs Mohr Goes Missing and Karolina or the Torn Curtain), and a selection of poems Aperture. Lala is available also in Lithuanian and - along with Saturn, Matka Makryna and Krivoklat - in Ukrainian. Dehnel has been awarded literary prizes that include the Kościelski Award and the Paszport „Polityki” and nominated to many others. Since 2020 he and his husband live in Berlin.

Iaroslava Strikha is a literary translator and literary scholar. She holds a PhD from Harvard University (2017), and developed and taught courses on contemporary Ukrainian culture and on Eastern European literary modernism at the Department of Slavic Languages and
Literatures at Harvard in 2022. Her translation of Behind the Scenes at the Museum by Kate Atkinson received the Best Book Award of the Lviv Book Forum as the best translation in 2018. Her interests as a literary scholar include Ukrainian literature of the late 19th through the early 20th century, trauma studies, modernism in Yiddish literature, graphic novels and intersemiotic translations.

All the discussions are in English language, broadcasted live on “Kaunas 2022” Facebook page.
Participation at the discussions is free of charge, but registration is required by filling in the registration form.

November 24th, 3:30 AM
VDU Leonidas Donskis Library, V. Putvinskio g. 23, I floor, Kaunas

Voices from the Underground: Artists Behind the Iron Curtain

One might think that the term "underground" was on its way to art history, but in 2022 it gets a new meaning. Concerts and festivals in the basements and metro stations in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and even Lviv are also a good reason to look a couple of decades back: did the artists of the past get proper credit after the end of the Cold War? What does their legacy mean today for our part of the world? Our speakers may help to outline the frame of numerous discussions we have ahead of us: on freedom, resistance, and Iron Curtains of the future.

Dr. Katherine Younger is a Permanent Fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM, Vienna), where she runs the projects Ukraine in European Dialogue and Documenting Ukraine. She received her PhD in History from Yale University in 2018. Her research concentrates on practices of international politics, forms of imperial governance, and the relationship between religion and power. Most recently, she edited The Universe behind Barbed Wire: Memoirs of a Ukrainian Soviet Dissident by Myroslav Marynovych (University of Rochester Press, 2021).

Prof. Habil. Dr. Gintautas Mažeikis. The head of Centre of social and political critique at VMU, philosopher. The sphere of interests is Critical theory of symbolical thinking, which includes Critique of propaganda, occultism, cultural industries and social politics.

Moderated by Oksana Forostyna

All the discussions are in English language, broadcasted live on “Kaunas 2022” Facebook page.
Participation at the discussions is free of charge, but registration is required by filling in the registration form.

November 26th, 12 AM
Kaunas central post office, Laisves al. 102, Kaunas

How To Show the Invisible

One may say that all cultures are equal, but who would say that all cultures are equally perceived, known, and admired? How to be interesting if your culture missed (partly or totally) the 19th century race for being a part of the cultural canon? Two speakers are on a mission to show their cultures to the world where cultural hierarchies are being reproduced faster than being undermined, and attention is the new scarce resource. 

Pawel Potoroczyn is educational and cultural chief executive with in-depth knowledge on international educational and cultural resources and trends, established cultural and business relations. He is also experienced music, theatre and film producer with several international awards to his credit. He has spent 15 years on top diplomatic posts, representing Poland  in the US (Los Angeles, New York) and in the UK (London), and accumulated extensive expertise in cultural diplomacy with a broad and established network among world’s best cultural and educational institutions, and got a proven track record of using societal and educational values as a powerful medium for cross-cultural dialogue. Diplomat, author, public intellectual, speaker, producer and executive.

Volodymyr Sheiko is director of the Ukrainian Institute, Ukraine’s cultural diplomacy organisation that develops cultural relations between Ukraine and other countries and promotes better understanding of Ukraine internationally. During 2007–2018 Volodymyr worked at the British Council as Arts Director for Ukraine, marketing and communications manager; and arts programme manager for 15 countries of South-East Europe and Central Asia. He has produced, programmed, organised or otherwise contributed to over 200 arts, culture, and communications projects and events in 15 European countries: art exhibitions, artistic residencies, film festivals and screenings, expert discussions, music concerts, literature projects, training workshops, conferences, theatre performances, communications campaigns etc.

Gintarė Masteikaitė is a cultural leader and performing arts producer. Since 2017, she has been working as director of the Lithuanian Dance Information Centre and artistic director of the festival “New Baltic Dance”, the largest international dance festival in the Baltic region. In 2019, she founded and started organizing the international performing arts festival “ConTempo” in Kaunas and Kaunas district (part of Kaunas 2022 program). For 17 years, she has been actively working in the field of cultural management, cultural representation and internationalization. The main areas of activity: development of contemporary dance and circus, initiation and management of projects, active international activities related to the presentation of Lithuania’s productions abroad and productions from abroad in Lithuania, initiation and implementation of international projects, production of contemporary dance, professional development of young representatives of the performing arts field. Gintarė is actively involved in the processes of cultural policy formation, strengthening of the contemporary dance in the public discourse, she also contributes significantly to the efforts of audience development and growth. 

Moderated by Oksana Forostyna

All the discussions are in English language, broadcasted live on “Kaunas 2022” Facebook page.
Participation at the discussions is free of charge, but registration is required by filling in the registration form.