PEILUNG #6: HANDLE WITH CARE! A CENTURY OF ARTISTS COMMUNITIES IN LVIV

26.10.2023 / 19:00 – 22:00
With Andrij Bojarov, Olha Marusyn

The city of Lviv in western Ukraine is currently a place of refuge and a hub of internal migration in the war-torn country, and has been shaped by the coexistence of different cultures and ethnic groups within the city for centuries.

Visual artist and independent curator Andrij Bojarov will give a short lecture on the significance of Lviv’s art scene and its role in contemporary art-historical narratives, based on the example of three current European exhibitions of Ukrainian modernist and Avantgarde art. Bojarov will focus on Lviv’s modernist art milieu and present previously unknown works and documents from the family archives of Margit and Roman Sielski—former members of “artes”, the famous pre-war group of modernist artists—with a special focus on female artists who were active in the interwar period, who left and who remained in Lviv after World War II. In his presentation under the title Lviv: ATLAS of Modernity Bojarov will relate to the main location where the Musical by Olha Marusyn was shot – the building of former Atlas printing house.

Following Bojarov’s lecture talk, artist, choreographer, and curator Olha Marusyn artist, choreographer, and curator will present the collaborative video work “A Musical” (2023). It documents a project that resulted from collaboration between soma.majsternia (Marusyn’s own project space for dance and performance in Lviv) and the volunteer network Kukhnia, which opened a small shelter for refugees from the Kharkiv region in a former book factory in Lviv in 2022. The primary motivation to develop the musical was not to create a product, but to facilitate an open, creative process under extreme conditions. “In a somewhat irrational way, it was more of a pretext to spend time together, which felt like a luxury in these circumstances. Later we realized that this was a kind of collective step into the unknown.” (O. Marusyn) The wry proposal: “We’re so tired, let’s make a musical!” thus evolved from a despairing joke into a loosely connected series of performances, singing workshops, texts, and discussions, in collaboration with the Kyiv-based artist Katya Libkind. In a further collective process, these were then turned into an episodic film that is both entertaining and affecting.

„Handle with Care!“ is the sixth event of the series Peilung, initiated last year by Lada Nakonechna and Bettina Klein to provide Ukrainian artists, filmmakers, and scholars a platform for presenting their work and forum for discussion.

Free admission

daadgalerie, Oranienstraße 161, 10969 Berlin