The Austrian curators Georg Schöllhammer and Hedwig Saxenhuber have revealed further details of their School of Kyiv biennial (8 September-November 1). The eight-week event, which is staged with Kiev’s Visual Culture Research Center, will be built around discussions and experimental platforms structured as “schools” addressing key social and artistic issues confronting Ukraine, Europe and the world today.
Commenting on the eve of Greece’s resounding no vote in a referendum over Europe’s bailout terms, the curators said: “Is the Europe that we are living in and the European project that is propagated, a project the citizens of Europe desire? This is a burning political question.”
Speakers at “The School of Abducted Europe” will include the Yale professor Timothy Snyder, the Bulgarian political scientist Ivan Krastev and the British artist Emily Wardill.
Meanwhile, “The School of the Lonesome” will explore the aftermath of revolutionary euphoria. The Turkish artist Zeino Pekünlü, Russian artist Keti Chukhrov and Kwan Sheung Chi from Hong Kong will be among participants in that school.
The biennial’s six schools also include “The School of the Displaced”—bringing together internally displaced persons with artists who have become political refugees from countries such as Egypt and Libya—and “The School of Image and Evidence”, which, according to a press release, aims to "deconstruct the status of image in current propaganda wars by using film production as an instrument for critical analysis of the war in Ukraine.”
Over a dozen Kiev venues have already been announced, including the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture and the National Art Museum of Ukraine. But the central venue will be non-traditional, a former Soviet-era Modernist department store known as the House of Clothes at Lvivska Square, creating a temporary space “that does not have an institutional history.”
Schöllhammer and Saxenhuber say the biennial will be “opening departments in more than 10 European cities”. Further details will be announced in August.
The Ukrainian government, reeling from war and economic crisis, is not funding the School of Kyiv. International supporters include the Austrian Federal Chancellery and the German Federal Cultural Foundation.
A number of artists from Russia are participating in the School of Kyiv, including Haim Sokol, Taus Makhacheva and Dmitry Gutov. “The Russian presence is among the strongest international participations of the project. Up to now, no Russian artist we have asked has refused to participate,” say the curators.
