EXTRA: Reimagining Utopias: Art and politics in 21st century Ukraine

'De-Communisation' has become a central plank of government policy since 'Euromaidan' - the second revolution in Ukraine after independence from the USSR in 1991. Determination to erase not just the Soviet past but any possibility of left-wing radicalism is the one thing that unites the country's two largest political forces: one that represents European Union-facing neoliberalism, the other, violent Ukrainian nationalism. Often censored - or worse - during the 20th century, post-Soviet artists with socialist, feminist and/or utopian ideals have found themselves facing new forms of exclusion and oppression. How have they located themselves within the new cultural and political landscape? In this episode, Juliet - on residency at the Izolyatsia cultural foundation (https://izolyatsia.org/en) in Kyiv, where it has been in exile from its home in Donetsk since the Russian occupation in 2014 - meets artist Maria Kulikovska (https://www.mariakulikovska.com), herself in exile from Crimea, and academic Jessica Zychowicz (https://www.jeszychowicz.com), author of 'Frame Work: Art, Activism, and Biopolitics in Inter-Revolutionary Kyiv 2004-2018' (Univ. of Toronto Press) to discuss the practicalities, problems and possibilities for artists in contemporary Ukraine. On de-Communisation – https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/apr/20/ukraine-decommunisation-law-soviet Donetsk People's Republic paramilitary takeover of Izolyatsia - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GfeGF1QYP4 SELECTED REFERENCES Ukrainian/Soviet modernist artists: Aleksandr Archipenko, David Burlyuk, Aleksandra Exter, Mikhail Larionov, Kazimir Malevich, Vladimir Tatlin Executed Renaissance (inter-war literary movement) - http://euromaidanpress.com/longreads/executed-renaissance-in-ukraine/ Ivan (dir. Oleksandr Dovzhenko, 1932) - https://grunes.wordpress.com/2007/01/29/ivan-aleksandr-dovzhenko-1932/ Les Kurbas (theatre director) - http://www.kurbas.org.ua/en/centre.html Mykola Skrypnyk - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mykola_Skrypnyk Svetlana Alexeivich (memoirs) Apartment 14 (young artist who inherited apartment) Bu-Ba-Bu (poetry circle) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bu-Ba-Bu David Chichkan - https://www.kyivpost.com/ukraine-politics/euromaidan-art-exhibition-vandalized.html Adam Curtis on Vladislav Surkov - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Od4MWs7qTr8 Euromaidan. Rough Cut (2014 film) - https://vimeo.com/90920946 Mayo Fryderyk – dressed as general, orange dwarf Grey Horses (dir. Mykola Ridnyi, 2016) - http://www.mykolaridnyi.com/video-works/grey-horses-1 Hometown (dir. Metahaven, 2018) - https://izolyatsia.org/en/project/hometown/hometown/ Hudrada (curatorial unit) SERHIY KOVALCHUK (ed.), Reimagining Utopias: Theory and Method for Educational Research in Post-Soviet Contexts (2017) CZESLAW MILOSZ, The Captive Mind (1953) - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Captive_Mind MYKHAILO MINAKOV, Development and Dystopia: Studies in Post-Soviet Ukraine and Eastern Europe (2018) - http://www.minakovphilosophy.com/ Ofanziba group (Ukraine) Orange Alternative - https://culture.pl/en/article/the-orange-alternative-there-is-no-freedom-without-dwarfs Valentina Petrova Pomoranchova (Polish poetry group) Revolutionary Experimental Space (REP) - https://www.thegreenbox.net/en/books/rep-revolutionary-experimental-space SOSka art collective (Kharkiv) - http://www.mykolaridnyi.com/curatorial-projects/soska-group The Sprawl (Propaganda about Propaganda) (dir. Metahaven, 2015) - http://sprawl.space/about-the-sprawl/ Ukrainian Body exhibition - http://vcrc.org.ua/en/ukrbody/ Lesya Ukrainka Voina - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voina HAYDEN WHITE, The Content of the Form (1987)