ІСТОРІЯ З ВІДКРИТИМ ФІНАЛОМ

Abstract

The essay describes transformations of the Ukrainian cultural sphere where once “artists-as-viruses” (Elena Petrovskaya), who inhabited the liminal space between the political and the non-political, embraced and enacted a new understanding of politics as a collective engagement in democracy and history, where the roles of an artist and a citizen complement and reenforce one another rather than stand in binary opposition. Such reattachment to the local context is about regaining agency and voice realized through solidarity and extreme care (Kwasi Wiredu). This new art of action, of intervention in the physical and political reality to affect the symbolic one, cares about the outcome not only about an artistic gesture. It incorporates Ukrainian artists and their experiences into the society unlearning to perceive itself through the Russian and the Western gaze, owning its embedded knowledge and producing its own epistemologies. The Ukrainian decolonial war today is geared towards constructing societies that make sense for those living within them (Felwine Sarr).