2020 eng

Katia Buchatska, reflecting on the conventional boundaries of art and its representation, on the limits between land art and non-land art, planned to create a gallery and easel works for the exhibition made from local natural materials. Anton Saienko also created his own temporary gallery, in which he himself became a work. The concept of ruin and impermanence, accompanying the history of culture and expressed by the artist in brick walls not bound with mortar, was complemented by the emphasised fragility of his performative gesture—a silent dance in headphones, an homage to “The Legend of Kaspar Hauser.”

Liusia Ivanova directed her temporary message directly before the audience’s eyes. Illuminated on the white background of the quarry at night, the letters VEKI (eyelids) were imprinted for a few seconds on the viewers’ retinas. This fleeting trace of light, with each person’s eyelids as the canvas, constituted the final work.

The works of Maryna Konieva (“The Message Cannot Be Delivered to Your Addressee”) and Yurii Yefanov (“Protolocal”) addressed communication and its (im)possibility, as well as the search for a relevant language and the capacity for understanding. Both the works included performative components and used the chalk quarry as a backdrop—an element of statics and permanence.

Natalia Lisova’s “Empty Form” also focused on processuality and working with time. Interacting with Mohrytsia’s key material—prehistoric chalk—the artist transformed it from something conditionally rigid and stable into something changeable and fluid. By freeing the work from the potential status of a finalised object, she filled the empty form with meanings generated through her actions and interactions with the audience.

“Performance for Piano, Shovel and Three People” by Vitalii Kokhan, Yurii Yefanov, and Anton Saienko—a fusion of heat, music, digging, and poetic readings within the landscape—was extremely temporary but was recorded, like many other works, thanks to the “time capsules” from the DE NE DE group. By burying a number of such capsules within Mohrytsia, the group left a message for art historians of the year 2300. Each capsule contains diagrams and texts for the artistic works of the symposium, and a map of their locations was transferred to the Sumy Art Museum.

Another message to the future was “AfterGarden,” a series of works created from dry and damaged trees, giving them a second life in the landscape as art objects, collectively created by over twenty participants of the symposium under the curatorship of Ganna Gidora.

In 2020, Yurii Vyshniakov, Kostiantyn Zorkin, Oleksii Konoshenko, Vitalii Kokhan, Natalia Matsenko, Yevheniia Moliar (DE NE DE) and the symposium’s permanent facilitator, Ganna Gidora oversaw the work of the art groups.

The symposium was also accompanied by a lecture programme prepared by Katia Buchatska, with lectures from Natalia Kokhan, Maria Lanko, Lizaveta Herman, Olha Shyshlova, and symposium participants—Kostiantyn Zorkin, Yevheniia Moliar, and Clemens Poole.

A special feature of that year’s eventful symposium was the children’s programme, in which nine participants created drawings (“Children’s Message,” curated by Olena Zahrebina), performances and objects (Katia Zhyvotkova, Petro Zorkin, Ivan Kosianenko), and the collective “Flotilla of the Primordial Ocean” by the youngest land artists.