20 - 26.04. 2021
3 - 6.11. 2020
Three episodes from Armed and Dangerous: Episode 1, Episode 2 by Mykola Ridnyi and "Sisters" by Valentina Petrova and Anna Shcerbyna, are going to be shown in the program Focus Ukraine: Underground Resistances of the 24-th International Kurzfilmtage Winterthur in Switzerland.
https://www.kurzfilmtage.ch/EN
September, 4
Selected episodes from the series are available on a digital platform of the Junge Akademie - Akademie der Kunste, international artist-in-residency program. Selection of video is accompanied with the text by Mykola Ridnyi.
https://junge-akademie.adk.de/de/articles/mykola-ridnyi/
April, 14
New essay "Camouflage. Pedagogy of Xenophilia" by Oleksiy Kuchanskiy analyzing the project "Armed and Dangerous" was recently published in the online magazine Transistory White. Text is available in Ukrainian:
https://transitorywhite.com/articles/kamuflyazh-pedagogika-ksenofiliyi
March, 31,
The new issue of the Polish online magazine Obieg is dedicated to Ukraine - "Euphoria and Fatigue: Ukrainian Art and Society after 2014".
It is curated by Tetiana Kochybynska and Kateryna Iakovlenko who describe the issue in the introduction text:
https://obieg.u-jazdowski.pl/en/numery/euphoria-fatigue/introduction
The issue including an essay by Mykola Ridnyi "Armed with a Perspective: The Author's view on "Armed and Dangerous":
https://obieg.u-jazdowski.pl/en/numery/euphoria-fatigue/armed-with-a-perspective
The publication accompanied with the video by Mykola Ridnyi, Elias Parvulesko and Fantastic Little Splash.
more
March, 4
New essay "Goodbye, Mirror!" by Kateryna Mishenko was recently published in the online magazine Support Your Art. Her text is available in Ukrainian:
https://supportyourart.com/columns/dzerkalo-pro/
December 4, 19:00
Kreativni sindikat invites to presentation of the project "Armed and Dangerous" and artist talk of Mykola Ridnyi.
Event will be hold as a part of the Videoforum program and will be hosted by the Gallery Nova.
Screening includes 6 episodes from the project:
Ceremonial Send-Off to the Army (Oleksiy Radynskyi)
Games in a Deoccupied City (Piotr Armianovsky)
Untitled (Elias Parvulesko)
Untitled (Mykola Ridnyi)
Fabulous Squirt (Oksana Kazmina)
A Year Later (Stanislav Bytiutskyi)
Gallery Nova, Nikola Tesla str. 7, Zagreb
04.12.2019
more
October 31, 19:00
Feminist Workshop and Museum Territory of Terror invites to the screening and discussion of the project
"Armed and Dangerous".
With participation of Mykola Ridnyi, Valentyna Petrova, Anna Sherbyna
Moderator: Vita Shnyder.
Poster design: Yulia Rezakova
Memorial Museum of Totalitarian Regimes - Territory of Terror,
Vyacheslava Chernovola str. 45, Lviv
September 12, 20:00
The Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw invites the public to the Museum on the Vistula River for a film program, which will be presented by the artist Mykola Ridnyi.
The screening is part of the public program of the “Never Again. Art against War and Fascism in the 20th and 21st centuries” exhibition.
More about the exhibition:
The program includes movies:
"Armed and Dangerous", 2017– 2018, video series, episodes 1– 4,
"NO! NO! NO!", 2017, short film.
Conducted by: Szymon Maliborski
Museum on the Vistula River, Wybrzeze Kosciuszkowskie str. 22, Warsaw
August 16, 16:00
KinoShot Film Festival and Cherkasy Art Museum invites
to the screening of selected episodes from video series "Armed and Dangerous".
Screening will be accompanied with panel discussion with a topic of "Propaganda and Art".
Participants of the discussion:
Elias Parvulesko - film director, artist
Stanislav Menzekevskyi - film director, researcher
Oleksandr Gusev - film critic
Olena Korkodym - film journalist
Anna Anyfrienko - film director, researcher
Mykola Ridnyi - film direcor, artist (on skype)
Cherkasy Art Museum, Khrechatyk str. 259, Cherkasy
more
June 16, 18:00.
Platform TU invites to the screening of the video series "Armed and Dangerous".
Program includes following films:
Ceremonial
Send-off to the Army (dir: Oleksiy Radynsky)
Games in Deoccupied City (dir: Piotr Armianovski)
Structures of Care (Pavlo Khailo)
Armed and Happy (Fantastic Little Splash)
Untitled (Sashko Protyah)
Untitled (Mykola Ridnyi)
Fabulous Squirt (Oksana Kazmina)
A Story
About the Old Fat Girl. Notes on the Cruel and Evil Bull (Alina Kleytman)
Sisters (Anna Sherbina and Valentina Petrova)
Happy New Year! (Philip Sotnychenko)
A Year Later (Stanislav Bytiutskyi)
Untitled (Elias Parvulesco)
Screening will be accompanied with Q&A sessions with film directors.
Platform TU, Mitropolitska str. 19, Mariupol
May 29 and June 2
"Armed and Dangerous" are going to be presented in non-competition program of the 48-th Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival.
Screenings include following films:
"Ceremonial Send-off to army" (Oleksiy Radynskyi)
Games in Deoccupied City (Piotr Armianovski)
Untitled (Mykola Ridnyi)
Fabulous Squirt (Oksana Kazmina)
Sisters (Anna Sherbina and Valentina Petrova)
Happy New Year! (Philip Sotnychenko)
A Year Later (Stanislav Bytiutskyi)
Untitled (Elias Parvulesco)
Screening will be accompanied with Q&A sessions with film directors.
Culture center "Cinema Kyiv", Velyka Vasylkivska str. 19
More information on https://molodist.com/
more
April 5 at 7:00 pm, YermilovCentre invites to the opening of the video-series exhibition «Armed and dangerous».
The project analyzes the fragile situation of Ukrainian society, which is undergoing external interference in the East and the activity of right-radical movements within the country.
Participants:
Piotr Armyanovskyi, Stanislav Bytyutskyi, Elias Parvulesko, Oksana Kazmina, Alina Kleitman, Valentyna Petrova, Sasha Protyah, Oleksiy Radinskyi, Daniil Revkovskyi, Pavel Haylo, Mykola Ridnyi, Philip Sotnichenko, Anna Scherbyna, Fantastic Little Splash.
Curator: Mykola Ridnyi
The exhibition continues till May, 4
http://yermilovcentre.org/announcements/3/
Address: Yermilov Centre, Svobody square 4, (main building of the V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University), Kharkiv
more
On March
14, at 7PM, as part of the Armed and Dangerous project, there will be special
screenings of works by artists Anna Scherbina and Valentina Petrova as part of
the video-series exhibition Armed and Dangerous.
In the new
series, the sisters of the Sisterhood of St. Mary of Egypt are armed and
dangerous, fighting for unequal rights and painting their nails. In a world
full of hardships, temptations and distortions, they have to stand up to a duel
with deviant marginals, or to lose painfully, filling up a colony of human
garbage. Will these beautiful and brave women be able to save traditional
family values from the threats of the outside world? Everything will become clear after watching
the new series of Armed and Dangerous.
Artists:
Anna
Shcherbina is an artist. Works with various media: from painting to video and
audio installations; a co-founder and member of ЙОД groups (2013-2015) and the Team of Specific
Dates (2015-2017). She has participated in exhibitions: A Space of One’s Own,,
PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv (2018), Textus, Center of Visual Culture, Kyiv (2017),
etc.
Valentyna
Petrova is an artist and a feminist. The artist works with such topics as overcoming
the patriarchal representation of the female body and the search for new ways
of representing it. Also, the artist works with themes of poverty, work and
violence.
March 14
(Thursday), 7 PM
IZONE
Creative Community; the 4th floor, Studio 2
8 Naberezhno-Luhova
St. (Kyiv, Ukraine)
Entry is
free
On March 1, at 7PM, as part of the Armed and Dangerous project, the lecture Kateryna Yakovlenko will be an event by main media partner, media-platform Zaborona.
It is already the fifth year of the war in eastern Ukraine. During this time, many have noticed that outside the military zone, in ‘peaceful cities’, the war is not visible. But the longer the war continues, the more it is visible in discourse, changes in rhetoric, culture, appearance. During this discussion, the participants will consider how the war penetrates private life and what this leads to.
Moderator:
Katerina Sergatskova is a journalist, editor-in-chief of the media project Zaborona.
Participants:
Vyacheslav Likhachev, the researcher of far-right movements;
Pavel Khailo, the artist problematizing the military education;
Natalia
Topchiy, the chief of the department of national-patriotic education and
cultural, educational programmes of the Kyiv Oblast Youth Center (Kyiv Oblast
Council).
March 1
(Friday), 7 PM
Creative
Community IZONE; the 4th floor, Studio 2
8
Naberezhno-Luhova St. (Kyiv, Ukraine)
Entry is
free; but, please, fill in the form
On February
21, at 7PM, as part of the Armed and Dangerous project, the lecture Kateryna
Yakovlenko will talk about the video experiments of Ukrainian artists and
analyze some of the works. There will be a screening.
In the
early 1990s, Ukrainian artists got their hands on video cameras, and they began
to experiment with the genre. The Ukrainian artists were fascinated by the idea
of working on the edge of visual art and cinema. In the early years of the
decade, works were created that appealed to visual culture, the aesthetics of
television and world cinema, as well as issues of documentation, truth and
lies. One of the most striking examples of that time was Vasyl Tsagolov, who
conceptualised his work as Solid Television.
Kateryna
Yakovlenko is a member of the PinchukArtCentre Research Platform, a publicist,
co-author of the PARCOMMUNE book. She contributes to the publications LB.ua and
Bird in Flight.
February 21
(Thursday), 7 PM
Creative
Community IZONE; the 2nd floor
8
Naberezhno-Luhova St. (Kyiv, Ukraine)
Entry is
free
On February
17, at 4PM, as part of the Armed and Dangerous project, there will be a public
discussion where each participant will recall their own experiences and
memories of encountering far right violence, will try to analyse the general
situation.
The name of
the discussion firstly refers to the Witnesses of the End column in the online
publishing Update, in which the researcher of extreme right movements, Anna
Hrytsenko, collects news about the activities of the Ukrainian radicals.
Secondly, the name refers to the personal experiences of everyone who will
participate in the discussion. They have been direct witnesses to the violent
actions of the Ukrainian far-right representatives in relation to the certain
artistic projects and some artistic objects.
Participants:
Lilia
Omelyanenko is a co-founder of publishing house Vydavnytstvo;
Oleksandr
Sosnovskyy is a manager of Platform Tu;
Valeria
Zubatenko is a member of the gender discussion club at Kiev's Dragomanov
University and the co-curator of exhibition Disciplinary Acts;
Yustyna
Kravchuk is a member of the Visual Culture Research Center, researcher;
Olena
Shevchenko is a human rights defender and educator whose focuses are LGBTQI+ rights and women's rights; a
co-founder and head of an Insight LGBTQ NGO.
Moderator:
Hanna
Tsyba, a researcher, Contemporary Arts and Culture Studies, curator.
February 17
(Sunday); 4 PM
Everyone
will receive the information about the place of the event after filling in the
registration form
Entry is
free
On February
7th, as part of the video-series exhibition Armed and Dangerous, the second
public event of the parallel programme took place at IZONE Creative
Community in Kyiv, Ukraine. The
exhibition and the programme is organised by the IZOLYATSIA Foundation.
According to the creator and curator of the video-series, Mykola Ridnyi, the
project is aimed at problematising the militarization of Ukrainian society and the prevailing ideology
of violence in contemporary Ukraine. The lecture by Anna Hrytsenko was on the
problem of the participation of young people in far-right movements.
The lecture
was given by sociologist Anna Hrytsenko, a researcher of far-right movements,
who was going to discuss the facts and causes of the growth in popularity of
radical right-wing movements amongst Ukrainian youth. A group of young men,
about 20 people, among whom was Aleksey
“Stalker” Svinarenko from National Resistance and the radical organisation C14
(Sich), appeared at the event and tried to disrupt the lecture. Despite the
presence of the police, young people painted chairs with a swastika, switched
off the lights at the power box several times, and disrupted the lecturer
throughout the entire event.
Representatives
of radical right-wing organisations also filed a criminal charge against Anna
Hrytsenko according to Article 161 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine:
"Violation of citizen equality on the grounds of race, nationality,
religious beliefs, disability and other."
Unfortunately,
attacks by right-wing representatives on cultural events, artists and activists
are becoming more frequent in Ukraine. In 2009, after the debate Promoting
Homosexuality or Promoting Tolerance?, the Kyiv art gallery YaGallery was set
on fire. In 2017, the pogrom of the exhibition by David Chichkan at VCRC Missed
Opportunity. A month ago, C14 representatives got involved in the case of
student Spartak Khachanov at NAOMA for his anti-militarist work.
IZOLYATSIA
is an institution in exile, forced to move from Donetsk to Kyiv because of the
war in eastern Ukraine. According to its mission, IZOLYATSIA considers it
necessary and relevant to create, through art,
a discourse surrounding and critical reflection on the phenomenon of the
militarisation of Ukrainian society and the radicalisation of right movements.
Comments by
lecture attendees:
Mykola
Ridnyi, artist, curator and author of the Armed and Dangerous video-series
project:
"About
30 representatives of conservative organisations came to the lecture by Anna
Hrytsenko regarding the participation of young people in right-wing movements.
Some of them were members of the radical organisation National Resistance. The
police let them in saying: “Please, behave yourself!” As soon as the lecture
began, the ultra-rights began shouting down the lecturer and disrupting the
planned meeting. They blew up the microphone and video screen blocking access
to the power box. During the event, the right-wing representatives insulted and
threatened the lecturer and other people who held LGBTQ+ and left positions. Their shouting
interfered with another lecture about the architecture of the local Podil
district in the auditorium next door. In an atmosphere of psychological
pressure, most of the audience left the event before it finished. When the
ultra-rights had left, there were numerous swastikas graffitied around IZONE.
"
Bogdan
Altinnik, activist:
"From
the very beginning, about 40 representatives of the right-wing came to the
lecture; there were twice as many of them as there were listeners themselves.
The police could not do anything since the right-wing representatives did not
take violent action. However, their appearance frightened by the majority of
those present, they also verbally mocked the lecturer, led a manipulative
"dialogue," and in the end, even threatened the left and LGBTQ+
activists. So the lecture was disrupted."
Demyan
Romanovich, visitor:
"Even
on the way to the event, I noticed a large group of people with ultra-right
symbols gathering at the nearest metro station. I told the police officers who
were at the entrance to IZONE about that. They, as it turned out, did not know
at all that the event was scheduled for this evening, reacted aggressively but
assured that they would "cover us". Nevertheless, shortly after the
beginning of the lecture, the same group of about 25-30 ultra-right people
appeared at the auditorium, began provoking the lecturer and visitors, behaved
rudely and tried to prevent the event from happening. At the same time, they
did not resort to physical violence. Among them, I recognised members of the
neo-Nazi organisation National Resistance. In addition to this, I noticed
representatives of the political party Svoboda, Ruslana Andreyka and Yuri
Noevy, in the corridor. The police looked confused and did not know how to
react to what was happening. "
On February
7, at 7PM, as part of the Armed and Dangerous project, Anna Hrytsenko will talk
about extreme right movements in Ukraine.
During the
lecture, Anna Hrytsenko, a researcher on far right movements, will outline the
process of mobilizing young people in extreme right movements, something which
has been observed in Ukraine in recent years. Can we talk about a new political
mood? How do teenagers get involved in hate crimes? What are the unique
benefits offered to them?
Anna
Hrytsenko is a researcher of extreme right movements; graduated from the
Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, the Faculty of Sociology. Research interests are right
radicalism and gender studies. Co-author of the publication Gender, Religion
and Nationalism in Ukraine.
February 7
(Thursday); 7 PM
Creative
Community IZONE; the 4th floor, Studio 1
8
Naberezhno-Luhova St. (Kyiv, Ukraine)
Entry is
free
On February
1, at 7PM, as part of the Armed and Dangerous project, artists and authors of
series will discuss the video-series project.
During the
event, there will be a discussion with the participants of the project Armed
and Dangerous. Artists will tell more about their own works, about the course
of events during the filming and will talk generally about the problem of the
growth of right-radical views in modern Ukrainian society.
Participants
of the discussion:
Piotr
Armianovski is a performer and director. He studied under Yevhen Chystoklietov,
Marina Abramović, Janusz Bałdyga. He is a winner of DocudaysUA Film Festival
and Open Night in Kyiv, MyStreetFilms in Slavutych; a participant in the
exhibitions Ukraine: Learning from a Good Neighbour 1918-2018, Passenger in TonHalle, Munich (2018),
Permanent Revolution, Museum Ludwig , Budapest (2018), Olympics-1984 in
Donetsk, Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv (2016), and others.
Elias
Parvulesco is a film director and researcher. He is the creator of the films
dendro dreams (2018; together with Teta Tsybulnyk), ATOMOPOLIS. Assembling
Utopia (2016; together with Stanislav Menzelevskyi and Anna Onufrienko), The
Pink Map (2016), and others. His works were shown at the Ji.hlava International
Documentary Film Festival, the Kyiv International Film Festival Molodist, the
Gray Cube Exhibitions, the Visual Culture Research Center, Kyiv (2018) and
Today We will not Meet, Closer, Kyiv (2015), and others.
Oksana
Kazmina is a director of documentary films and an artist. Together with artist
Anatoly Belov, she founded a project about physicality, Body Practices.
Together with artist AntiGonna, she has founded collective OKCAHAS. The
collective’s work considers female
physicality and sexuality. With their film Zarosli, the collective participated
in the Pornfilmfestival Berlin, the Queer Woche Festival in Leipzig, the Tel
Aviv Queer Film Festival and the Antwerp Queer Festival. Oksana Kazmina
participated in the exhibitions A Space of One’s Own, PinchukArtCenter (2018),
Kyiv International - Kyiv Biennial Kyiv School (2015), Odessa Biennale (2017),
and others.
Alina
Kleitman is an artist working with video, installation and sculpture. She
participated in the exhibitions A Space of One’s Own, PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv
(2018), Permanent Revolution, Ludwig Museum, Budapest (2018), Riga Photo
Biennale (2018).
Oleksiy
Radynsky is a documentary director and publicist. He is a member of the Visual
Culture Research Center. His films were presented at the festivals in
Oberhausen, DOK Leipzig, the Odessa International Film Festival, 86, Docudays,
etc., and were featured at the Institute of Contemporary Art (London), e-flux
(New York), and S A V V Y Contemporary (Berlin).
Daniil
Revkovskiy is an artist working with sociological research objects. The artist
creates projects structuring and rethinking materials seen in and collected
from urban space, archives and social networks. He created a number of projects
in co-authorship with Andriy Rachinskiy. In 2018, they were nominated for the
PinchukArtCentre Prize. Together with Rachinskiy, Daniil Revkovskiy’s works
were shown in the solo exhibitions Soot, Gallery Artsvit, Dnipro (2018), War of
Inscriptions, Small Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal, Kyiv (2016) and others.
Mykola
Ridnyi is an artist and film director. In 2005, he became a co-founder of the
SOSka group. He acted as a curator of a number of international projects in
Ukraine, such as After the Victory (YermilovCenter, Kharkiv, 2014), New History
(SOSka group, Kharkiv Art Museum, 2009) and others. Since 2017, he was a
co-editor of the online magazine on arts, culture, and society, Prostory. His
works were exhibited at the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich, the Neuer
Berliner Kunstverein, the Museum of Contemporary Art in Warsaw, the V-A-C
foundation in Moscow, and others. His films were shown at Transmediale, Berlin
(2019), Kasseler Dokfest (2018), DocudaysUA, Kyiv (2016) and others.
Anna
Sherbina is an artist and craft-woman. She works with different media,
including painting, video, and audio installations. Anna Sherbina is a
co-founder and member of the ЙОД Group (2013-2015) and of the Specific Dates
Collective (2015-2017). The artist lives and works in Kyiv. She participated in
the exhibitions A Space of One’s Own, PinchukArtCentre, Kyiv (2018), Textus,
Visual Culture Cente, Kyiv (2017) and others.
Moderator:
Kateryna
Filyuk is a co-curator of the Armed and Dangerous exhibition.
February 1
(Friday); 7 PM
Creative
Community IZONE; the 2nd floor
8
Naberezhno-Luhova St. (Kyiv, Ukraine)
Entry is
free
On January
31, at 7 PM, IZOLYATSIA invites to the opening of the video-series project
Armed & Dangerous curated by Kateryna Filyuk and Mykola Ridnyi. The project
reflects on the ambiguous state of Ukrainian society undergoing an external
intervention and internal disruptive movements.
Armed and
Dangerous is a project-platform that brings together a group of artists and
film directors working on the intersection of contemporary art and experimental
cinema. Artist Mykola Ridnyi proposed that the project take the form of a video
series devoted to the militarisation of society and, in particular, the
attitude of youth to violence and weapons. The staged and documentary scenes
were shot during parties, walks, and everyday situations around the city, which
the author and his friends encountered. These scenes form the basis of the first
episodes in the series. The images attempt to reflect the fragile condition of
Ukrainian society, which is undergoing external military intervention in the
East whilst also experiencing internal disruptions caused by ultra-right
movements. The subject seeking an emancipated society in an aggressively
conservative environment is reflected in the interrelation of everyday life,
the Internet and cinema.
Exhibition
Details:
Artists:
Piotr
Armianovski, Stanislav Bytiutskyi, Elias Parvulesco, Oksana Kazmina, Alina
Kleitman, Valentyna Petrova, Sashko Protyah, Oleksiy Radynsky, Daniil
Revkovskiy, Mykola Ridnyi, Philip Sotnychenko, Anna Sherbina, Fantastic Little
Splash.
Curators: Kateryna Filyuk and Mykola Ridnyi
Date:
January 31, at 7 PM
Address: IZONE Creative Community; 8 Naberezhno-Luhova
St.; Floor 2
September 26, 20:00,
Bursa gallery invites to a screening of the series "Armed and Dangerous".
The program includes first episodes filmed by Mykola Ridnyi as well as new films by Oksana Kazmina and Piotr Armianovskyi. The screening will be accompanied with a Q&A session with the authors.
Bursa gallery, Kostyantynivska str. 11-b, Kyiv
more
August 6, 21:00
Green Theatre of Odessa invites to free film screening.
The program includes two films of Mykola Ridnyi and Q&A session with the director.
"Armed and Dangerous", episodes 1 - 3 (2017 - 2018),
"NO! NO! NO!" (2017)
Green Theatre, Taras Shevchenko Central Park, Odessa
more