Kyiv: city for/without the state

Which ways or media can help us sustain memory within the city? What is the role of monuments and memorials in remembering? Who and in which manner do different communities choose to delegate their "burden of memory" to, as well as their responsibility for keeping it? What is the responsibility, then? How do we deal with cases when there are contested "rights for the past?" Who would decide to have some chapters from the city’s history visible, and which shall be erased? How do we address the trauma, how to experience/overcome it, how to fit it within the public space? What are the issues and limitations in approaching its representation, in ethical aspects of commemoration of certain tragic, heroic, or ‘usual’ events? What are the ways to avoid or mediate conflicts on multiplicity of memories in the city? These questions, among others, will be addressed during the two days with participants of the workshop through the example of Kyiv. The discussion on the future of the city will have its special focus on multiple links of memory and nation-building with the establishment of a political nation under decommunization and decolonization of the once capital of the UPR, USSR, and now the independent Ukraine, and on the role of the past. One of the goals of the event is to actualize the expert discussion and critical rethinking of such aspects as what memory is in the city and about the city, what could be the ways to shape it specifically in Kyiv, what are the key challenges in this process, and which of them have a chance to become such in the future.

The workshop will include four subject-based panels, two public events (lecture and discussion), and a critical city walk along Kyiv.

Project partners:
"City: History, Culture, Society"
Center for Urbanistic Studies
Center for Urban History
Heinrich Boll Foundation Kyiv Office Ukraine
Kyiv National University of Civil Engineering and Architecture
Institute of History of Ukraine of the NAS of Ukraine
Zabolotnyi State Scientific Library of Architecture and Construction