A Transient City

War brings its own amendments to the pre-established and orderly networks of urban spaces. Physical threat and material destruction cause forced mobility between geographic locations in search of a safe place. The war forces people to flee from the front and frontline zones and seek new and safer places to live. Lviv is one of such places. Most forced travelers see the city as a temporary stopover on their way to other cities or countries. Some hope for a new (temporary?) settlement.

Thousands of residents from the frontline regions have relocated to Lviv. The urban fabric includes new cultural institutions, educational institutions, business environments, etc. All of them have their own usual rhythms and routines. International diplomats, journalists, and goodwill ambassadors are coming to Lviv on a relatively regular basis. Eventually, because of its proximity to the border with the European Union, the city became another important logistical and transit hub on the map of military and humanitarian aid.

So, how do all the flows and the movement that we live in after February 24, 2022, affect the city? How does each and every one of us experience the transformations, personally and professionally? How have the city professional centers changed and what content do they create today? How are the sensations of distances between cities and the fixation of time transformed? How do war and violence focus the attention of the world's media and intellectuals, writers and journalists? How does the experience of war in the country and attention to us from the outside makes us connected with other geographies and experiences? How do we rethink historically longer pathways in experiencing and overcoming violence and recovery processes and what tools enable us to remember and represent? How is the understanding of (non)material heritage transformed due to the constant threat of violence due to war? How can we broaden our view of the present through a review of the past on the way to the future?

TEAM

Curator: Viktoriia Panas

Сonsultancy: Sofia Dyak

Communication support: Maryana Mazurak

Logistics and technical support: Marta Bula, Oleksandr Dmytriiev

Design: Oleksandra Davydenko