Forest
landart installations / discussion program
festival Atmosfera
Such a successful interaction was the joint program of Artpole and the Slovak festival Atmosfera in August 2024. It is also a multidisciplinary festival that has not only a musical, but also a visual and discussion program. It also emphasizes a careful attitude towards the environment and welcomes site-specific projects. Together the concept of FOREST was implemented at the festival. Ukrainian artists and Slovak architects created a unique open-air space by placing light land art objects in it. Ukrainian experts took part in the “Discussion forest” program, talking about a new experience which is environmental practices during the war.
The ArtPole Agency invited Iryna Solovey (Kyiv) and Anna Prokayeva (Kharkiv) to participate in the discussions. Iryna spoke about social transformations and working with small communities in the context of sustainable revival. Anna shared her experience of working at the ecohub in Kharkiv before and after the full-scale invasion. In particular, she spoke about the concept of “zero waste” and the secondary use of building materials in the context of the war in Ukraine where there are now thousands of houses destroyed by enemy shelling.
Ukrainian artists Myroslav Vajda and Olia Mykhailiuk were invited to artistic interaction with Slovak architects. Their objects were exhibited in the area of the festival located quite far from the big stage and close to an open-air discussion and exhibition space.
Myroslav Vajda’s project “Rays” represented cross-shaped lines of light directed into the sky. For some, they were similar to the light from air defense searchlights which find enemy drones in the darkness, and therefore were a metaphor for protection and hope. For others, they were signals for help directed into the sky.
Olia Mykhailiuk’s objects were also connected with light. Weightless cylinders made of transparent paper painted with elderberries seemed to wrapper the rays and form a bizarre FOREST with trees glowing from the inside. But in this form, the forest existed only for one night. Landart is an interaction with the environment, and therefore it is always unpredictable. On the second evening of the festival a rain changed the drawings on the tracing paper. Streams of juice and rain formed new trajectories on the paper. The next night, a strong wind arose and gave Olia an idea for a performance during which she tore several works into small pieces and combined them with stones and wood. This is how the site-specific project for the Atmosfera festival was born. It was called “Transforming” and included three stages: “installation-performance-installation”, “creation-destruction-reproduction”.
The project FOREST(S) is implemented in the framework of ZMINA: Rebuilding, a cooperation between IZOLYATSIA (UA), Trans Europe Halles (SE) and Malý Berlín (SK) and co-funded by the Creative Europe Programme of the European Union.