No Man is an Island
Audiovisual project about the Ukrainian south. Crimea, Kherson, Mariupol
Part 1
It’s a silent journey to a close and desirable but unattainable territory — Crimea. The author of the idea is Olia Mykhailiuk. In the summer-autumn of 2021 together with soundartist SK.EIN they got as close as possible to the peninsula in order to collect sounds, colors, textures on the border in the form of audio and video files. The main material was recorded on the Khorly peninsula (Kherson region), which is 30 km from Crimea.
Then in Kyiv traditional Crimean melodies and improvisations on these themes were added to it. Mustafa Kyzildeli (Istanbul, baglama), Suren Voskanyan (Mariupol, duduk, clarinet) and Andriy Levchenko (Kyiv, tambourine) joined the co-creation. Musical quotes were used in the piece. The project was presented for the first time at the end of 2021 in Kherson, Kyiv and Ivano-Frankivsk. On February 24, 2022, Khorly was occupied.
Part 2
This audio-visual journey to peaceful Mariupol took place on December 1, 2022. At that moment Mariupol has been occupied by russia for six months already. 90% of apartment buildings had been destroyed or damaged. The siege of Mariupol began on 24 February 2022 and lasted until 20 May 2022. About 400,000 people found themselves in the blockade. There was no electricity, water, gas, heating, mobile connection, food and medicine. The city was bombarded with artillery, aerial bombs and rockets. Over 20,000 civilians died during the blockade in Mariupol.
Suren Voskanyan is one of those who managed to survive the blockade and leave occupied Mariupol. He participated in the recording of the first part. In second part he plays duduk, clarinet and saxophone, this is his first performance after March shell shock. Photo and video were taken by Olia Mykhailiuk (Kyiv) by accident during trips to Mariupol in 2016-2021.The sounds of the city were recorded by Tomasz Sikora (Wroclaw) in Mariupol in 2017.
It is no longer possible to rewrite or add anything so they collected a portrait of their city from the material that Olia and Tomasz have in folders “Mariupol” on their computers and musical improvisation by Suren. At the end of autumn’2022 they gathered in Opera Aperta studio in Kyiv for journey to an imaginary city. Blackouts and regular air raid signals interfered with rehearsals. But the performance and recording took place. Many Mariupol residents who had to move from their hometown to Kyiv were in the audience that evening.
During 2022, “No man is an island” was shown in Dnipro (Ukraine), Klaipeda (Lithuania), Gdynia, Gdansk, and Wroclaw (Poland). In 2023 — Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle and in Asortymentna kimnata in Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukraine). In 2024 — in Kansas (USA).
Our cities are timeless. They are there even when it seems that they are not. These cities are within us. Peaceful. There are cities that do not exist. Everything depends on which word to emphasize. As long as we remember our cities — beaches, fountains, flower beds, houses, factories, cracks in the walls, bridges, they are there. At each showing someone said something like “I have never been to Mariupol but now I felt this city” or “at the beginning there were many questions and then I just immerse in these herbs, listen to them and the music, I must go to the Kherson region someday”
Olia Mykhailiuk