 good morning my friends. I think we can start the discussion panel of the second day of our assembly. My name is Anastasia Platonova, independent cultural journalist. I have the honor to lead this panel. I will focus on museums and state institutions in all time and I think we should talk about the museum institutions for a number of reasons because museums, since the beginning of the false kill in Beijing, they had faced the very same situation as any other institutions but there are many other aspects that we might not consider obvious and the scope of challenges and losses every single day is quite massive. Museums are tasked with a really difficult challenge of preserving Ukrainian culture and the war has put museums in a very difficult mode. Today we're going to try to describe how museums work. I have the honor to introduce the speakers. The deputy manager of National Alexandr Lovrenko Film Center in Kiev, Olena Ranczuk. A general director of Mestetsky Arsenal National Art and Culture Museum complex in Kiev, Olesya Ostrowska-Lyuta. Olga Novicka, the Bogdan Varvara Kanenko National Museum of Arts General Manager and PhD of University of Oxford in the UK, Olena Chervonik. I wanted to start with a small reality check so that we could talk, make a small introduction speech on how your institutions, your teams survived the first nine full-scale invasion and the war, how your exhibition practice looked like and obviously we'll talk about threats but also insights and challenges and conclusions. Please could you start? Good morning everybody. First and foremost I wanted to thank the organizers of this conference and the Ukrainian Institute especially Simon and everybody who did their job to make this today's event happen and obviously I would like to thank Ukrainian Armed Forces so that we're alive and we can work and discuss today. I wanted to share my own experience with our colleagues and the public of our museum with people who who's abroad, who left in Kiev, who came back as well. It's a lot of stories. Our schedules are really tight, have become really really tight since the beginning of the war and the programs that were prepared in the pre-war times that were prepared in weeks, now we're preparing them in days. I think you will all agree that all activities of the museums are connected with personal feelings because the museum for us is something constant. It is a kind of a shelter where you go to in order to feel some kind of security and stability. I wanted to say that any preparatory work to any possible invasion in the museum took place. We were considering what would we do if this invasion happened, how to secure our collections, what kind of actions to take but on February 24th and we understood it, it is impossible really to prepare for such a thing. Obviously on this day after the first explosions we gathered together and started to talk about how to preserve the collections, how to guarantee safety but part of our colleagues since the first days of March spent whole days in the museum. Myself I managed to join them in April. So first and foremost we decided to preserve the collections, that was our priority and indeed it is a kind of a therapeutic effect for us and we are thankful to our German partners who sent us a huge truck with materials to help us pack the collections. So you cannot imagine how we were really stoked about going to work to pack collections. It was really our priority and we were very emotional about it. There was even a video of myself as I was packing some China figurines and obviously packing was not the only task we had on our hands. For everybody who stayed in Kiev there is a masterclass for everybody who wants to join us and help us to pack the collections. So everybody is welcome, you can come to the museum and actually see how the process of packing looks like. The history of an empty museum is what impressed our colleagues the most from colleagues from abroad. They even in Dortmund they organized a photo exhibition. Our German colleagues were considering exploring the idea of a museum without any collections, how it can continue operating. Some of my colleagues connected and not connected with cultural institutions, they were asking me what are you doing right now apart from securing the collections. Obviously there is a constant deja vu effect because many institutions, many Ukrainian institutions have not been experiencing the war for the first time. We have had the experience of war previously. For example the Second World War we still have people who remember the experience of the Second World War. Within the past nine months we have been reliving in a way the past, the reliving their experience and we actually have been also learning about their experience of preserving museums in war time of the Second World War and this is exactly what we want to do. We also want to leave some memory, leave some mark in the archives about how we preserved museum collections in the war time of 2022. The next few slides will show what we actually did within the past summer. One of the interesting educational events was the museum courtyard. I can say that what was most interesting for our public, for our audience who came to our museum is the feeling of shelter. They wanted to feel some kind of stability. This was an area of freedom where people could come on the weekend and rest, drink some coffee, listen to go on a walk because we were walking down some streets starting and ending in the museum. These were guided tools along with experimental music so we created kind of a kind of a hub thanks to our neighbors. We were able to work with an institution called Squad 17B and together with them we created a kind of a partnership because over the fence we could work with them. Moving on I wanted to say that we had another interesting initiative together with Odessa Museum. It's a demonstration of our museum. During the war it's a tour of the empty holes of the museum called Shadows and Walls. We're talking about the architecture, history, biography of the people connected with the museum. Obviously the main person of this masterclass was the museum and its walls, let's say, could talk and tell some stories. You probably know about these exhibition projects in our museum. I'm not going to stop longer on this one because we'll continue talking about the details so I'm just clicking through my presentation and just to give you a glance. Here I wanted to stay a bit longer and talk about longer. I was talking about some territory of freedom and peace. I was actively talking about this on the 9th of October and I was talking about the peaceful walls of the museum but unfortunately I lied to them because if they look at these photos on the 10th of October there was a huge airstrike, a huge Russian airstrike and on Friday in the 40s we had a very similar airstrike which damaged our museum as well which is quite symbolic and this is the deja vu effect I mentioned in the first place. Although Kiev was not occupied, we still faced such a similar experience. So you can see part of the museum was damaged so the windows were broken and I just couldn't imagine that inside the museum there could be so much glass because all the glass as you can see was broken and fell inside the museum. Everybody joined us and helped us in bringing everything in order, in cleaning up the glass. You can see the famous hole in the street but right now fortunately it was cleaned and the street is whole. Everything is repaired and it's amazing how quick these works are being carried out. Here is a really crucial moment because the museum which seemed to be a very safe place stopped to be so. You know it's a huge blow. It's really hard to recreate these mechanisms to create the histories and to continue our work. My last word in the context of my speech, I wanted to stop pause at this moment. There was a training on providing first aid within the volunteer activity in volunteer communities. We were showing how to help people in extreme situations, how to help them in emergency situations. This photo shows a very emotional state of us everybody because every day long we are in a very stressful situation because we don't know what's going to happen next and we're not only concerned with conserving and preserving our collections but also the constant threat of what can happen in a moment. Thanks a lot Ola and I think that we are going to touch upon the layers that you discussed before once again but I think that your speech presented a lot of challenges and changes in museum institutions of Ukraine and we should talk about them. Please let these slides remain on the screen for better understanding of the emotions. Please let's speak about the experience of Art Arsenal and specifically about your experience. Present also your inclusions, your insights for your team for these last months. Thanks a lot and it's very interesting to listen to what you're talking about and I think that the experience that my colleagues shared yesterday, my colleagues from non-governmental sector and our governmental public sector, our experiences are very similar. Of course there are details where we differ but basically we are going through very similar things and so we are playing more or less similar roles. Thinking about what is going on with all of us, I reminded that in March I wrote an essay and it was publicized only on Facebook because I just did not have energy to promote it anywhere else. Yes Facebook remains one of the main media for Ukrainians. Yes and throughout the whole March I reminded so many scenes from my childhood and at some point I realized how we look at elderly people, at people who do not remember abruptly what happened to them tomorrow or yesterday but still they believe very well some very very distant scenes and therefore I just started recalling the scenes from my childhood in March and they were so vivid to me and I thought that maybe such things happen when people or institutions face a wall of insecurity and this wall is so close. Everyone who was in Kiev in March was in total insecurity and every time we woke up in the morning we actually were not sure if we are going to be alive by the end of the day and this result of that we felt that there was a wall in front of us and so sometimes we felt like having this wall so close to us in the same way like elderly people they think that they do not have very long future, the future is so close and what it meant for our institutions our institutions they are all related to our past even as such institutions as artesinal and Dovzhanka center of the 20th century because your building is very modern but partly our work relates to the past and also it relates to the future because we should be sort of a way to present future to people so in order to present this future to people we have to make enormous efforts now and it's it doesn't work automatically anymore and therefore we just immerse into the past to avoid this and so while thinking about that I realized that we have a few missions first of all we have to preserve our heritage in physical sense it should just survive the second mission we have to voice the opinions of Ukrainian culture so that as many people as possible in the world would know what is going on in Ukraine also with culture the third mission is that you are doing something to help people be stable, be in good condition and I think that at the moment also literally our mission is to help people overcome this very approximate horizon and think realize what's going on a few days ago we opened such an exhibition that presents the relationships among people in Ukraine in the conditions of insecurity of instability when we have so many threats of food shortage and actually it's very unusual for us because we realized basically Ukraine plays such an enormous role in food safety of the whole world and therefore we are trying to rethink and we are trying to make some theoretical thoughts even when it's so difficult and I think that every institution has a very approximate very close horizon horizon at the moment but still we are working and yesterday I heard a few thoughts about physical presence, physical space and I think that when we are looking from the perspective of Kiev because we were on the siege at the moment at some point and so physical presence of people in the city had two dimensions the first meaning was first dimension was sort of physical presence in the most radical example is President Zelensky who did not leave the country and therefore we realized that our country remained integral yeah he was an example and so we had to be an example as an institution for someone to show to demonstrate that we are there that we preserve the institutionality in this area in this city and the second point is we were trying to preserve sense of citizenship because it is so important when authorities officials state that they do not leave the country they do not flee from the country because they want to stay here and to preserve the institutions and the fabric the fabrics of the city but there is sort of a benchmark of a border of stability of resilience we had so many requests from foreign agencies and they asked us why are you staying in Kiev the journalists who asked me about this because maybe they wanted me to say something like I'm defending my motherland or something like that but I could not say anything like that because on the one hand they realized all my obligations I realized what I should do but I did not realize what is the border of my fragility because we realize when this border was only after it is over and therefore it's so difficult to answer this question because this border can be crossed at any moment and this is and so quite often you realize that it is happening at this very moment so physically on the one hand physical presence helps to preserve institutionality the sense of citizenship but at the same time it is constantly under pressure of border of fragility of resilience about which you never know when it is over and thanks a lot for your very sincere thoughts and for your sincere experience and we are very happy that art arsenal remains to be an example for many institutions and I would like to ask you to ask about your experience in the Zhenka Center you have many more challenges than other institutions yes we were lucky enough to have so many challenges yes I would first of all like to thank to all of those who made this meeting possible it is so nice to feel your physical presence even when we are in Kiev we do not feel each other's physical presence but here Ukrainians met with each other and with the international partners so it's very nice for all of us to meet here and I would like to share my global observation and nobody heard from me about that yeah so it will be an exclusive sharing of thoughts yes basically we have very strange relations with time on the one hand we realize that we just do not have time so much work is not has not been done whole tasks have not been completed I'm in a hurry and I do not have time to somehow catch up with everything and we have just lost our time and it's all everything what is going on everything is sort of limitless it doesn't have limits and one event happened and it proved to me that it is a sort of a scenario from above when we had a city a day of city of Kiev we decided to host an event multidisciplinary event the Kiev 450 in military language means everything's okay everything's quiet and so we conducted this today's event and within this event we presented some lectures we showed some videos and Kiev citizens also shared the experience about leaving Kiev and coming back and then we also had a performance of Hezev Band and they started with Chernabayevka song it should have been a provocative performance we were looking for some bellies curts for them because they wanted to make a provocative performance from Lviv as pig blood was brought and so evening starts a song starts no air raid alerts during the whole day one of the performers just starts pouring blood on himself and then the sirens start and at first we asked everyone to just leave the premises and go outside and everyone was so dissatisfied everyone was disappointed as a way went outside just to bow down and before the audience and unfortunately we had to say farewell to this bloody ballet and I realized and the children and people started singing the hymn of Ukraine on the street so it was sort of a sign for us that the time is there and we just have to trust this time and very simple situation happened in museum Hanenkov one week before this terrible strike we had a possibility to visit the opera performance and museum was presented in totally different way we are so impressed museum became so open so new to us and we have never imagined that such things can happen in museum and this strike put sort of a door it brought some sort of a breakthrough so this is sort of interpretation of our own but I see some sort of wheel from above in everything like this so I saw that I when I became a head of Dovchenko center I saw some logical events that happened and we sometimes if someone starts something we have to finish it and we have to finish someone's home task for 30 years of Ukraine's independence Ukrainian Ukraine has not done everything to counteract this invasion and therefore also cultural invasion and therefore from the first days my personal priority was I did not tell my colleagues that they have to leave Ukraine or they obliged to stay here but the priority was to say that you are the most important you are the carriers of memory and you are you people are grain from Ukraine and because you are sort of a cultural seed and so it was very important to preserve people so that under no circumstances all those people who are left in the country going to die and so fortunately our whole team survived nobody left us and except for two people who are living abroad at the moment our whole team was preserved and from the first days because the movies in a digital form is quite dynamic and it can cross the borders so easily and we were lucky enough because we had power supply and internet we proposed to and a lot of cinema agencies contacted us because they wanted Ukrainian movies to have because they wanted to emphasize Ukraine's voice abroad and so it was very symbolic for me because at 12 o'clock on the 24th of February Fiat the world cinema agency contacted association contacted us and they told us that they are ready to support us and provide us any support we need in a week and we realized some we received some information from our authorities that we have to optimize our optimize our costs and reduce our costs and so on not to put pressure on the state's budget but we didn't receive that much help from them and all I meant that what are you doing except for preserving the heritage and I can say if that's not enough isn't it our main work it doesn't mean that we are just sitting and thinking if an enemy comes I'm going to lie down and enemies won't cross and pass into our building but preserving this heritage its contacts these are contacts with our partners this is communication with so many people this is also information about the collection collections so first of all we are obliged to demonstrate our presence in information area so to say justify our existence and for many of us we just cannot do any other way we want to be heard we want to be people to listen to us we want to be appreciate and so any challenge we have I see as something organic although of course I would like those challenges not to exist thanks a lot for your wonderful conclusions and we are moving to the subjects that speakers started talking about the conclusions and practices and I would like to come back about what Lesya mentioned the importance of physical presence and about things that Elena Kancherova mentioned about preservation in different levels and directors of museum institutions cannot say to us not about everything because there are so many aspects during the war that they cannot share but I would like to ask about preservation on a key level and it is a very big challenge to Ukrainian museum institutions please share with us your insights about preservation of buildings your collections you started mentioning about this of course we won't speak about what you overcreated and what you did not evacuate but please share with us your survival practices and how do you think what are what survival practices are the most productive for you because the war is going on and we still have these challenges and in the context of preservation for example we now having a dark and cold winter so we have a new layer of challenges so let's speak about this level yesterday I wanted to add listening to other colleagues we talked with Alona Karava if you remember during the round table or rather maybe a panel discussion there was a thought that a horizontal the horizontal aspect is a modus vivendi for peaceful times in difficult times the hierarchy does matter at first when I heard it I thought my experience is completely contrary the horizontal aspect was really helpful but maybe after this winter I may have actually different conclusions we are in the process so it may change now I'm talking of my current experience but when you know following this line of thought I think it's not about the horizontal aspect or vertical one but about the measure about the scale so what really helps is maximal number of most most decisions are made on the level of a small number of people in small teams that you don't need to consult with me or other managers it's really simple decisions like drawing up a schedule it's very very very easy to to make such decisions for like five people rather than for 100 people so this remains to the discretion of a small unit many decisions like this are made I just wanted to to talk about this but on the other hand there are several parameters that make this the horizontal aspect well effective let's say it is effective that it's productive it is time so the small teams they know how much time they have on their hands which means that within some time a decision needs to be made you know the and second if a decision is unable to be made the team just needs to to understand this that this person knowing how much time they have they need to take this decision and it works really well in a situation of crisis another thing which has been discussed quite a lot so far is the the exchange of roles so when one some people can take over the responsibilities of others because you don't know how fragile people can be even more it's not a linear process it can go up it can go down a person can be in a different state they can recover after stress so it's it's it's it's a it's a dynamic process and you cannot predict how it's going to happen so you know um you know colleagues need to be ready and take up the slack for you when need comes for example out of 100 people somebody can can support you when when you're down in Arsenal about half to three quarters of the team remained and continued working so so this is our experience thirdly is the skills in we don't work in departments we our teams are interdisciplinary and cross sectoral so it means that our colleagues they know how professional and know the the scope of responsibility of colleagues from from from other department so when they know that let's say team A cannot do a certain thing then team B can can support them maybe you know in in longer time period but still the job gets done simply speaking it it really helps and this is our experience thank you alessia i wanted to just state that indeed the experience of flexible small and dispersed team of cultural institutions proves to be really effective especially in uh circumstances when institutions face unbelievable unimaginable responsibility i will tell you that it's really the the scale of the responsibilities is is is just humongous an average person would not withstand such pressure some institutions cannot serve as a partner unfortunately the ministry of culture at the beginning of the full scale invasion failed to support the preservation of collections in museums i really need to voice this opinion so the huge huge hats down to you because you're doing a great job because you took up this this burden this idea really resonates with me it sounds like a that in such circumstances it is really difficult to to plan anything in dovrenko center we worked twice three times as much in order to continue our work because we were not dealing with the russian aggression but also with in terms of the dovrenko museum we also had we were let's say invaded by one institution under the the ministry they have been misusing the the prerogatives vasted in them by the by the ministry but our connections with this institution der schkino which is i believe a a government institution dealing with with the cinema are really tight and it really puts a damper on our institution and the whole team needs to be involved in this cooperation so speaking of what we needed in the circumstances of reacting to war threats is actually minimizing other burden work from imposed on us by other institutions right now we're fighting for the preservation of our collections so this is our main main focus and we're dealing on on many levels with this issue on the legal level as well our team is is extremely personally involved in in the preservations an amazing an amazing part of of the resources is is actually burned on on not only preservation the collections but also the the other dealings with external institutions the situation in in our country is not catastrophic is so catastrophic that we do not we cannot enjoy enough sufficient financial support so that the people who work in the team because they do not have the the luxury of you know selling selling the works like photographs or sculptures they receive financing from from the government so that the so that people are familiarized with with works of art but they cannot sell them to to the public so the our first and foremost task is the preservation of of artworks but we we are tasked with other responsibilities as well we need to find power generator generators so there is a lot of infrastructural challenges as well since the beginning of of the full-scale invasion there was one person who really helped us Sasha Kovalchuk helped us organize everything the Odessa museum is present with us online Kirill Ipatov wanted to join us online but it didn't work unfortunately but I will talk about his experience because it's really important I wanted to move on to the level of threat and and preservation and let's talk about the the connection with with the government which is really really difficult sometimes because institutions also are tasked with the preservation of the institutions themselves and they need to devote a lot of resources for this for this purpose and there is no exaggeration that their work is is immeasurable and what Olana has said on the crisis situation in the center the situation is connected with the reorganizing the center on the part of of of the government and its agency cinema agency this so-called reorganization will lead to the destruction of one of the most successful Ukrainian multidisciplinary institutions a key institution on the preservation of the cinematic heritage we cannot let this happen and indeed we are in a situation where we need we we are forced to force the the state the government to listen to us and we need together to save the institution in the post-mai dan period we'll get back to this issue and I know that we're jumping from one topic to another but I wanted to to pass the floor to you thank you for giving me the floor I wanted to explain why I'm here in this panel because I'm the only person who is not a manager of a governmental institution of a museum or or any other so I'm when it comes to the Ukrainian context I started working in Ukraine in isolation in 2011 in the Isolacia institution I will not talk about this institution in length because it was done yesterday I worked in Isolacia with Ukrainian contexts and Ukrainian artists a lot of people here present that I see went through the Isolacia group you took part in our exhibitions for example and as you know Isolacia in in in Donetsk was suspended in 2014 unfortunately and I was in Donetsk in the spring of 2014 when the city was captured when the city was the airport was bombarded and I was there when it happened back then our team needed to be evacuated our staff need to be evacuated as well I'm not sure even even the word evacuation is good for this for this case because evacuation is something you do before a crisis situation but we were evacuating our staff under the fire of Kalashnikovs we were evacuating what the Russian army allowed us actually in essence war started not on February 24th but in 2014 it's interesting that that in Ukraine nobody's speaking what was lost in 2014 by our heritage our cultural funds what's happening with museums in in in Luhansk in in Donetsk we don't know if these collections are there or they were robbed by by by by the Russians in 2022 we see that our our government institutions and ministry of culture was not really ready to possibly preserve our heritage and for example in cities like Mariupol-Herson we don't know what is really happening in in in in the cities sorry for interrupting but I wanted just to say that to dive even deeper in this history this question is the question of continuity because in 2014-15 the ministry of culture I'm not really fond of this institution a lot of was made actually Olesya Astrovskaya was the deputy of the of the minister of the of the ministry the museum was at the time in the process of construction so it's the question of institutional continuity so I just wanted to make this remark please continue briefly on the 9th of June we were we were we fled from our territory and we were sitting in some buildings in Padilla and we were just we could not just imagine how we are going to survive are going to work in future we had our team but doesn't have any sense to work like this in future insulation was very specific in Donetsk we have not brought anything from outside we worked only with social economic cultural things that we had in place so actually we lost our sense of existence so we started thinking probably we should be a nomadic organization but I think it was sort of an topic dream it's sort of a very cool world world nomadic but when you lose your house your accommodation your social ties your job this cool world doesn't mean anything to you and recently and so I started working with the Harkiv school of photography that was presented by Sasha yesterday then again Dasha view the same story of invasion we again have to save our collection isolation and Harkiv school of photography these are not state institutions so we were quite dynamic we managed to do what was necessary we were able to evacuate the collections with the help of our German colleagues who helped us in transportation and now we are trying to pitch this collection in some places abroad and so because physically this collection is abroad at the moment and therefore we try to promote our photography so objects I can share with you in what way we build established relations with some institutions I'm in Great Britain now and I'm also contacting some British institutions and try to convince them that they it is worth organizing an exhibition with Ukrainian photos but okay let's let's stop here for a moment but we will come back to your story again I don't know what aspect of our talks do you want to share in your talk but probably you can share your experience with public institutions because it is very interesting especially in the context of museum Hanenkov it is a municipal museum so it is directed by a municipal direct rate of culture but the department of culture left one of people from the department of position left the position and it was unknown who was in charge and therefore you had quite a lot of complications so can you share your experience first of all I would like to say from the optimistic point of view I would like to first of all thank and give thanks of course it is terrible that war happened and therefore we had to find new ties new connections due to the war but basically it's a matter of responsibility of readiness to take responsibility and so Yulia Vaganova and all those people who were in museum from the very first day of invasion to this responsibility on themselves and so we are very grateful to our colleagues to our Western partners who helped us in this we are very grateful to our colleagues from Arsenal and to New Silesia because a lot of these projects including grant applications in order to get the funding to preserve collections to somehow physically protect our collections we were able to do this due to the support and help we received and so we started establishing connections ties first on local level and this human aspect helped us survive and be still be integral we'll still have our windows and it's a strategic optimism and we can say that our colleagues from Arsenal the moment they help us create procedures how to optimize the project activities how can we distribute the roles it is also very important that our colleagues mentioned because we redistribute our roles our responsibilities and it's a big challenge to all of us from the first from the first days of war we started joking that we have we are doing 10 and a half jobs in our museum because we did our job and we did the job of so many other people who left the country or who had to be relocated and and it is very important to do this work instead of someone because it is very important for people abroad to know that once they arrive they will still have this job for themselves although someone else does it at the moment and so many people are called us and asked can we come back and we said yes of course you can there is a place for you and I'd like also to mention the relationships with time on the one hand we are working with the past as Alessa mentioned but on the other hand this past is sort of horizon and we do not have a clear future we do not understand how much is ahead of us we are trying to be ready for anything but you are not sure in anything but on the other hand you are ready for everything and so it's a unique situation because we can adapt new skills and previously we had a week a few days a month for something now we just do not have time for this we just have to do the work very actively very quickly and it is part of our everyday life all the time I'm doing something new of course I'm making a lot of mistakes and then I'm sorry for that but it's so quick training for us also in the context of preserving our collections it is totally new experience to us of course we spoke about evacuation or some preservation but we have never done that before so it was a new experience to us so we had to become mature very quickly and I'm very grateful for that all I want to add something very quickly I would like to relate to things that starts to be mentioned and this is a role of diaspora of the Ukrainians who are living abroad and it seems to me that their role is very important probably we do not realize how big their role is and it's not formal role but if we remind about the role of diaspora after the second world war then we realize that this is a model for our potential diaspora now and Elena mentioned it in the context of Kharkiv school of photography I think that this is a very productive direction of thinking yeah thanks a lot for your remark workers they're directors of museum institutions they sell tell us about fragility and still they show us there's very strong resilience and we are scattered around the whole Europe but still everyone is so flexible everyone is adapts adjusts to everything what is going on it's just unbelievable and I'm so proud to look at you and the time is running out and the discussions are becoming more and more interesting and I would like to judge a few aspects which are very important in functioning of any institution exhibitions it's very important to observe how institutions grow when we look at their exhibition activities please share with you our your insights after you started exhibitions during in-war conditions I know that you have very interesting experience experience some of you remain to remain to be a focal point for some other institutions for example Hanenkov museum starts to rethink what their role what their place and we have never seen in museum Hanenkov such things as we've seen there every a few months ago so who will start this is our new role first of all I was lucky enough and it was quite a big challenge I became a coordinator of the project this is a situational project and all our activity now is quite situational because we just face the challenges and we just try to answer them and quite often we had plans before and we try to do our best to stick to this plan but nowadays we have quite the opposite situation and so Yulia Vaganova after a year meal of in a year meal of center there was held a project by artist Kalashnikov and year meal of center due to the allocation in half basement on half basement level this place became sort of a shelter for cultural community and everyone who is connected to year meal of center could be sheltered there and then like I was invited to our empty halls and our museum has two halls and in one building the art of west country is presented and in another part Asian countries arts is presented and so our museum became a platform for some new project on the one hand we started thinking if a museum of classical art can become a place where contemporary art is going to be exhibited and can we present their creative works of modern artists and many things were absolutely new to us of course we held different projects related to modern artists but it was in the context of classical art some reflections or for example like Maitrey Weisberg exhibition it's related to society and because he uses classical painting techniques and so we have not changed our exhibitions in the Asian hall since 2004 this hall became a place for something absolutely new and it was so vibrant to us maybe just got used to our exhibits we got used to our comfort zone and the whole war and everything that is related to it this war brings us away far away from this comfort zone it was so comfortable to see it next to sit at the table and do our research work and suddenly I have to talk to a modern artist Tolet Kalashnikov and have to use some new skills I have to use and to achieve some new tasks and yes for us it was of a sort of an experiment and very grateful that that because it opened a new chapter in our history of museum and so the history of exhibition itself the history of the museum in war the texts of Sergei Zhadan and other poets who were thinking about the war about Soviet times and post-soviet times who reflected on some history and at the same time the objects start thinking in totally different ways and this is what this exhibition is all about and so when we prepare this exhibition when Yulia entered the red hall where we had Chinese classical objects she entered the hall and said it's so interesting that this hall this hall basically was created for objects like Oleg Kalashnikov does because it's just specifically for him it looks so nice with his objects yes it's quite an interesting story that we see so it's wonderful that we see so many interesting things in Hanenkov museum if you allow I would also speak about Hanenkov museum it came to me during the presentation of new opera what we talked about with Yulia so through this imposed situation it's a huge potential it's not a place of preservation and knowledge and work of collection but the making of the culture here and now in a weird way this did not happen earlier you can see it in in a contrast when you're in the center of the situation yeah and at this moment you just understand it on the other hand I'm quite afraid of ourselves we're like patting ourselves on the backs too much I think but but yeah right now we we do quite a lot of work so we can be proud of ourselves yeah this year we can allow us for this it is a kind of therapeutic activity in Arsenal everything is happening as as usual it's kind of a business as usual so we have been cooperating quite similarly as before the war but the the circumstances that we are right now they form the institution we are right now and this evolves all the time it's a process we are in the process and you can it's quite evident in our two exhibitions the first one was one of the first in Kiev to open in at the beginning of June why did we actually organize it I will reiterate that in April we understood that we are so talking we're talking so much about this allowed and excessively much more than it is necessary to to understand the the the understand of the of the gravity of the situation it applies not only to Arsenal workers but also everybody who is in Kiev our current exhibition involves our kind of exudes our understanding of the current situation and the and the gravity of it and it's much more reflective but so far we don't know how it's going to work as much as we are faced with other challenges new challenges the lack of of energy meaning electricity and unpredictable schedules when the institution has a lot of responsibilities in before the the user to provide services on time everything is is invalid right now it's irrelevant irrelevant because there is a different rapport between the visitors and the institution the visitors are more in the process and in they they feel the same experience the same circumstances as we do so our schedule is is up to up to change all the time it's quite fluid depending on on on the circumstances we can take an example of of of rain like everybody understands that when when when rain happens the circumstances changes and it changes in our institution as well yes i agree what olesa has said it adds to our our discussion physical presence changing circumstances fluid volatile situations it's it's unimaginable olenka please the floor is yours what kind of difference is this i mean whether in wartime or there is no no wartime the circumstances are volatile and they activate different values i really like to phrase about what supports the strength of and the resilience of the community in dozenko center we had the value of a huge cultural hub under one roof there are plenty of art forms and this is actually the nature of of the cinema to for example to create a painting or a book you need one person but to create a film you need a group of people or at least a person who who is the camera operator and the actor but anyway there is a whole group behind the project one of our key ideas behind behind the project is is to present cinema in the form of festivals we organized two of them one was in in the summer organized not at the onsite of the center because because of the the safety so we transfer to a different location and it's not connected with with the war but we actually we're concerned with our emotions and the main focus of our activity was diving deep into our being obviously this was imposed by the situation around so we wanted to reinstate and preserve the nature of our being and this is this is the direction that we devoted most of our resources to right now we started processes including the whole team into this into this experience previously it was an atomized process right now uh we include it's more inclusive so everybody needs to understand all members of the team needs to understand what everybody is doing so the whole process of making of the movie for example was so that it was understood by everybody it's actually quite a young collection so we cannot contact the the founders obviously of of our museum but we can talk with the creators it's really important for for the whole team to understand what the projects are made of and who is responsible for what this serves as the basis of of resilience and and strength of our our little community so right now the center is carrying out the mission of point of resilience we can provide shelter to people provide them heat electricity uh hot water so that's another another function of the museum see how how it's only interesting how Ukrainian cultural institutions are facing more and more challenges and still they can dive deep into their own history and and and bring the activity on a on a completely different level um the different center currently is a point of invincibility a point of help for everybody Elena could you provide us information on the insight from your international exhibition experience first of all I would like to summarize a little bit for me the the main focal point of our discussion is the innovation of our activity obviously we had some normal mode of operation but we also create a new space for new activities as I listen to you I understand I understand that the museum activity in Ukraine in terms of innovative approaches what to do with a with an empty museum for example when you have cleaned up broken glass well we can be innovative in in the world context the innovation concerns not only museum activity but the Ukrainian society in general right now we have been forging new connections in our community right now I am in Oxford but and we have organized many conferences on Ukraine and people are enamored with Ukraine they don't know that this that really you can forge a society build a civic society like this like Ukrainians do um forge new connections create and and communicate together it's really unimaginable for them so it doesn't concern only the museum sphere but for example we're talking about our Ukrainian army and army generals our army general is probably is most experienced in terms of tactics and and strategy not in terms of strategy and simulation but in on the executive level there is no other person in the world than Zaluzhny our army general right right now we are also on the front line creating and forging new connections with with the public I just wanted to add that our history also makes me think of the moment that museums in in in the USA went through I worked in in America for a long time in Philadelphia and there was a moment when the Black Lives Matters movement has been initiated and we've been talking a lot how discussing the the issue how the how the museum can become a sanctuary for example from a historical perspective in in the Middle Ages it used to be a safe place for the community was was church you could find shelter in in the church you could feel safe there today in a secular world there is a safe place which for example a museum can can be so let's talk about museum as as a sanctuary in the museum of Philadelphia we were discussing a hypothetical situation in Ukraine right now this sanctuary is actually materialized not metaphorical it is a real place of shelter indeed museums in in Ukraine's are one of the safe places in a symbolic sense because in physical obviously we cannot know what's going to happen so we can only believe in in our army but in a symbolic sense in an emotional one I would say that the Ukrainian Ukrainian museums right now serve as a as a safe place thank you Elena for this remark and thank you for summarizing our discussion because we're just left with a few minutes so I wanted to pose a final question and to sum up our our discussion let's recap our experience and insights everything that you went through and we have been going through within the past nine months of the war what do you think is most what is the vital as as the tools in in the fight and what can be scaled up on over two and a half thousand museums in Ukraine fighting just as you do please just one minute per person please summarize the summaries please my conclusion is that our inner resources are just limitless yes of course afterwards we will realize what is the line border of this fragility and how quickly our hair is going to be gray but we have hair dyes and so it doesn't matter yes so our inner resources are really limitless and in critical conditions we just see how big it is but I would like to remind about yesterday's advice it's very important to take care of ourselves within these conditions and so we have to remember about the point where we have to stop and take care of ourselves and not to be exhausted and burnt out although I cannot say such things about our armed forces they do not have time to retreat to have some rest they only can move forward and it's very good when they at least they can have some time to become defrosin sneakers because they can at least drink some hot tea so it's all about believing in ourselves it's about our face in the fact that we are doing everything right international partner support is just so incredibly important I think that I just didn't realize the importance of this support before these are the people who understand the value of Ukraine the world needs us and we need the world and so it's not worth being self-confident but we should also be able to accept help aid and be grateful for that civil society on the example of our center I see that we are seen as a sort of a micro model of things that are going on between Russia and Ukraine and the assurages are sort of an example of something that can only destroy and so everyone can be a hero either locally or globally and we can protect our values and some some people say that if our center does not survive and fall it means that any democratic initiative can be broken and can be spoiled so I think that we are at this point now we know that this is it's not worth fighting against our own state of course it's not good but we have to provide some solutions and not just passively wait for their solutions and I think that my colleagues will support me thanks a lot about mentioning another layer of preservation yes self-preservation it's the approach of self-care practices that we mentioned yesterday and we should remember about it and I'm sorry that we have not enough time we didn't have enough time to speak about this yes and due to our armed forces we have this opportunity to have some rest and therefore we will protect the Dvgenko Center in the same way as the armed force forces stand for Ukraine you've got us I have very short remarks I will start with the uplifting remark yes of course our armed forces and Elena inspired me the armed forces for almost everyone who works in any institution sort of an ideal are you all trying to feed to this ideal of course you cannot match up to this ideal but we see the armed forces as ideal and Elena's husband is in the armed forces and so it's here every day it's an example of your everyday practice and so this defrosing sneakers is from real life and another practical comment what we have learned in management sense my rule that I stick to at the moment on is the most important to be focused not on practical steps but on the leadership function of the institution practical steps should be taken by those who are working with them the team should be very flexible and have space for maneuvering but the task of leadership is to be focused on why we are doing this thanks Elena I can totally agree with my previous colleagues my uncle is also in the armed forces he is an example for me every day to stay strong and I would also like to mention foreign colleagues partners organizations who support us so strongly and our museum diaspora works very actively to promote our activities to promote our museums so that we receive aid for our artists for our initiatives but I would also like to remind about mention about our children of people who work in our museums a lot of my museum biography is related to teaching activities and for quite a long time I have worked with children from five to six to seven years old and so it happens so that part of my work and happened due to the lack of personnel again I had to do this teaching work and therefore these meetings with children who are so patriotic so emotional and each of them their inner story because most of them a lot of them are internally replaced children so their stories inspire me and gives me energy to move forward thanks a lot I would also like to sum up to sum up on the 24th of February the war starts and on the same the same week in Oxford there were a lot of discussion panels in Oxford what happened and why nobody was ready of course there are a number of people who are dealing with in Oxford regions and they have many many politologies and for example we had an ex-head of British intelligence who visited us and all these people told us that in three days there will be no Ukraine in five days there will be no Kiev and so on and so on of course nothing of these things happened and a few days ago we had another conference and a lot of Ukrainian researchers were invited to this conference some of them were connected online some of them arrived physically and so they started discussing what happened why did Ukraine survive and these politologies that prophesied that we are going to fall down and they said that we confess that we looked at politicians at some state institutions public institutions but we did not pay attention to civil society Ukraine stood and remained strong due to civil society due to Ukrainian people ordinary people and in their western context people are just so impressed by this because it is sort of implementation of sense of democracy because we can say that we Ukrainian people we have sustained this we have preserved this country it's not due to politicians and therefore of course probably we have always had this social civil society but in 2013-14 we in isolation in isolation project we had to leave because what can we what could we do 15 people against the whole squad and so after that for eight years our civil society have been formed and I am deeply convinced that it happened so because we had so many cultural events and these events they embedded all together our society and we had so many festivals during the last eight years we had so many visual demonstration exhibitions I remember when we started doing residencies in isolation nobody heard about this word but nowadays any territorial community they all have their cultural hubs and it has changed throughout throughout these last eight years so now when we are when we talking about rebuilding Ukraine renovating Ukraine previously people said that first we have to rebuild energy sector but these people do not understand that culture is a primary aspect of national security of national safety of safety of people this is not an additional function this is a primary function and so we have to think over hierarchy it should be done simultaneously because without culture there is no Ukrainian nation and then without Ukrainian culture we won't be resilient things a lot for this wonderful remark I am totally agree with you and we all think that culture is a trice for transformational factor and it is a guarantee of national security thanks a lot to all of you dear friends and now it's time for questions from our audience and I would like to choose this occasion to thank to each one of you for your physical presence in your institutions for physical presence here today to thank you for what you're doing because people who are working nowadays in public institutions they're real heroes and I do not exaggerate I would like to thank for your vision for your bravery because you are preserving the things that you're forced to preserve and you are doing so many more tasks than before and you are driving forces of changes and you stick to a good government governance practices and we need it so much sometimes your work may be overlooked but we do value and appreciate your work thanks a lot and I would like to the audience please applause us to our speakers thanks a lot please bring more light on the audience I would like to give Mike to the audience if you have questions raise your hand I have my first question I have a mic so I would like to ask our conference the aim of our conference is also to establish ties connections I would like to ask do you see an opportunity of cooperation among public institutions and non-governmental institutions please share what can be done so that this cooperation would be more frequent and more than at the moment who would be eager to answer this question thank you first we've all been working in community organizations I thought that we don't have a lot of exhibitions where Dovrenko Center takes part in Oksandar Teluk's from Dovrenko Center on the basis of film seminar made great work but what to do more it's really hard to say we lack strength not enough people one of the conclusions of this work of this year is why why is Ukrainian institutions who are not included in international context there are many reasons one of them is we are understaffed yeah there is a lack of people in Arsenal we need more 50 people more to to be able to carry out all the activity so we do what we can we just do just a part thank you very much I'm sorry can I rephrase the question I'd be more specific what is what are the examples of cooperation that you have I wanted to ask the the question of cooperation between the institution you said that so you you cooperate a lot but what in effect does this cooperation looks like for example curatorships these projects are not led by our employees but curators also projects based on inviting one author to Arsenal and also lending sorry borrowing works it all depends on practitioners our education department has been working a lot with therapeutic a lot of therapeutic organizations to help children there is a lot of workshops organized together with educational practitioners and organizations specializing in psychological support excuse me what is do you have do you have a cooperation with other organizations is there any support from the side I believe you should really speak after our discussion to to explain the details but what do you mean of our institutions I mean the the cooperation of all all sectors face extreme challenges so can we cooperate to develop culture culture together without dialogue it's really difficult to move forward for example dozenko center cooperating with artists curators we pay fee fees to everybody so government institutions have been cooperating with artists and we've also been developing this community right now the center is in a situation that we do not have funds for our activity so we are supported for example by charity fund that has been has been working with us supporting Ukrainian community so Pavlo helped us organize co-working he supplied us with furniture and other resources such offers are are open but there are not enough hands to to deal with them thank you for this improvised dialogue maybe the last question I could see the hand being raised in in in then I'm not giving the question because there is a lack of time okay there is another question you're talking about culture and how our civil society is strong under the pressure but I wanted to ask you do you see that this strength is is a different strength than Russians have or Americans have can culture be deeply embedded in in in the society is this the strength that could also fight Russia in in the war thank you who would like to to answer this question Elena Trevonnik it's a really difficult question we must understand what really culture is very often we're speaking about culture as an amorphic concept we have something like practices of symbolism um for example literature music these practices of symbolizing the world it cannot be turned off and on and this is what makes us human as a principle and this is what we experience right now people who are for example hiding in in bomb shelters in Butcher without food and and water they would they were still making paintings on the walls this is our core function sim creating symbolism expressing symbolism expressing symbols without this we cannot exist so maybe this culture sometimes is not expressed not active but but this is a question of of awareness and the awareness of civic society to analyze yourself I think we all can agree that there is a huge difference how the Ukrainian society understands itself and Russian society does not do it I think Russians have they they they behave like they pretend the war is not happening they uh and and it seems like they they believe that Russian that Putin is not a representative of of Russian society but I don't think this this this bears and relevance so I believe there is no sense to to compare our societies as there are stark differences in between them but thanks to our civic society and civic awareness that we have built within the past eight years of the war so since 2013 there is a change a change happened it is difficult to quantify however but maybe before the war this civic society has not been as as popular as as as widespread as now we consolidated it as well thanks to our cultural practices and museums thank you very much Olena I couldn't find a better final code for our discussion and all this I wanted to add something really quickly I wanted to give thanks to Nastya that you have been helping us to keep the front alive thank you it's my pleasure it was my honor to be a moderator of today's discussion I can see some hands in the air but unfortunately we we cannot withhold our discussion but if you have some questions please ask them in an informal way to to the speakers and we'll continue discussion as needs be thank you very much for the participants for really fantastic discussions very inside inside for once and the people in the audience for your insight as well thank you very much