RETURN

2019 · Second Biennale of Young Art Curator: Darina Skrynnyk-Myska Hotel "Kharkiv", YermilovCenter 2017 · Film and Urban Festival “86”, land art program · Slavutych 2020 · "Form of space" (Port.agency and LCD "044"), Kyiv

Concept

Text by: Daryna Skrynnyk-Myska The project Return was first realized within the framework of the Festival of Film and Urbanism “86” in Slavutych. In its initial version, the idea of the project referred to the history of this city, built in the middle of a forest that is constantly trying to reclaim its territory. The project also alluded to the proximity of Chornobyl, where, despite the technogenic catastrophe, nature has prevailed over urban landscapes. However, in the context of Kharkiv, the opposition between “human and nature” acquires a different intonation. Parasitic fungi, which usually cling to trees, appear in the most unexpected places — on concrete electricity poles or notice boards, on buildings, or even inside them — within the once luxurious interiors of part of the unique Constructivist complex, the Kharkiv Hotel. The state of neglect and ruin that has prevailed here in recent years, against the backdrop of the broader problems not only of the city but of the country as a whole, has ceased to be traumatic or to cause discomfort. It seems that the pitiful condition of our environment (our garden?) on a national scale is perceived as a natural and inevitable state of affairs. Ruin has become so familiar that it is no longer noticed. Instead, parasitic fungi, appearing where according to the laws of nature they should not exist, mark this emptiness and decay in order to refocus attention on it — to remind us that such a state of things is not the norm, and that it has long been time to put things in order.