By Architecture Ukraine - Beyond the Front - Biennale Architettura 2016
Architecture Ukraine (AU) – Beyond the Front opens a dialogue on some crucial issues in our time: envisioning the future of cities in places of ongoing conflict alongside the revival of post-industrial landscapes within an increasingly urbanized world.
Clemens Poole, Architecture Ukraine: Beyond the Front co-curator, talks about exhibition.
ARCHITECTURE UKRAINE – BEYOND THE FRONT is a project by IZOLYATSIA presented in Venice, as a collateral event of the 15th International Architecture Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia.
The exhibition consists of data visualisations, interviews, models, film and printed material to engage the visitors with the diversity, history and culture of the Donbass region of Ukraine.
The main focus of the exhibition is the video material created by Architecture Ukraine 2015 residents Romea Muryn and Francisco Lobo juxtaposed with media reports from Donetsk.
The documentary Centrallurgy provides a creative and engaging overview of what defines Mariupol, drawing research on anthropology, economy, social and cultural history, literature and philosophy.
Centrallurgy documentary goes together with map of Mariupol projected over wooden surface depicting different aspects of everyday life in the city.
For example this layer represents different infrastructural objects of Mariupol, especially roads.
Another layer represents educational facilities like schools and universities.
Map includes more then 30 different layers presenting city with every angle a map can provide.
City inhabitants threatened by persecutions refused to participate in interview-based research. Instead, documentary made of reports from DPR-controlled media is presented.
Donetsk video is also accompanied by map of Donetsk divided into separate layers.
For example this layer represents comparison between educational facilities versus industry in the city.
Map is made of more then 40 layers from geography to industry, education, infrastructure and agriculture.
Danielle Rosales and Robin Coenen (Germany), representatives of the Civic City Network present their findings of the visual identity of Mariupol.
Through a series of social interventions they have engaged local communities into a dialogue about topics of expectation, change, looks of a city, migration, Europe and others.
Project is presented through graphics and printed materials.
Data visualizations serves as the hard facts on a timeline of the current conflict displaying various information.
Data represented on the map is ranging from occupation, death rates, gender and nationality to industrial export, oligarchy, power as well as road blocks and fights.
A physical and metaphorical boundary will seamlessly engage the visitors to shift and displace it.
Liveuamap is open data-driven media platform that uploads daily maps, messages, pictures and videos from the conflict zone in Ukraine. 300.000 Km/s have extracted and processed more than 29.500 events in the Donbass Region from April 2014 to April 2016 to build up the map.
Data for map layers was taken from different sources, for example checkpoints have been geolocated according to United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) reports 2014, 2016.
dataWar map consists of more then 20 layers. All the layers and map together with other information about exhibition can be found online at http://architectureukraine.org .
Participant exhibitors:
Romea Muryn, Francisco Lobo, Fulco Trefers, Danielle Rosales and Robin
Coenen.
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Curators of Architecture Ukraine (Kyiv/Mariupol):
Rick Rowbotham (UK) Architect, Urbanist and Masterplanner
and Krists Ernstsons (Latvia) Architect, with the collaboration
of Clemens Poole (NY) Artist.
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Producers:
Maureen Sullivan, RedArtProjects (NY)
Mykhailo Glubokyi, IZOLYATSIA exhibitions manager (Kyiv)
Dmytro Sergieiev, IZOLYATSIA Graphic designer (Kyiv)
300.000 Km/s (Barcelona)
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IZOLYATSIA is a cultural platform founded in Donetsk in 2010 and relocated to Kyiv in June 2014 after the military occupation of its premises. IZOYATSIA has carried out over thirty international projects, which include ZMINA, a series of educational and creative initiatives in Eastern Ukraine, international residency Architecture Ukraine (Mariupol-Kyiv), the exhibition Culture and Conflict: IZOLYATSIA in Exile held at the Palais de Tokyo (Paris), at DOX (Prague) and in the Heinrich Böll Foundation (Berlin), #onvacation project and the project Letters to the Mayor in collaboration with Storefront for Art and Architecture (New York)
