Marta van der Haagen on Thu, 9 Jul 1998 23:52:15 +0100


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Syndicate: Ukraine


Dear Syndicate,

I guess that most of you had this experience at least once in your
Syndicate carriers. You share a piece of your daily knowledge with some
people and you see that this opens whole new horizons and perspectives
for them. This creates for both sides such an amount of positive energy
that it was worth all the trouble it took you to get this far.
I initiated a workshop for artists together with the Ukraine Soros
Center for Contemporary Art. The structure resembled the two workshops
I organized in Poland (http://csw.art.pl/dowarszt/menu.html).
The subject was a first introduction with Internet and a workshop in web

projects. I was working as always together with Wojtek Bogusz,
and this time I got extra energy from Henryk Gajewski.

The Ukrainian artists where young, not only from Kiev but also from
Charkow and Lwov. They where so eager to learn and worked so hard
(some of them touching the computer for the first time).

At the end of the week there was a whole range of Web projects. The
artists were proud to present their work on a large screen projection.
My favorite projects were the net voyeurism of Anna Kutz & Viktor
Dovhaliukv and the Kindergarten stories of Katya Stukalova.
 I am happy that I can give you the address with the projects:
http://www.cca.kiev.ua/projects/index.html
This all happened thanks to Yuri Onuch and Natasha Manzhali
of the SCCA. Don't hesitate to contact them.

greetings Marta

ps. impression of Kiev.

Kiev
is a one of the most beautiful capitals in Europe. It's on green hills
next to the river. There are some orthodox churches with golden domes.
The main visible difference with other cities I know is that 75% of the
cars in the street have dark glasses. Most of the buildings are from
XIX c. and older, there are also examples of "marching "architecture
(I even slept one night in the Palace of Culture).

Women
It is not often that you see so many wonderful women. I was together
with two guys so imagine how often we had to stop on the street to look
at girls. The men are rather tough and less interesting.

Cars.
We spend there only one week hard working and saw the city only early in

the morning and by night. The mornings we traveled with our driver but
evenings were more exiting - stopping illegal taxi on the street
so-called "maszinu",
first negotiating the prize and then trying to explain to the driver
were to
go (not easy in a 3 mln city comparable to Berlin and most of them don't

know their own city).

History
Polish and Ukrainian history are mixed. Who is a great hero there might
be a black character for us and vice versa. I was shocked to see
Chmielnicki on the money, I was always thought that he was a bad guy.
Languages are similar.