Marta van der Haagen on Thu, 9 Jul 1998 23:52:15 +0100 |
[Date Prev] [Date Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Date Index] [Thread Index]
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.