Witnessing the War in Ukraine: Vectors of Reflection, Practices of Documentation

Programe

Opening Remarks

Welcome messages from the WWSI 2023 Organizing Committee:

Eleonora Narvselius, Lund University, Sweden

Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, University of Alberta, Canada

Grażyna Kubica-Heller, Jagiellonian University, Poland

Alina Doboszewska, Dobra Wola Foundation, Poland

Marcin Jarząbek, Polish Oral History Assoсiation, Poland

Kateryna Bilotserkovets, Konrad Adenauer Stiftung Ukraine

Screening Iryna Tsilyk's film "Earth Blue As an Orange"

The film is about single mother Anna and her four children who live in the front-line war zone of Donbas, Ukraine. While the outside world is made up of bombings and chaos, the family is managing to keep their home as a safe haven, full of life and full of light. Every member of the family has a passion for cinema, motivating them to shoot a film inspired by their own life during a time of war.

Moderator: Eleonora Narvselius

Discussion with Iryna Tsilyk "What documentary films do in the wartime"

I’m a Ukrainian film director and I make fiction and documentary films. Over the years of Russia’s war against Ukraine, various metamorphoses had happened to Ukrainian cinema. All its types and genres use different tools to somehow deal with reflecting on this new reality. But as to my opinion, documentary filmmaking has its special moment, therefore let’s talk about its role, advantages and methods today.

What power nonfiction filmmaking has in the times of war? Which instruments does it use? What is the role of the author’s view and what do we mean by truth in documentary films? What ethical challenges do we have working with the characters of our films? How documentary filmmaking could be useful for the fight for human and civil rights, as well as cultural diplomacy? These are often debatable questions that do not have simple answers. But the constant search is also an important process in the formation of today's cinema.

I’d like to reflect on these and other questions using examples from my own work on films “The Earth Is Blue As an Orange”, "Invisible Battalion” and the one I’m working on now. Q&A will be also an important part of my presentation, since I believe in dialogues and I feel open to your questions. 

Speaker: Iryna Tsilyk

Moderator: Eleonora Narvselius

Andrii Bondarenko's reading and discussion

Andrii Bondarenko will present his plays "Peace and tranquility" and "Squirrel Man" in the reading format.

"Peace and tranquility"

An original essay drama written two weeks after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This drama tells about the life of the playwright Andrii Bondarenko in Ukraine: the peace and tranquility of his childhood, cemented by historical traumas, revolutions and war. Through the story of his grandmother, mother and sister, as well as his own biography, the playwright vividly reproduces the joys and sorrows of life in Ukraine and the old and bloody shadow that Russia cast and cast over this life.

"Squirrel Man"

Brief sketches of absurd life in anticipation of the Russian occupation in Lviv in the spring of 2022. The third month after the full-scale invasion of the Russians - is it time to eat the potatoes bought at the end of February? How to play the game with Russian missiles? Why do marksmen not say goodbye and why did the infantry kill the beaver? Who are the guardians of space?

Speaker: Andrii Bondarenko

Moderator: Marcin Jarząbek

Documentations’ possible futures: On long-lasting outcomes of rapid responses

The Russian full-scale invasion after February 24th, 2022, is one of the most documented wars in contemporary history. One of the first reactions of the Ukrainian academic community and activists was to start different types of archiving – from writing diaries and collecting memes to conducting interviews and documenting war crimes. All these initiatives are future-oriented – they seek to preserve the present moment for community building, establishing justice, conducting analytical research. How can academics and activists practice emergency archiving of war experiences in the situation of protracted uncertainty? How can we train our imagination about possible outcomes of our rapid responses to the unfolding violence? Natalia will engage the group into collective thinking about various outcomes of documentation initiatives aiming to collect the stories of Ukrainian refugees, IDPs, and volunteers. She will relate to the experience of the international documentation initiative “24/02/22, 5 am”.

Speaker: Natalia Otrishchenko

Moderator: Alina Doboszewska

Home-making in displacement among Ukrainians in Poland and Canada after February 2022: collective memories, historical narratives, transnational heritage (a tentative research agenda)

Our presentation takes its vantage point in the idea that the unprecedented geopolitical circumstances of the ongoing displacement of Ukrainians have to be reflected in a corresponding theoretical optics and conceptual approaches. EU’s protection mechanism activated in the wake of Russia’s aggression in February 2022 has a temporary character. It aims to both facilitate sustenance and accommodation of Ukrainians, absolute majority of them women and children, and at the same time envisions their quick return with the end of the war. In this situation the question of migrant integration as a long-term and more or less fixed state of belonging has to be considered against the possibility of home-making as a process of creating a safe, familiar and controllable gendered space that does not need to be permanent, but nevertheless should not look like “stuckness” against one’s wishes. Even in the situation of great uncertainty it is necessary to think about the material, but also psychological well-being of the affected Ukrainians and people around them.

In-depth and multi-perspectival explorations of the ways in which Ukrainians in Poland and Canada perceive and make home will allow us to juxtapose predominantly nation-state-centric approaches to home-making with more fluid understandings of home underpinned by multidirectional loyalties and trajectories of contemporary migrants that are in turn informed by the past. We want to shift the focus on migrant homes and home-making as cultural phenomena in their own right fueled by “trails of collective memory about another place and time” (Appadurai and Breckenridge 1989: i). Our exploration of personal and collective memories of home among the Ukrainian refugees as well as their ‘homing’ in the new environments, where some shared pasts, recognizable historical triggers and (post)colonial histories may be decoded and interpreted, will enrich the studies of home-making with the manifested focus on the right of historicity. Also, our analysis of sedimented discourses of home-making is informed by the interest in examining practice-oriented solutions that may advance social cohesion, solidarity practices, migrant incorporation and recognition of diversity in Europe and Canada.

Speakers: Natalia Khanenko-Friesen, Eleonora Narvselius

Moderator: Grażyna Kubica-Heller

Testimony and Trauma in Ukrainian Theatre and Literature after Euromaidan 2014. Ethical and Aesthetic Challenges

Witness art is an innovative interdisciplinary field, involved in the practical investigation of testimony, trauma, social change, and political activism. The uses of lived experiences in artistic practices engage with and/or challenge methods elaborated in disciplines such as psychology, documentary art, sociology, historiography, ethnology, jurisprudence. In Ukraine, witness theater became a widespread practice with the 2014 Euromaidan revolution and beginning of war in Eastern Ukraine. Maidan activists, war veterans, and internally displaced people were sharing on stage their stories of struggle, despair and hope in the face of Russia’s unprecedentedly cruel war against Ukraine. We will discuss the ethically challenging questions raised when first-hand accounts of (often) traumatic experiences are mediated first-hand or second-hand on stage, but also the possible therapeutic and empowering effects of witness theatre, as well as its political and social impact, where witnesses of historical events claim on stage their historical subjectivity, which was oppressed during centuries of political persecutions by the Russian Empire and Soviet Union. We will also discuss Ukrainian war poetry and the question of testimonial address – a lyrical “I” addressing a broader “we” – in relation to processes of translation and mediation, in this case the interaction between author, intermediator and reader. What happens when poetical testimonies are transferred from inside the zone of trauma to the outside of it? In other words: if a central question is to whom the testimony is addressed, then what happens when you, in the process of translation, exchanges one addressee with another? Conceptual frameworks of specific relevance for our discussion are: the epistemological significance of the place (“having been present”); the sense-perceptual dimension of presence; witnessing in relation to theoretical-constative certitude; utterances “that do not simply report facts,” but create a “testimonial project of address” (Felman & Laub 1992, 7, 39).

Speakers: Johanna Lindbladh, Mikael Nydahl, Ielizaveta Oliinyk

Moderator: Eleonora Narvselius

Screening Natalia Vorozhbyt's film "Bad Roads"

Four short stories are set along the roads of Donbas, Ukraine during the war. There are no safe spaces and no one can make sense of just what is going on. Even as they are trapped in the chaos, some manage to wield authority over others. But in this world, where tomorrow may never come, not everyone is defenseless and miserable - and even the most innocent victims may have their turn at taking charge.

Moderator: Ielizaveta Oliinyk

Discussion with Natalia Vorozhbyt

The author will tell about the experience of working with documentary theater, about the path from the first interviews to documentary performances, then to writing a play and creating a film. Natalia Vorozhbyt will focus on how the strong potential of the material collected in the first years of the war allows it to be comprehensively covered, how personal experience can be transformed into a universal one, and will also highlight the technical and ethical issues of such work.

Speaker: Natalia Vorozhbyt

Moderator: Ielizaveta Oliinyk

Living in, writing out: is it possible to write about the war while living in the midst of the war? Fictional aspects of actual lives against Ukraine-Russia war background

A year ago, many of us tempted to transform the war in a sort of creative product. To write and film it as if the war is over, to reflect on dramatic experience and make assumptions on future developments. Many journalists, publishers, moderators etc. focused on post-apocalyptic reconstructions, suggested possible options for the post-war modernity. I personally participated in a number of discussions of our future coexistence with Russians; many stakeholders asked about possible counteraction and cooperation of the neighboring states in the future, after the war is over.

Unfortunately, for many of us, the postwar - or rather the post-victory - world would remain a distant mirage, an unattainable dream. Under tremendous pressure, we have learned to live in here and now, and these dramatic events have shifted optics of many Ukrainians. We do realize that our realty is somewhat unique for modern Europe. We see how the creative search for new forms and genres to adequately reproduce this experience is developing in real time. We have established some inner criteria to determine when and how to write and talk about the war. In Ukraine, we have already had several cases when creative projects were withdrawn from production due to fierce criticism by ordinary Ukrainians - simply because they did not pass that internal eligibility test. 

Speaker: Tamara Duda

Moderator: Alina Doboszewska

Documenting the Genocide: The Experience of Investigating War Crimes in Bucha, Irpin, and Okhtyrka

Occupation, mass killings, captivity and torture are those things which Ukrainians faced after the beginning of the Russian invasion. The researchers were faced with a difficult dilemma: to record the story "on the hot tracks" or to wait until the wounds heal?

We will consider this problem using the example of research experience in three cities: Bucha (which was completely under occupation), Irpin (partially under occupation) and Okhtyrka (was not under occupation, but the city suffered from hostilities). We will consider the main sources of information for research, methods of searching speakers, and their verification. This talk is also dedicated to the ethical standards during interviewing, "red lines" for the researcher and how to prevent retraumatization of the witness during work. An important aspect of our conversation will be the discussion about how to represent the experience of witnesses of genocide in the context of an ongoing war. Finally, we will consider the question of the researcher's psychological stability when working with complicated topics and ways of self-help.

Speaker: Yevhenia Podobna

Moderator: Natalia Khanenko-Friesen

Oral history films as ethnographic films

The format of oral history films had been worked out during the project: "The railway station Krasne-Busk. Stories of displaced women" carried out in Ukraine in 2012. The theoretical and methodological framework of this project was the feminist perspective and the concept of oral history. We wanted to give a voice to women who were the main subject of post IIWW political decisions on expulsions and who were burdened by their tragic consequences. In the film itself, this meant that we did not use film "embellishments": shots of landscapes, etc. We intentionally resigned from the film language of a documentary filmmaker in order to focus only on the statements of our interlocutors. It wasn't actually intended to be a cinematic work, but rather a filmed polyphonic narrative. The term "oral history film" we coined denotes this meaning well.

Speaker: Grażyna Kubica-Heller

Moderator: Marcin Jarząbek

Screening of the documentary film 'And the War Came to Us' made in 2021 on the basis of oral history interviews, using authentic materials from the front line. It shows the beginnings of the Russian-Ukrainian war from the point of view of the widows of soldiers, combined with the stories of an eyewitness − a participant of the war. The stories told by: widows of soldiers from Zhytomyr: Alyona Zalizko, Natalia Yevpak, Svetlana Khodorowska and a volunteer soldier of the 8th separate regiment special purpose Andriy Sydorenko ps. "Coin". Script and editing Krzysztof Krzyżanowski, realization Alina Doboszewska. A discussion of oral history films is scheduled after the screening.

Speakers: Alina Doboszewska, Krzysztof Krzyżanowski

Moderator: Grażyna Kubica-Heller

To have a pulse and a heartbeat - a project to document the experience of Jewish refugees from Ukraine as a part of the oral history program of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews

In the first part of my presentation, I will analyze the way in which the project of documenting the individual experiences of the war in Ukraine and the humanitarian crisis in Poland that it triggered, has forced changes in the methodology of the POLIN Museum's oral history program, which until now has been based primarily on accounts of past events – and less often focused on the present. I will also point out the role that the collected interviews can play in understanding and creating new interpretive frames for the Museum's existing oral history collection, and more broadly, how the ongoing project fits into the vision and mission of this institution – a museum focused primarily on the history and heritage of Polish Jews. In the second part of the speech, I will synthetically outline the various phases in the implementation of the project, the basic methodological assumptions, and inspirations as well as the specifics of the group being documented: Jewish refugees from Ukraine and aid-providers in Poland.

Speaker: Józef Markiewicz

Moderator: Marcin Jarząbek