In 1917 in Kyiv, Atanol Petrytsky painted his face with all the colors of the rainbow. Davyd Burluk showed in public with his forehead and cheeks covered in zoomorphic drawings. Body art will become flavor of the day in 1960s, although nobody will try to trace it back to the practices of Ukrainian futurists. And what’s the point if certain forms, ideas and artistic insights pop up here and there, all around the globe, forming regular patterns of phenomena specific and unique for each particular place.
In the early 1970s, Lviv found itself on the crossroad of information flows. Polish literature was available there; the Druzhba bookstore opened its doors; Polish radio shows were available; sensible was the very presence of the neighbors living on the other side of the iron curtain. The situation provoked the search for new forms, but there was no such thing as clear understanding of what those new forms should be. No university featured courses on installation, land art, let alone performance – such courses were simply impossible. Thus, artists mentored and curated each other. Volodymyr Kaufman recalls that «people simply found corridors for themselves to broaden their thinking and highlight their artistic statements.»
An important attempt to say something significant, draw attention to the inner world of human mind and look beyond gray daily routine passed unnoticed in 1975. After graduating from the Lviv Institute of Applied Arts (presently, the Lviv National Academy of Arts), an artist by the name of Vasyl Bazhai started his work at the Maxim Gorky Theater (presently, the First Ukrainian Theater for Children and Youth). The company turned out to be interested in artistic experiments and, together with the director and set designer, the actors decided to offer their audience something unconventional that would end up a performance piece. They ordered 90 square meters of mirrors and installed those on the stage in such a way that a reflection of an actor was ‘fractioned’ into hundreds reflections of his self. The idea was to overpower one’s doubles, to find a way through hundreds of selves, shed the similarities shared with the others, and find the truth – one’s proper place in the world. «In the finale, I came up the stage and crashed all the mirrors; then I put white gloves on, shoveled splinters to a cart and took everything out,» Bazhai recalls.
Apart from such bright sparks, the 1980s were quite dull a decade. Everyone looked for an environment to develop in, regarding the circumstances of the time. In Poland, in 1978, the concept of performance art had already been an official part of artistic terminology and first performance festivals were organized; at the very same time Ukrainian artists were working within the artificial frame they were trying to bend by mostly private stand-alone performances, but still couldn’t break.
Nevertheless, any restriction provokes action. Ukraine’s isolation was auspicious for activity in tight artistic circles which revealed itself in the late 1980s. Lviv’s artistic reality underwent profound changes that brought about actions, performances, installations which, in turn, intertwined with Ukrainian art and established themselves as proper artistic genres. The first underground exhibition in Lviv in 1987 was an important milestone. It was held in the Church of Our Lady of the Snows – back then, a photo gallery – and featured live installations, such as a cock in a cage. Yuriy Sokolov who organized the event, recalls a piece by Maksym Vasylenko: the artist went up to the choir gallery, cut an issue of Komsomolskaya Pravda to pieces and ‘rained’ them down onto the audience that was quite numerous. It was an actual performance although nobody called it as such at the time.
One of the first organizations of the new type in Lviv was creative collaboration Tsentr Evropy (‘Center of Europe’, 1987‒1990). It started with provocative street performances in the yard of the Armenian Church on the Day of the City in 1987 (actionist pieces by Platon Silvestrov, Vadym Bogun, Igor Barabah, Pavlo Grankin, and a performance by Yuriy Sokolov «Art to life, or the order as the son of anarchy» [1 Вишеславський Г. Самоорганізація художнього життя у Львові кінця 1980-х — початку 1990-х рр. / Г. Вишеславський // Мистецтвознавство України. — Вип. 9. — 2008. — С. 289-293.]). Glib Vysheslavsky believes that performances by Boris Berger (1992‒1993), Petro Starukh (1993), and Vlodko Kaufman (1993) encouraged a contact with their audience. The Lviv international festival «Plus’90» (October of 1990) included, as an important part, an exhibition of Ukrainian, Polish, American, Israely, German, Armenian, and Russian artists curated by Yuriy Sokolov and Kazimir Urbanski.
At the same time in Kyiv, Fedir Tetianych was another prominent independent figure. His view on the world he expressed in unconventional, even strange ways which are somewhat related to installation and performance art: he appeared on the streets dressed in silver costumes and accompanied by mysteriously looking objects. Tetianych repeatedly claimed that for him there were no such things as time and space: his life itself is a continuous performance in which he uses the infinity, the objects he creates and his appearances on television to build a single neverending installation Biotechnosphera Fripulia (‘Fripulia’s Biotechnosphere’) on the face of the Earth. Talking about pre-coated canvas, Tetianych used the analogy of the land to explain how he sees life, «Canvas covered with coating?! Of
course, if the coating is the ground, and the ground means chernozem soil, then it must be fertile. I asked myself, what layer of soil my canvas can bear, and decided: why not use the entire land of the Earth for canvas? So I did. I’ve got a piece of my creation – the Planet Earth on my canvas.» [2 Тетянич Ф. Біотехносфера–Фрипулья/ Федір Тетянич // Образотворче мистецтво. — 2009/2010. — №4/1. — С. 102—103.]
Back in Lviv, there was another milestone worth mentioning – the VyVykh festival (literally, «DisLocation»), where Volodymyr Kaufman and Vlodko Kostyrko announced a performance of «Turning the flag of Soviet Ukraine into the flag of Ukraine.» It was 1990. The idea was to repaint the red part of the Soviet Ukraine’s flag into yellow. The action took place at the Yunist stadium and it was an organized and properly announced performance.
The Impreza festival in Ivano-Frankivsk for several years, starting 1991, gathered Ukrainian postmodernist artists. The exhibited pieces often conveyed the spirit of aggression, self-irony, anti-aesthetics, and eroticism. Impreza featured performances by Anatoliy Zvizhynsky («A fox can’t howl at the moon») and Myroslav Yaremak («Concerning integrity»). One of the most significant pieces was performance by Polish artist Jerzy Onuch, who used giant soap bubbles on the streets to impress the public. More and more often Ukrainian festivals and exhibitions included events that demonstrated unconventional views on art. Gradually, performance made its way into Ukrainian cultural and social environment. Two years later in Ivano-Frankivsk gallery S-object took place an exhibition by Yaremak, Zaimpreza (‘After-Impreza’) that consisted exclusively of video art and performance pieces.
Activities conducted by Kaufman and the community around what would soon become art collaboration Dzyga activated new movements in Lviv and other cities. Both as stand-alone actions and parts of bigger events or happenings, emerge the performances «L.Z. (the 8th seal or letters to earthlings)», 1993; «Dzerkalny Korop» («A mirror carp»), 1994; «Yizha» (Food), 1995; «Komediya Ekstazu» (Comedy of Ecstasy), 1996; «Versiyi Napovnennya» (Versions of content), 1997; «Shchodennyk» (Diary), 1998; «Chas-Konstanta» (Time Constant), «Zoo» (1999).
The 2000s saw numerous collaborations between Ukraine and Poland. Artists from abroad took part in contemporary art festivals (ЕРАF, Interakcje, Noc Kultury, 27, Konteksty, Koło Czаsu, Flaunder Festiwal, Grassomania, ТАМ, the Days of performance art in Lviv, GogolFest, etc.), cultural activity of Dzyga and the Polish Insitute in Kyiv became more noticeable. Polish artists came to Ukraine more frequently to conduct workshops and organize exhibitions, and vice versa (School of performance in Lviv, master-classes in Lublin, Oronsk, Sokolowsk, Piotrkow Trybunalski). Student exchange programs also made a great difference (academies and universities in Warsaw, Wroclaw, Gdansk, Krakow, Lodz, Poznan) and postgraduate scholarships and residencies (Gaude Polonia, Center of Contemporary Art Zamek Ujazdowski, Cultural Center Zamek).
Present-day performance festivals are the special form of cultural progress that stimulates to systemize, compare and analyze the state of thing in concrete place, environment, society, and time. Festivals activate the exchange among artists from various countries. That’s why the Days of performance art in Lviv is a very valuable festival that discovers and develops art-related thinking. The School of Performance that has been attached to the festival, was the initiative of Polish artist Janusz Baldyga and has recently expanded its geography and pool of mentors (Waldemar Tatarczuk, Zygmunt Piotrowski, Przemyslaw Kwiek from Poland; Tamar Raban from Israel; Sibylle Omlin and Barbara Sturm from Switzerland; Nigel Ralf from Ireland; Roddy Hunter and Sandra Johnston from the UK). The environment of a typically four-day school is a hub that – with its tasks, specifics, schedules – provokes unexpected bursts of ideas. Such schools are not so much about teaching as about discovering one’s potential – a valuable process that brings about new amazing ideas.
The Days of Performance Art in Lviv and The School of Performance organized by the Institute of Actual Art triggered the emergence of young artists who work with performance and have already made themselves known not only in Ukraine, but also abroad (in Poland, Czech Republic, Israel, France, Germany, Norway, Japan, Tailand) – Pavlo Kovach Jr., Yuriy Biley, Yaroslav Futymsky, Vasyl Odrekhivskyy, Anton Saienko, Petro Riaska, Yaryna Shumska et al. Mykhailo Barabash, Volodymyr Topiy and Myroslav Vayda evolved as performers independently and demonstrated their progress at the Days of Performance Art in Lviv and other festivals.
Nowadays, new opportunities and relations emerge, and Ukrainian art of performance experiments with new environments. In 2013, the joint initiative of Detenpyla Gallery and Dzyga brought about a new performance festival, 360ᵒ, that occupies the spaces of Lviv – galleries, museums, parks, private homes. Apart from The Week of Contemporary Art, performances could be seen at other festivals, such as Ekle, Bereznevi Koty (Uzhgorod), Fortmissia (Popovychi, Lviv oblast), GogolFest (Kyiv), as well as in Odesa and Kharkiv. Despite the lack of funding, young Ukrainian artists persistently organize numerous events to develop the genre of performance in this country. Therefore, to be continued…