On Sunday, 6 September, at 18:00, the Dzyga Gallery in Lviv will open the exhibition “Dzyga: A Living Archive. 20 Stories in Posters”, dedicated to the history of the eponymous art association. The exhibition will run until 15 September, curated by Vlodko Kaufman. Admission to the exhibition is free.
The project is built around 20 posters, each of which tells a separate story — about an event, a cultural initiative or an art project by Dzyga. Among those presented are “Grand Masters of Art”, “Freedom of Choice”, “Jazz Bez”, “Flugery Lvova”, “Fort. Missia”, “Week of Contemporary Art”, “Days of Performance Art in Lviv”, “Ukrainian Cross-Section”, “Radio Initiative”, “Doll”, “Chetver”, “Project Ye”, “Ringing Wind” and others. Together they showcase the association’s diverse fields of activity — from music, literature and media to contemporary art, performance and international cultural collaborations.
“This is a very small fraction of the projects and, unfortunately, the decisive factor in selecting the posters was the availability of visual material, because very many of the projects have survived only in memory. That is why creating a digital archive of Dzyga is an urgent need today, and we will also provide functionality for people to add their own artefacts to the archive, so that we can recover what we do not have but which someone else may have managed to preserve” — Vlodko Kaufman
The exhibition is part of a broader project, “Dzyga: A Living Archive”, aimed at preserving and rethinking more than thirty years of the art association’s history. As part of the project, an open digital platform is being created to collect digitised photographs, posters, videos, audio recordings, texts and personal memories connected with Dzyga. Anyone interested will be able to contribute to the archive by sharing their own materials and stories.
The presentation of the project and the beta version of the digital platform will take place on 6 September at 17:00, immediately before the exhibition opening. Taking part will be the project coordinator Anastasiia Chuprynska, Deputy Director of the Institute for Cultural Strategy Lidiia Savchenko-Duda, co-owner of the !FEST Holding of Emotions Yurko Nazaruk, Director of the web agency “Sitegist” Mariana Oliinyk, with moderator Hryhorii Semenchuk.
At 18:00 the official opening of the exhibition and a curatorial tour by Vlodko Kaufman are planned, during which the co-founder of Dzyga will speak in more detail about the projects on display and their history. At 20:00, as part of Dzyga Jazz Fest, there will be a jam session dedicated to Marek, the founder of Dzyga. Admission to all events is free.
The Dzyga art association emerged in Lviv after the proclamation of Ukraine’s Independence, at the intersection of the student protest movement, avant-garde art and the music underground. At first its activities focused on festivals and art happenings, and later grew into a wide network of cultural initiatives that became a notable part of the cultural history of Lviv and independent Ukraine.
The project “Dzyga: A Living Archive” is being implemented by the Lviv City Public Organisation “Art Council Dialogue” in partnership with the NGOs “Virmenska, 35”, “Post Bellum-Ukraine” and “DzygaArt”. The initiative has been prepared with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation and the Lviv City Council as part of the competition “Відповідальність бути / Responsibility to Be”.