Dispatches From the Quiet Centre. Episode 2: A Book Talk with Vitaliy Matukhno Please contact David Garland for a Teams Link [email protected] or Viktoriia Grivina [email protected]

Join us on 27 November at 2pm GMT on an exciting online talk with an artist and art curator Vitaliy Matukhno who will present his new books, For Us, For You, and For Donbas and Year 10 Continues, on Ukrainian East, its artists, and the future of the region. The books include interviews and memoirs of Ukrainian artists and creative youths from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

What have the young creatives been doing since the beginning of Russo-Ukrainian war in 2014? What was their childhood like in both occupied and unoccupied parts of the Ukrainian East? What projects and initiatives, hopes and dreams, can art faced with an armed conflict produce? You will have a chance to ask these and many other questions during our online talk. The Dispatch will consist of a 15-minute talk by the artist or writer followed by a brief discussion, after which we will open the floor of Q&A.

To register for the event please contact David Garland for a Teams Link [email protected]

About the Series

Centre for Arts and Politics at St Andrews University cordially invites students, researchers, and all interested to an experimental series of discussions on the role of creative practices in critical times. We will dive into a fascinating world of writing and art in a frontline city of Kharkiv, talk about everyday life, historical and philosophical questions that Ukrainian artists and writers look at as they stay at the Quiet Centre residence in the historical modernist heart of Kharkiv. Quiet Centre is a residency for artists and writers that will run between September and December 2024 in Kharkiv, Ukraine, hosting up-and-coming Ukrainian talents. During their stay in Kharkiv the residents are invited to think about the 1920s avant-garde architecture and history of the neighbourhood, while continuing to work on their artistic projects. How does an artistic neighbourhood influence what we create? How do they reflect the fragility of life in a city that is constantly targeted by Russian missiles? What is the role of imagination, creativity, and embodied knowledge in the plots and themes the residents work on? Moderated by Dr Jeffrey Murer at Centre for Arts and Politics as well as Viktoriia Grivina, a PhD student at St Andrews University and the author of the Quiet Centre residency, the Dispatches are here to open a window, a time-and-space portal between St Andrews and Kharkiv, pondering about the connections, policies of knowledge production, and communities of the places.