Photographic documentation: Anton Fedorov
Am I Dead Yet? was a project comprised of a photography exhibition by Stanislava Ovchinnikova, a sound piece by the invited composer Andrey Novikov, and a public program with lectures by Oleksii Karachynskiy and Den Humennyi.
This project began with a series of seventeen recorded conversations between my colleagues, friends, and me. There, stories were exchanged about burials in wedding dresses, childbirth as a near-death experience, and changes in human perception of mortality after the intake of (non-)medicinal drugs. These conversations informed the selection of works for the exhibition, which itself brimmed with varied interpretations of the concept of death. Similarly, the invited composer, Andrey Novikov, used fragments of these recordings to create the sound work audible throughout the exhibition space.
To further open up the exhibition as a space for conversations on mortality, I invited Oleksii Karachynskiy—a practicing psychotherapist, scholar, war veteran, and co-founder of the documentary “Theatre of Displaced”—to give two lectures on how to talk about death with children and teenagers. Click on the titles below to be redirected to the Medium.com page with the Ukrainian-language transcriptions of the presented materials:
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How to talk to children about death? (Як говорити з дітьми про смерть?)
Why is it important not to avoid this subject? How to explain to children that loved ones die, and do it in a non-traumatic way? Discussed here is also why children fear darkness and associate it with death.
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When does a person die? (Коли людина помирає?)
The lecture studies the dichotomy between the known and unknown, as well as the juxtaposition of death and life/joy. It also tries to answer the question of why not everything that appears alive is alive, and why the majority of what we experience, think, and do is dead.
Another lecture, titled “How Cities are Born and How They Die,” was presented by Den Humennyi—a curator of the performing arts space “PostPlay Lab,” leader of the international program “Citizens’ Theatre,” tutor, and performer, who since 2011 has been a practitioner of a political/critical theatre as a playwright, director, and art-manager. The lecture covered the life cycle of a city, various urban planning concepts, and the connection between the "body of the city" and the social life of its citizens. Then, using the example of the Vynohradar neighborhood in Kyiv, Humennyi explored why some spaces feel "dead" even when they are formally still "alive." Finally, he reflected on how urban spaces can be revived through the tools of contemporary art.
The exhibition and public program, hosted by PostPlay Lab (Kyiv, UA), were part of Stanislava Ovchinnikova’s project “Am I Dead Yet?”, realized with the support of House of Europe and the program of the European Union “Moving Forward Together.”