Lunch Talk: Kharkiv is a Dream – on Public Art, Activism, and Fragility of a European City

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Citizen science

Organizer

ZSI

Meeting Information

Contact

Olga Bolibok MSc

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Lunch Talk

Kharkiv is a Dream – on Public Art, Activism, and Fragility of a European City

ZSI Lunchtalk with a Book Presentation “Kharkiv Is a Dream: Public Art and Activism 2013–2023” (ibidem, Ukrainian Voices series)

Language: English
When: Monday, October 20, 2025, 12:30–13:45
Where: Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI), Vienna, and ONLINE
Please note: Limited places are available for in-person participation. Confirmation will be sent by email after registration.
Registration link: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/Pyshd6sCCf

In-person registration closes on: October 18, 2025
Online registration closes on: October 19, 2025

The Centre for Social Innovation (ZSI), as part of its Lunchtalk series, organises this hybrid event featuring the recently published book Kharkiv Is a Dream: Public Art and Activism 2013–2023 (ibidem, Ukrainian Voices series). The talk highlights a decade-long research project from Kharkiv, eastern Ukraine, tracing artistic and activist practices before and after the full-scale Russian invasion.

The session will feature the book’s authors:

Vasylysa Shchogoleva (Architect and Visual Artist, Berlin/Kharkiv)
Viktoriia Grivina (Cultural Anthropologist, University of St Andrews, UK)
Hjørdis Clemmensen (Anthropologist, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Moderation: Olga Bolibok (Senior Researcher, Centre for Social Innovation, Vienna, Austria)

Info-partners: Ukrainian Community Media Center in Vienna, LiterAktiv, Austrian Cultural Association “Frontier Art Collective”

The book explores Kharkiv as a diverse, multilayered city shaped by its people, history, and urban landscape. It asks key questions about the evolution of activism and art since before the Maidan Revolution, the role of memory and resilience, and how communities imagine the future of the city. Architect and visual artist Vasylysa Shchogoleva (holds a double MA in architecture from Dessau International Architecture (DIA), Hochschule Anhalt, and the National University of Civil Engineering and Architecture in Kharkiv) explores the urban space of Kharkiv in 2023 as a place of healing and compassion. Cultural anthropologist Viktoriia Grivina, PhD candidate at the University of St Andrews, takes us back to 2018 when a piece of street art on a wall became the epicenter of a community conflict. Anthropologist Hjørdis Clemmensen, prospective PhD student at University of Ljubljana, opens a window to the workshop of a group of architecture students in 2013 who wished to not only influence the space around them but time itself.

During the presentation and the following discussion, you will have a chance to become familiar with the methods and theoretical underpinnings of the authors’ approach to city exploration. The book is a testament to embodied methodologies: close reading of a city space, participatory methods and artistic interventions, autoethnographies, walk-along interviews, and self-reflections in writing, art, and photography. The authors invite the audience to a conversation about positionality in Kharkiv prior to the full-scale invasion vs. today, with a particular focus on the relevance of a decolonial glance at Ukrainian urban spaces and histories.

Registration is required for both in-person and online participation. Please indicate your mode of attendance upon registration and wait for confirmation for the in-person option. The authors will also bring some copies of the book with them.