The New Scene of Ukraine

BLOCKFREI has a pleasure to invite you to the conference program in the framework of the project “The New Scene of Ukraine”.

In the light of 2019 – the bilateral “Year of Culture” between Ukraine and Austria, BLOCKFREI has created a project “The New Scene of Ukraine” with the idea to present the existing and emerging cultural associations from Ukraine. The main goal is to connect them with their Austrian colleagues for the purpose of exchange of ideas and to lay a foundation for their potential collaboration in the years to come.

So far two of the three planned activities have taken place.
The first activity was a “Visitors’ Programme to Ukraine” - when an Austrian based art critic and a curator were selected via an open call to take part in the week-long study visit to Kyiv and Kharkiv during the 2nd National Biennale of Young Art. It has been realized in cooperation with the Biennale and IZOLYATSIA. Platform for Cultural Initiatives.
The second activity of the project was a selection of two Ukrainian based emerging curators and their participation in the “Curators’ Agenda”, an annual curatorial program for emerging international curators conducted by BLOCKFREI. This recently ended program was realized in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute.

The December conference is the final activity of the project “The New Scene of Ukraine”. It is envisaged along the lines of a networking event with the aim of (re-) connecting Ukrainian and Austrian professionals from the field of arts and culture, as well as for giving a reflection on the current state of the art and culture in Ukraine.

Friday’s daily program will be dedicated to presentations of the institutions, projects and initiatives by the invited guests from Ukraine, as well as examples of cooperation projects between Austria and Ukraine. During the night event, we will present two Ukrainian sound artists at Club Celeste in the framework of their Service platform.
Saturday’s evening program will have a discursive format consisting of two panels, one dedicated to the state of the (young) Ukrainian art scene, while the other panel will be focused more on the topic of internationalization as a capacity-building of the Ukrainian art and cultural scene.

Friday, 6th of December

Daily program
Depot, Breite Gasse 3, 1070 Vienna
12 - 13.30 PM // 1st Set of Presentations
14.30 - 05 PM // 2nd Set of Presentations
Night program
Celeste club, Hamburgerstrasse 18, 1050 Vienna
11 PM - 6 AM // Dj Kurilo and Dj Udda, Kultura Zvuka, Kharkiv
Performing in the framework of Service program