Forum of Oral History of Ukraine Spearheaded by the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation Presents Program Topics and Introduces Moderators of Discussions

On 10 October 2023, an offline meeting of Ukrainian and international documenting initiatives, the Forum of Oral History of Ukraine, will be held in Kyiv.

Representatives of educational, public, and independent institutions of Ukraine and the world, museums of history and national memory, Ukrainian cities affected by the war, as well as documentarians, will discuss various aspects of documenting the war in Ukraine.

The Forum’s program will consist of three discussion panels.

The panel discussion When Experiences Become Knowledge will be moderated by Natalia Kryvda, Ph.D., cultural researcher, professor of the Department of Ukrainian Philosophy and Culture of the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Natalia specializes in the history of culture, the history of mythology, issues of identity and cultural memory.

In the framework of the panel discussion, the speakers will discuss, in particular, how documented experiences of war are transformed into knowledge about it, and later become part of public memory. The panellists will talk about the challenges in working with documented evidence, as well as about the formation of narratives about the war and the role of the state, society, independent institutions, etc. in this process.

The panel discussion Oral History: Tasks, Roles, and Problematique will be moderated by Yulia Manukyan, journalist, editor, researcher, co-founder of Urban Republic civil society organization (Kherson), curator, editor of the culturalogical publication СОYС and winner of the Vaclav Havel Award (2023).

The participants will discuss “bottlenecks” and pain points in documenting war experiences, as well as the role of the Ukrainian experience for global documentation practices.

The panel discussion Documentation of War Experiences and the Future will be moderated by Anastasia Platonova, a cultural critic, editor, culture analyst, former culture section editor of Forbes Ukraine. Anastasia specializes in criticism of contemporary visual culture, cultural policies, and the topic of memory. 

During the discussion, its participants will talk about the significance of the documented experiences of the war for the advocacy of Ukraine in the international arena and future post-war justice, as well as about what the archive of this war can be like.

The Forum is an initiative of the Museum of Civilian Voices of the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation, which has been documenting testimonies of civilians about the war, told first-hand, for more than five years, and which has collected more than 85,000 testimonies for now. The event will be held in partnership with the Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and Maria Curie-Skłodowska University (Lublin). 

Participation in the Forum is free and is possible upon prior registration and confirmation from the organizers. Registration for the Forum of Oral History of Ukraine is available at the link 

THE FORUM OF ORAL HISTORY OF UKRAINE
and is open until 8 October 2023. 

For questions related to press accreditation, please contact Olha Nosyk at [email protected].

For questions about registration and additional questions, please contact Volodymyr Kapustin at [email protected].

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