08/06/2023
performance
rememberMINT
projection+performance+ live accordion - about memory and the future, about distances in time and space
- rememberMINT is a multimedia collage that combines audiovisual observations from the regions of Lugansk and Donetsk, music, plants, performance and stories of people found themselves in the war in eastern Ukraine. For five years from 2016 to 2021, the work was shown in various cities in Ukraine and Europe as a performance, taking a slightly different form each time, but the common point was always the planting of mint from the occupied regions of Ukraine. In 2021, the idea to edit rememberMINT as a video work emerged. The artist, Olya Mykhailiuk finished editing it nine months before the full-scale war in Ukraine. It premiered in the spring of 2021 in Mariupol.
- Grass by the Donets Siversky River, sunflowers near Bakhmut, frozen birds by the Sea of Azov in Mariupol, black fish on the wall of a store in Shchastia, lilacs and garden gnomes in a destroyed flower farm in Slovyansk. The war in Ukraine has been going on since 2014, but until 2022 it was called an armed conflict. In the spring of 2017, the performance paMIĘTAć was presented in eastern Ukrainian cities near the war zone: Starobelsk, Siverskodonetsk, Kramatorsk, Bakhmut and Mariupol. In 2022, all of them will be at the epicenter of hostilities. From November to December 2022, the work was presented at the exhibition Decolonial Ecologies at the Latvian Center for Contemporary Art.
- In May 2023, Olya Mykhailiuk felt the need to return to her herbs - to film plants specific to eastern and southern Ukraine. Since most of the territory is now occupied, finding areas of the Ukrainian steppe was quite difficult. But Olya was lucky, she found her herbs at the Kherson Botanical Garden. Botanical Garden specialists were able to preserve them even during the occupation. Olya hopes to film the herbs in the coming days and show the new part of paMIĘTAć in Warsaw, combining it with a performance and music by Alexey Vorsoba.
- We invite you to watch, drink mint tea, listen to music and plant mint together.