Track List

Music is art that lasts in time. Music, and in particular the song, is unfolded and perceived in time, which means that it can lead it. And what is time? It is fluid, and music, apparently, is eternal.

We live in time. We leave something in the past, we say goodbye to someone, we want something now, we do something now, we want something to happen later, then in the future. That’s how it is. And that’s how it will be. In the end, the future is only the projection, desirability, anxiety, confidence, anticipation, and expectation.

But something that allows us to remember, recall, leave something with ourselves, in ourselves, that helps us to overcome time is also music, isn’t it? Once having heard a song that would eventually become a favourite and would always be with you, would you be able to forget it? Could you no longer know it in the future? The unique ability to reproduce fragments of the past in the future, the reversibility of the perspective, again-reflexivity of experience — everything is music. But how could you understand music? How could you feel and explain it? How could you interpret it and share with the Other(s)? The ability to grab music, catch a moment, witness it, project it, extrapolate it, and therefore, embody your emotions in something different from music, but just as beautiful. Special magic and suggestibility of music encourage the creativity and create images.

Music and song are always a message, a call for impulse, a signal to the future. At the exhibition Track List by graphic designer and artist Julia Fedorovych, you can see how this message can be displayed visually.

Julia has created a series of collages dedicated to Ukrainian songs of different years and styles. Among the ten tracks visualized by the artist are a song from the new project by Serhiy Zhadan The Mannerheim Line, one of the tracks by DakhaBrakha, Chervona Ruta by Volodymyr Ivasyuk, and even some of the Ukrainian swing of the 60s. The volumetric collages are made of paper, foam cardboard, threads, as well as lyrics, which spread on the canvas sometimes chaotically, and sometimes in a spooky logical snake. That is exactly the way we listen to the songs and remember them — with separate words, phrases, choruses, and those several seconds of compositions, which cause us to feel the apogee for which we listen to the entire track. While contemplating the songs you can at the same time listen to them — for full immersion in the atmosphere it is desirable to bring smartphones with QR-scanners and headphones with you.

The year of 2018 in Kyiv has become a year of public libraries transformation. This year, the reform covers five districts of the capital where libraries are gradually turning into new cultural and informational spaces.

The Mykola Kostomarov Library is the first object that Kyiv will see in the new format as early as at the end of this year. The reformation concerns not only the reconstruction of the building and changes in its interior but also the functionality of the space as a whole. In addition to the walls, the changes relate directly to the work of the library, from the new working hours to the new identity, from the principles of inclusivity to free development programs for children and adolescents, from the expansion of the district library functionality to its enlightening mission throughout the city.

Within the Book Arsenal, excursions inside the new space of the Kostomarov Library will be held, which you will be able to visit without leaving the festival area. All you need is to wear VR-glasses. In addition, you will find out about all available public libraries in different parts of the city and become a member of them if you want to.

Imagine you are among almost three hundred of silk-screened prints created by artists, where you as a real editor make a collection to your liking. It’s hard for you to choose: silk-screened prints are beautifully made, and each one of them may qualify for the category of intellectual food in order to be a sheet of your collection. In the end, you make choices about your own ‘visual lunch’ that includes thoughts about Kitchen, Sex and Ukrainian passport. You can visit the Book Buffet ‘kitchen’, where on the table with a silk screen you can print a sheet for your collection with your own hands. Or you can look into a room where there are only fluorescence and visual content.

The idea of the event belongs to the curatorial duo Book Lunch initiated in the spring of 2007 by Alevtyna Kakhidze and Kateryna Svirhunenko and geared solely toward the category of books created by artists.

IZONE is an open silk-screen printing workshop engaged in silk-screen printing and aimed primarily at producing products, that is replicating posters and printing on fabric or ceramics. The format of the open workshop was chosen to help as many people as possible master the silk-screen printing technique.

Art & I calligraphy and font school is hosting the fourth annual exhibition and educational program from Ukrainian and foreign artists at the Book Arsenal. The project reflects the development of modern font design and the art of calligraphy from classics to the trends of the future. The general perception of the function of letters is to transmit information. They accompany virtually all moments in our life. Just think of the endless number of letters gathered on the pages of all books at the Book Arsenal! Yet, do we also realize the more powerful role of letters in their graphic form? When letters reflect not just words, but emotions, moods and style? We will focus on demonstrating and researching these unique possibilities.

The Font Platform on the 1st floor of the Art Arsenal shows that even handwritten calligraphy does not disappear in the digital age. Instead, it turns into an accessible and unique skill when combined with digital technologies. Modern font designs and 3D animation of letters are to be discussed at professional meetings as part of this special program.

In addition to its program part, the project offers a display of new calligraphy on fabric, lettering in materials and video installation works by Ukrainian and foreign artists.

Art & I studio presents the new edition of Ukrainian Calligraphy: Cursive from Veronica Chebanyk and her students, and the updated Living Font catalog from Ukrainian font designers.

Artists involved include Veronica Chebanyk, Taras Makar, Kyrylo tkachov, Zakentiy Horobiov, Viktoria and Vitalina Lophukhina, Andriy Shevchenko, Natalia Komiakhova, Misha Katz and others.

Illustrative focus on the theme of this year’s Book Arsenal was made by artists from Pictoric Illustrators Сlub. The world of the future created in the imagination of illustrators — how close will it be to reality? From the creators of Futurama to modern art exhibitions with VR technologies — artists around the world are already projecting the future in images, dreaming and visualizing the most daring ideas. In illustrative posters by Pictoric, artists tell their stories about the future and create optimistic, satirical, utopian inspirational works. The illustrators’ appeal to futuristic theme in a separate project is not new. As early as the end of the 19th century, French artists of the En L’An 2000 project (The Year of 2000), which arose before the Paris International Exhibition of 1900, predicted what the world would be in the year 2000, and created a series of artworks that later were discovered by Isaac Azimov while he was working on the book Futuredays: A Nineteenth Century Vision of the Year 2000.

Today, Pictoric illustrators are also expanding horizons of human curiosity and depicting feelings in anticipation of future progress. Futuristic works are an impulse to conceive and convey the vision to the broad masses, to provoke ideas in others. After all, progress doesn’t appear as something chaotic, but rather as a result of the efforts made to implement certain ideas. A futuristic series by the Pictoric illustrators club created by artists launches the Ukrainian Visual Odyssey to the year 3000.

Creators of the artworks: Art studio Agrafka, Anna Andreeva, Nadiia Antoniets, Oksana Bula, Yevhen Velichev, Andrii Hetmanchuk, Oleh Hryshchenko, Tetiana Denysenko, Polina Doroshenko, Oksana Drachkovska, Ivan Dudchenko, Anna Ivanenko, Serhii Maidukov, Hrasia Oliiko, Zhenia Polosina, Romana Ruban, Anna Sarvira, Nastia Sleptsova, Yuliia Sobotiuk, Olena Staranchuk, Anastasiia Stefurak, Yuliia Tveritina, Olha Tereshchenko, Olena Tykhoniuk, Illia Uhnivenko, Erik Khoroshok, Tetiana Tsiupka, Anastasiia Sholik, Olha Shtonda, Oleh Shcherba.

Within the exhibition program of the VIII International Book Arsenal Festival, Aza Nizi Maza will present the project Buravchyk’s Rules, which became the answer to the general theme of the event The Project of the Future. In order to speak about the futurity, artists suggest not to hurry with the predictions. Aza Nizi Maza speaks of the need for today’s production of principles, using which you can “bore” the path to a better, more interesting, more full life. The name of the project is a word play, combining productive “creative boring” in the direction of the future, the right-hand rule (the rule of determining the direction of the magnetic induction vector in electrical engineering; Buravchyk’s Rule in Ukrainian), as well as the surname of the author of the list of contemporary art’s fundamental rules — Myroslav Buravchyk.

Aza Nizi Maza is an art studio founded in 2011 by Mykola and Mariia Kolomiiets in Kharkiv. While working with students, the teachers of the studio move from discussing an idea to creating an artwork. On their way, they often appeal to the collective writing of poetic texts, which makes it possible to reveal the characters and saturate their images. One of the principles of Aza Nizi Maza is the desire to get rid of two common extremes: the academic dogma “first learn and then work”, on the one hand, and the notion of incredible performance of creativity without restrictions, on the other. In the studio the artists immediately immerse themselves in work, developing their own capabilities and distinctiveness of the expression.

Photo-Katia Makarova

Partner – Zabolotnyi State Scientific Library of Architecture and Construction

With the participation of Factum Arte, Borys Yerofalov and Semen Shyrochyn

Assistant curator – Hanna Oryshchenko

Humanity has always been interested in only one question: what will happen next – tomorrow, next year or through the centuries? The past cannot be undone, the present is marred by numerous shortcomings, the future gives hope for a better life and leaves plenty of room for fantastic and utopian ideas. The possibility of improving and modifying the world prompted thinkers, painters, architects and other artists to come up with futuristic fantasies in various chronological intervals and geographically defined territories.

The notion of “tomorrow” has become increasingly widespread with the development of science and the expansion of its dominant role over religion. The discovery of America by Columbus, the theory of perspective of Leon Battista Alberti, the scientific activity of Nicolas Copernicus, Galileo Galileo and Giordano Bruno contributed to the broadening of the horizons of knowledge and, accordingly, gave an impetus to the creation of new theories and fantasies about the future.

During the Renaissance, emerged the famous inventions of Leonardo da Vinci that were ahead of the time for several centuries and became unconditional proof of the modification of human consciousness – from fatalism associated with religious dominance to belief in progressiveness. This process became dynamic and inevitable, and was also extended to art, through the prism of which the artists reflected not only their contemporary reality, but also guesses about the future and confidence in what exactly should it be in the perfect dimension. So architects turned to the modeling of utopian cities and buildings (Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Claude-Nicolas Ledoux, Jean-Jacques Lequeu, Etienne-Louis Boullee, Yakiv Chernikhov, Le Corbusier and Ukrainian architects of late modernism), artists filled the paintings with symbols incomprehensible for their contemporaries, which, however, can be logically explained nowadays, and directors, armed with cameras and special effects, tried to visualize the most daring futuristic ideas of writers (A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès, Aelita by Yakov Protazanov, Metropolis by Fritz Lang, Modern Times by Charlie Chaplin).

The subjective expression of creative thought of the future by the artists of the past helps to answer the questions about the desire and aspiration of different generations and allows us to analyse the evolution of progress from the contemporary perspective. The visual narrative in this case becomes a sort of a “map” that helps us not to get lost in the infinity of thoughts associated with representations, fantasies and predictions.

The exhibition presents views of visionaries in the area of architecture, inventions, and cinema. In particular, the originals of utopian projects for the reconstruction of Kyiv by Ukrainian architects of Stalin period (Oleksandr Vlasov, Oleksiy Tatsiy, Dmytro Chechulin), are of great value.

It all began in Lampedusa, an island in southern Italy where many refugees have been arriving after long and hazardous boat journeys across the Mediterranean Sea. The people coming here carried with them fear, anxiety, grief and longing. The situation created the conditions for a new means of refugee reception.

In 2012, IBBY Italy launched a project called: “Silent Books: from the world to Lampedusa and back”. The project focused on a collection of wordless picture books, on the understanding that the inherent narrative power of the images could bridge cultural and linguistic barriers. Everyone could share in the same story, no matter where they came from or what language they spoke.

It soon became clear that the books and the stories gave comfort and security, an opportunity to disappear into a story and escape the difficulties of life for a moment. This was a place where people could share worlds and experiences with each other. The books provided a fast route into the new language, and sparked a desire to read.

This year, a unique collection of “Silent Books” 2015 by IBBY will be presented at the Book Arsenal Festival with the support of the Embassy of Switzerland in Ukraine. These are 51 books from IBBY National Sections from about twenty countries. The IBBY expert, a senior lecturer at the University of Glasgow, the leading children’s literature and reading specialist Evelyn Arizpe from Scotland will arrive to introduce the collection and its history, as well as to share new models of storytelling to a wide audience of readers, authors and illustrators, publishers, educators and librarians (guest visit is supported by the Embassy of Great Britain in Ukraine).