April 30 – May 1. What was taken from us.

“This is the way Russia is killing Ukrainian culture once again. It takes away the time from the young artists, who could spend it making their art, growing, travelling and becoming something they want to become.”

The classroom of the department of Contemporary Art Practices is on the last floor of a historical building in the centre of Lviv.

The Lviv National Academy of Art, where I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree, got a new department as soon as I left. They teach Contemporary Art practices to young people who want to become artists and expand their creative horizons beyond the traditional genres. They work on video, performance, and design projections. And I got myself an invitation to a lecture where students present their projects before implementing them. A common theme for them is Anthropocene, and they have to tackle it from the angle of their choice. The presentation stated their academic sources, the references from the Ukrainian and global art scene, and the preview of the artwork.

I did not have a role in the presentation, but everyone was curious about my opinion, so I spoke on a couple of occasions, offering more solutions than critiques. After all, this is what everyone needs here — solutions, a different point of view that assists along the way towards the destination. The four professors the students presented to were keen on looking for technical gaps. They questioned the solutions to the final artwork and advised on possible changes. It was afternoon, and they were evidently tired: they had been doing this all day. But it was nice to see the commitment that went beyond exhaustion. Sometimes, their communication would switch from students to the members of the committee, as they would start a heated discussion on what is best to do for the artworks they are looking at. In the end, everyone there wanted to produce a good show, a meaningful and visually appealing work of art.

After the students finished presenting, I was invited to the department’s office, where I stopped for a minute to exchange a few words with the professors. I knew one of them very well — she used to teach my course many years ago. She did not seem to age one minute, but she seemed overwhelmed by the amount of work and information intake. The second person from the committee looked painfully familiar to me, and I knew he was an artist, but I could not remember where I had seen him before. After all, I had spent four years in the walls of that Academy, and, to some extent, I knew everyone there. Lots of my coursemates are now teaching in different departments, too.

First off, I noticed how many students from all over Ukraine were in the group we had just listened to. Back in 2013, when I was admitted there, I was barely the only person from the Eastern part of the country. The situation drastically changed with the full-scale invasion, as students and their families moved further to the West, where russian missiles arrive less regularly. We talked about the way war impacts the young students (most of them are 19 years old upon arrival in the First year of studies).

The guy I vaguely remembered listened to our conversation from the armchair in the corner. He looked visibly exhausted. He said that at the beginning of the war, the students would talk about it a lot in their art projects. Years passed, and the war became both the present and the past. There are memories of it and events that unfolded in the past, but always in the framework of the russian invasion. “The difference”, he said, “is that the students do not position themselves as victims of it anymore. They live in this present reality, absorb it, and everything that comes with it”. Their work is still about the war, but not as an event, but as a condition. They do not talk about it directly. 

The theme was Anthropocene. It is a large, complicated hyperobject, with lots of things it drags along with it. But I noticed that in one way or another, all of the students talked about loss. It feels like all of these very young people (in their early 20s) have lost something they want to have back. They are critical about the human impact on the world, their small world, maybe, but I couldn’t shake the feeling of their nostalgia for something that isn’t there anymore. They are way too young to be nostalgic, I thought.

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Lviv city centre at night. Bernardine’s convent. Most of the monuments in the city are protected in case of a missile attack.

In the meantime, my stories on Instagram indicate my current location: Lviv, Ukraine. 

“Well, this is rich. I was in Lviv two days ago, and had a strong feeling about calling you, but I was sure you were away. Instead, you are here.”

It was my old friend B, whom I have known since before the war, since 2012. Back then, I suddenly found a group of friends in Kharkiv. They were musicians, writers, and actors. Everyone is very young and smart. We are still friends with almost everyone. All the boys are fighting. Nobody asked them to, they decided they had to do it. They put away their guitars and poetry, left their stages and abandoned their writing. Nobody among them was “made for war”, and even less prepared to do it. They were where they were supposed to be: making their art and doing their research. 

I asked B if we could meet somewhere this month, and he said it was not possible, because he was returning to the [military] positions. I asked him if we could still talk about his service, his music and his theatre. “There is no theatre, I can’t make music, and I don’t feel like talking about service. But we can talk, if you want to”. This is the way Russia is killing Ukrainian culture once again. It takes away the time from the young artists, who could spend it making their art, growing, travelling and becoming something they want to become. But every artist here is stuck in the tragic gap of a choice between the two identities: the creative one and the civil one. My friends chose citizenship over creativity. I am very proud of this choice, but sometimes I wish they had made another one. 

B has changed a great deal. He used to be an arrogant, talented young man, very hard to be friends with because he was so fond of himself. We loved him for that, though. He took the arrogance and made it his. The service made him a tired, pragmatic, humble man, who ages three years in one. He is not alone. We are all him. 

I found a photograph from November 2013, before the Revolution of Dignity started. It was still just a student protest in the Kyiv Square. We were very young, and we believed in the power of our will, as promised by the Constitution. We were there because we had to show up, to be present. A few months later, we would be all grown up, because Russia would start its war in Crimea, and then in Donbas. Now I don’t even know who those people are in the photo. We are not them anymore.