The new interdisciplinary project by NGO Docudays, LAB: DOCU/SYNTHESIS x Ukraine War Archive, is actively evolving: two months of participant selection followed the open call announced in July, a thematic event took place at the IDFA festival on 16 November, and from 19 to 23 November, a training module was held at the Peremoga Business Space, resulting in the selection of 10 winning projects. In this interview with Oleksandra Nabieva, a cultural studies researcher and the curator of the Lab, we uncover details about the project’s latest achievements and its meanings which continue to be discovered and actualised.
What goals did you set for yourself as a curator during the presentation of the Lab at IDFA? Were you able to achieve them?
The event at IDFA was envisioned as part of our project from the start; however, this did not mean that such an opportunity—to become part of the festival programme—was guaranteed by default. The Lab is not only a new project but also one that is in progress. The festival programmers needed to show interest in it and also commit to preparing the event on a partnership basis, as the Ukrainian Institute did, whom we are deeply grateful for support. At the same time, we didn’t want our event to be just a simple presentation; instead, it was important to me to embed it into a thematic interdisciplinary discussion involving local experts. As a result, the event (Re)thinking Archives: Historical Memory, Cultural Heritage, and Artistic Interpretation involved people from the Dutch side, namely Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi, curator at the Eye Filmmuseum, the Museum of Film and the Art of the Moving Image, and Ankie Petersen, a cultural heritage protection expert from the Ministry of Defence of the Netherlands, who, during the full-scale war, has regularly collaborated with Ukrainian governmental and non-governmental organisations professionally and frequently visited Ukraine. The Ukraine War Archive was presented by the project’s co-founder and Infoscope leader, Maksym Demydenko. The think tank by invitation format is by definition small-scale and prioritises the quality of the discussion.
I believe that in the process, we managed to outline a range of problematic questions, each of which could develop into a separate direction of work. Who is forming the archives now and how, and what is the historical perspective of these processes? How do the material components and structure of the archives influence this selection? To what extent are archives truly accessible and open for artists to work with? However, perhaps the most important, painful, and relevant question is how to deal with the archives themselves and the narratives they produce that have been inherited by us. Ultimately, how can we build an approach sensitive to previously discriminated and marginalised groups and communities, and how can we decolonise this archival heritage?
(Re)thinking Archives: Historical Memory, Cultural Heritage, and Artistic Interpretation discussion. Photo credit: Stefania Bodnia
How did the idea for the project you presented at IDFA come about?
In my view, there is both a trend and a demand in the cultural sphere for building sustainable practices. Following this logic, Docudays UA has grown numerous branches from the festival that have been thriving for many years. The idea for LAB: DOCU/SYNTHESIS x Ukraine War Archive emerged from institutionalising the DOCU/SYNTHESIS programme and scaling its principles, which included this laboratory component from the very beginning. For instance, thematic exhibitions within the festival were formed not only from selected projects but also from works created by artists specifically for the programme. Another important component of the Lab — working with the materials of the Ukraine War Archive — is a similar scaling of the programme. After all, Beyond the Window by Yevhen Arlov and Anthology of Ukrainian Cuisine 2022–24 by Volodymyr Kuznetsov already paved this path in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Personally, it is also important to me that the materials structured and preserved by the Ukraine War Archive are incorporated into projects that concretely demonstrate the importance and necessity of archiving, and that the interdisciplinary collaboration between the Ukraine War Archive and DOCU/SYNTHESIS results in mutual exchange and amplification of audiences.
Thematic and competitive open calls for project and exhibition development programmes are also practised by DocLab (IDFA), Alternate Realities (Sheffield DocFest), and others. In our case, the Lab represents specific conditions created to enhance the process. It consists of opportunities to engage the widest possible circle of potentially interested participants — an open call; a theoretical and practical component — an educational module and mentorship sessions over 4 months of working on artistic projects; and a cultural-diplomatic component — the in-progress presentation of the Lab at relevant international platforms. By the way, according to our vision, the planned final exhibition within the DOCU/SYNTHESIS programme during the 22nd Docudays, which will be based on the created projects, is not meant to be a destination but, hopefully, the beginning of a further journey and dialogue with the international community.
What feedback did you receive after the event? What conclusions did you draw personally for yourself?
After this discussion, I became completely convinced that it definitely makes sense to discuss these questions specifically in an international context, creating as broad a perspective as possible. The degree of sensitivity of this topic is such that there is always a risk of becoming encapsulated in one’s own experience and perspective of research.
IDFA festival space. Photo provided by Oleksandra Nabieva
What are your impressions of the event and of attending the festival itself?
A significant part of the networking took place during the preparation for the event and during the networking at the festival itself. Of course, the Eye Filmmuseum is decolonising its archive, correctly attributing films from the Soviet era using the guide developed by the Dovzhenko Centre for FIAF, but over coffee, I taught Elif Rongen-Kaynakçi how to pronounce the title of Mykhailo Kaufman’s film In Spring in Ukrainian.
I had the opportunity to talk with the programme team of the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision, a museum that collects, preserves, and provides access to over 70% of the Netherlands' audiovisual heritage. I also spoke with the head of the Collection and Knowledge Exchange Department at the Eye Filmmuseum, the Dutch national film archive.
Additionally, I had contact, of course, with Caspar Sonnen, co-founder and curator of DocLab, IDFA’s programme that pushes the boundaries of storytelling through modern media. DocLab, as an interdisciplinary platform for interactive and immersive documentary art, has existed since 2008 and became the first of its kind, an example that was later followed by other significant film festivals.
Could you please tell us about how DocLab was conducted at this festival?
This year, the programme revolved around the theme This is Not a Simulation and, through digital media — from VR to augmented reality, from performances to interactive installations — aimed to provoke reflection on reality. Researcher Julia Scott Stevenson argues that creators, instead of striving for a greater effect of immersion and derealisation, tend to layer the real and the unreal, undermining both. She also notes that working with the body is the new grammar of expanded documentary. Most projects in the DocLab programme first define bodily boundaries and spatial coordinates and then "challenge" them to stimulate other ways of cognition.
DocLab programme. Photo provided by Oleksandra Nabieva
From my personal experience as a visitor, I must note that your sensory receptors truly become heightened. After all the immersives and interactives, I stepped into the inner courtyard and perceived an installation with no less intensity — an autumn tree slowly shedding two yellow leaves onto the damp ground.
By the way, this year’s IDFA opened with About a Hero by Piotr Winewicz, a film whose development began within DocLab several years ago. It is a hybrid film, with its fictional part generated by artificial intelligence trained on data from Werner Herzog’s films and interviews.
A retrospective of Belgian multimedia artist Johan Grimonprez resonated with DocLab. Each film in the programme was dedicated to exploring a specific medium and, according to the curatorial commentary, the collective imagination that shapes our understanding of historical events. Philosopher and curator Dana Linssen writes that Grimonprez’s works travel between museums and cinemas: “His films arise from fragments — fragments he shows to his students, culminate in exhibitions, turn into features, only to unfold into short films again, and turn into themes explored in longer features.”
The artworks we selected for participation in the educational module of the Lab also freely drift between mediums, undermining the boundaries of expressive tools. They begin as a performative-poetic audio walk and culminate in immersive video; they transform the documentary film stage into an audiovisual installation, and so on. At a later stage of the Lab, we plan to present the main project alongside the works developed by the participants. For now, we’re keeping the international platform we have in mind a secret, but it will be just as interesting.
The Lab’s education module. Photo credit: Anna Soli
Let’s move on to the question about the educational module of the Lab. How did it go? What was the programme, and who were the invited mentors and speakers?
The subject of the Lab, Cultural Heritage and Memory, is vast, and we deliberately did not limit it with our interpretations when announcing the open call. The projects we selected for participation in the Lab after the open call, in my opinion, had a remarkable spectrum of approaches. These ranged from fundamental topics — such as a community’s struggle for Kyiv’s long-suffering architectural heritage and the right to the city, as well as the preservation of student film archives at the Film Processing Workshop — to less obvious ones, like memories of the road from currently occupied Melitopol to the Sea of Azov or the social structures underlying informal street vending in Ukraine, a periphery of the neoliberal economy, seemingly meticulously implementing the idea of a free market while simultaneously appearing to mock it.
However, leaving the participants without theoretical frameworks and tools for delving into the topic, in my view, would mean deviating from the laboratory format, which should primarily create conditions for thinking. I assigned these tasks to the educational module, which combined lectures, seminars, and workshops with moderated discussions with artists.
A large block of the module was dedicated to the concept of cultural heritage itself — both the frameworks of its definition and the questioning of those frameworks. How do we determine what constitutes cultural heritage and distinguish it conceptually? Is there a difference in these definitions at the global and local levels? How can cultural heritage be kept alive rather than bureaucratic and nominal? What is the connection between the institution of private property and the preservation of cultural heritage? And even, can the theoretical framework of the approach be scaled so that the entire planet becomes cultural heritage, extending all related practices of sacralisation and preservation to it?
Meeting Janice Kerbel, a Canadian artist and lecturer at Goldsmiths College. Photo credit: Anna Soli
What was valuable in these meetings for the Lab? What new meanings emerged during the collaborative work?
At the lectures and seminars, participants could grasp how the canon of “cultural heritage” is formed and undermined, using examples from the history of architecture and attitudes toward architectural objects. They learned about the historical approach to working with photographic archives, the structure of artistic archives dedicated to the subject of war, the work with family and so-called “orphan” archives, the digitisation of heritage, and the efforts of museums to preserve it. They heard about rethinking audiovisual heritage in the decolonisation context, practices of memorialisation on the Past/Future/Art platform in a conversation with Kateryna Semeniuk, and community interaction and cultural heritage protection as a participatory practice in a lecture by Uliana Dzhurliak, an architect, senior urbanist at Cedos, and co-founder of NGO Save the Flowers of Ukraine.
Participants reflected on the digital and analogue nature of archives and how artificial intelligence influences archiving practices. They also explored the phenomenon of the archive itself, starting from various approaches. For instance, during her artist talk, artist and director Hito Steyerl shared her non-expert opinion that an archive is created through a process of selection and cutting away the excess: deciding what is not part of the archive. Historian and staff member of the Center for Urban History, Iryna Sklokina, noted that the essence of an archivist's work is to answer the question, “What lies behind the visible?” and to work with metadata.
Within the module, participants also got acquainted with the project mentors, learned about the principles of the Ukraine War Archive's work, and how the work of the Lab artists with its media database would be organized. We also invited our partners, who have provided or plan to provide materials to the participants of LAB: DOCU/SYNTHESIS x Ukraine War Archive, to share the areas of their activities related to the preservation of cultural heritage.
The authors of 32 projects in total participated in the educational module. To ensure maximum engagement in the process, we asked the Lab participants to present their projects on the first day of the intensive and again at its conclusion. It was incredibly interesting to observe the rethinking, development, and transformation of ideas. In their feedback, some even mentioned that during the module, they managed not only to develop their existing project but also to come up with the concept for their next one.
Participants of the Lab. Photo credit: Anna Soli
Could you please tell us about the Lab’s upcoming plans in collaboration with the selected participants?
After the intensive, our jury of organisers and mentors selected 10 finalist projects for further collaboration. Even though we doubled the number of finalists, the selection process was still difficult because all the projects have potential. Now, the Lab finalists are moving on to the phase of researching and exploring materials in the Ukraine War Archive and establishing a schedule for mentorship sessions, during which they will have the opportunity to consult on both the theoretical and practical aspects of their work.
Since our project is still in progress, instead of drawing conclusions, I’ll share a small observation. It’s fascinating how two ideas from very different lectures during the educational module—by Oleksandr Ivashyna, who approached the topic from a cultural studies perspective, and by Ankie Petersen, who addressed accountability for the destruction of cultural heritage during international conflicts using the Balkans as an example—resonated at a single point. That point was the idea that the preservation of cultural heritage at the state level is inversely proportional to the likelihood of an outbreak of war. The better and more effectively cultural heritage is preserved, the lower the chances of a military conflict developing in that country.
Header photo: Anna Soli
This project is implemented by the Docudays NGO as part of the ENGAGE activity, which is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and implemented by Pact in Ukraine. The contents of this project are the sole responsibility of Pact and its partners and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.
