Donbas in Focus: Visions of Industry in the Ukrainian East
Donbas in Focus: Visions of Industry in the Ukrainian East explores the ways that Donbas, a heavily industrialised region in鈥疎astern Ukraine, was depicted in photography and film across the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and asks how these鈥痯rocesses continue to resonate in the region's political and cultural landscapes today. Situating the Donbas case in a鈥痗omparative research frame, it questions established notions of the region's post-Soviet specificity, highlighting common鈥痗hallenges and experiences in post-industrial regions and communities across the UK and Europe.
While a number of recent studies鈥痟ave begun to address the question of Donbas's cultural construction through word, image and social practice, there is no single-authored volume in Ukrainian, Russian, or English that engages with the politics of visualising industry in the鈥疷krainian East and the ways these politics have informed the cultural myth of Donbas across the Soviet and post-independence鈥痚ras. A study of this kind is now more urgent than ever given the ongoing conflict in Donbas, in the context of which marked tendencies to "Otherize" the heavily industrialised region have emerged. By drawing parallels with the鈥痗ultural construction of (post-)industrial regions across the UK, the project will contribute valuable new perspectives to the鈥痙ebate about Donbas identity politics, shifting the focus away from questions of ethnolinguistic identities, which have鈥痙ominated Ukrainian public discourse and international media coverage of the conflict, to discuss the dynamics of power鈥痶hat shape and inform (post-)industrial regional subjectivities and experiences.
The project includes a number of collaboratively conceived creative initiatives with partners in the heritage and creative industries across the UK and Ukraine:鈥�
1) a series of industrial archive workshops that will provide an opportunity for heritage professionals, artists, and local鈥痗ommunities to engage critically with archived photographs and film relating to the steel industry in Ebbw Vale, the coal鈥痬ining industry in Durham, and the oil shale industry in West Lothian, and to work with artists to formulate their own鈥痗reative responses to these materials;
2) a schools photography project in West Lothian that will explore historic鈥痸isualisations of the industrial landscape in regional archives and museums and engage local鈥痯hotographers and younger鈥痳esidents to create a new corpus of photographic work responding to (post-)industrial themes;
3) a touring exhibition of鈥痯roject photography and digital work, including creative outputs from the workshops and schools photography project, that鈥痺ill be displayed at venues across the UK and Ukraine.
Through these events, the project will prompt a reappraisal of the鈥痸alue of post-industrial history and heritage, highlighting the potential of post-industrial sites for stimulating innovation in鈥痚ducation, creativity and tourism.
Victoria Donovan has been awarded a 2-year Arts and Humanities Research Council Early Career Researcher Leadership Fellowship to support this work.
Images are from Oleksandr Kuchynskyi鈥檚 鈥淒e?industry鈥� series produced as part of the Un/archiving post/industry Summer Residency in Pokrovsk (2021).
