Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which puts its people under physical and political extermination, has forced the West to question the very foundations of the institutional order it had been based on since the end of World War II. Vasyl Cherepanyn, the director of the award-winning Visual Culture Research Center from Kyiv, puts this new catastrophic reality into the perspective of Europe at large. Discussing the recent as well as the historical experiences of imperialism, colonialism, authoritarianism, and revolution, the talk addresses the dominant ideological setting that enabled the reactivation of genocidal fantasies and practices today.
Vasyl Cherepanyn (Ukraine, 1980) is head of the Visual Culture Research Center (VCRC), an institution he co-founded in Kyiv in 2008 as a platform for collaboration among academic, artistic, and activist communities. VCRC is the organizer of the Kyiv Biennial (The School of Kyiv, 2015; The Kyiv International, 2017; The Kyiv International—’68 NOW, 2018; Black Cloud, 2019; Allied, 2021) and a founding member of the East Europe Biennial Alliance. Cherepanyn holds a PhD in philosophy (aesthetics) and has lectured at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), University of Helsinki, Free University of Berlin, Merz Akademie in Stuttgart, University of Vienna, Institute for Advanced Studies of the Political Critique in Warsaw, and University of Greifswald. He was a visiting fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna in 2016. He co-edited the Guidebook of the Kyiv International (Medusa Books, 2018) and ’68 NOW (Archive Books, 2019), and curated The European International (Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten, Amsterdam, 2018), Hybrid Peace (Stroom, The Hague, 2019), and Armed Democracy (2nd edition of Biennale Warszawa, 2022), among others. VCRC received the European Cultural Foundation Princess Margriet Award for Culture in 2015 and the Igor Zabel Award Grant for Culture and Theory in 2018.