Authors

Sara Nesteruk¹;  ¹ Sara Nesteruk, UK

Discussion

This paper presents landscapes of creative practice in Ukraine, 1933–2023. I take as a starting point Mikhail Bakhtin’s ideas of polyphonic voice in storytelling, using audio-visual materials, layered audio, fragments of histories, memories, perspectives and personal stories. I work with oral histories including auto-ethnographic research. This is a film project exploring individual and collective memories through animation. Documentary work from the field.

Precedents for practice explore references from poetry and literature. Uses of structural devices in film. This work takes as specific reference openings from Ivan Kotliarevs’kyi’s Eneïda and re-uses these structures in storytelling from contemporary Ukraine. With particular reference to Anatolii Bazylevych’s illustrations of Kotliarevs’kyi’s poem from 1968. Visual responses using print techniques, woodcuts and graphic forms. Contemporary references include work by animator Elizabeth Hobbs. Working with film and literature, collage and rotoscoping. Production of this work is drawing and digital animation.



This is practice-based research including visual maps and landscapes. I am working on a feature film, an animated documentary for release in 2024. In my paper I present production materials, work in progress, sketches from the field, storyboards and illustrations. In particular, I am working with ‘value sketches’, black and white drawings highlighting light and shadow in architecture, cityscapes and landscapes. Using place and symbols from Kotliarevs’kyi’s poem to retell stories from Ukraine today.



Production work is from August 2023, Ukraine. Research is six in-depth interviews with nine people: Christine Popovich and Nazar Danylkiv, Ukrainian Catholic University Lviv; Mila Potapova, Kyivness markets; Annete Sagal, Katya Syta and Olha Syta, Cutout Collage Art Project Kyiv; Yelyzaveta Taranukha, Ukrainian language teacher Kyiv; Yana Hrynko, head of the exhibitions department, Holodomor Museum, Kyiv; and Yaroslava Tkachuk, General Director of the National Museum of Folk Art of Hutsul Region and Pokuttia, Kolomyya. Audience: academic scholars, film communities and general public.