A conversation at Depot, Vienna on February 25, 2026

From left to right: Anastasiia Diachenko, Katia Denysova, Asia Bazdyrieva, Nikolay Karabinovych, Georg Schöllhammer

© Office Ukraine

To mark the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Office Ukraine hosted the panel discussion Artistic Practice in Times of War at Depot in Vienna. The event brought together researchers, curators, artists, and cultural workers to reflect on how artistic practice continues under conditions of war, displacement, exhaustion, and political urgency.

Moderated by Anastasiia Diachenko, the discussion gathered Asia Bazdyrieva, Katia Denysova, Nikolay Karabinovych, and Georg Schöllhammer for a wide-ranging conversation about responsibility, witnessing, decolonization, and the infrastructures needed to sustain Ukrainian cultural production today. From the beginning, the speakers emphasized that discussing war from outside Ukraine is both necessary and deeply difficult. Reflecting on the reality faced by cultural workers, Asia Bazdyrieva began by acknowledging the scale of loss.

“Yesterday the statistic was published that since the beginning of the war 346 artists were killed. And this is just artists,” she said. “There are also writers, other professionals, and many people who gave up their artistic practice to go to the front.” Bazdyrieva described the uneasy position of speaking about the war while being physically outside the country. “I feel like I have no right to speak for the people who are there,” she said. “But at the same time one of the violences that war produces is that something as intimate as grief has to be communicated publicly. You either communicate, or you allow silence to erase it.”

Distance, Responsibility, and the Diaspora

Artist Nikolay Karabinovych reflected on the challenge of working from a position geographically removed from the war. “For artists who live abroad but remain connected to Ukraine, the question of language becomes crucial,” he said. “The language you use has to be very inventive in terms of ethics.” Karabinovych pointed to the fragmentation of experience within Ukrainian communities and the diaspora. “Everything is fractured,” he explained. “Even inside Ukraine experiences are very different. The main question is how to break this distance — how to speak about the experience when many of your friends and family are still living through the war.” At the same time, the war has created new global visibility for Ukrainian culture.

According to Georg Schöllhammer, this visibility also produces tensions. “There is enormous international attention,” he said, “but there is also exhaustion. Artists are suddenly expected to testify, to produce work that explains the war, and sometimes that pressure cuts into the autonomy of artistic practice.” He also described how international institutions are only now beginning to understand the complexity of Ukraine’s cultural landscape.

“Ukraine is no longer seen as a single centre,” he noted. “People begin to understand that there are scenes in Dnipro, in Uzhhorod, in Odesa — a multiplicity that was largely invisible before.”

Art, and the Question of Autonomy

Art historian Katia Denysova argued that the Western notion of artistic autonomy does not fully apply to the Ukrainian context. “The myth of art for art’s sake is largely a legacy of Western art history,” she said. “In Ukraine the artistic field was always deeply connected to civic life.” She pointed to the Maidan Revolution of 2013–14 as a moment when art spaces became sites of collective political and social transformation. “Artists were not separate from civil society,” Denysova explained. “The artistic sphere was one of the spaces where a new Ukrainian subjectivity was being formed.” In this sense, the war did not create a completely new relationship between art and politics. “The war didn’t radically change this lineage,” she said. “It intensified processes that were already there.”

Decolonizing Cultural Narratives

A major theme of the discussion was the long-term work of dismantling inherited cultural narratives, particularly the concept of the “Russian avant-garde.” Denysova described how this category was constructed in the 20th century by art historians and the art market. “The term ‘Russian avant-garde’ was created in the 1960s and 70s. It wasn’t used by the artists themselves,” she explained. “It grouped together artists from many regions of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union and presented them as Russian.” As a result, the cultural heritage of multiple nations including Ukraine became subsumed under a single imperial narrative. “This is something we have to push against,” she said. “Institutions and academia move very slowly, but we have to carve out space for Ukraine within this framework.” At the same time, several speakers warned against applying ready-made theories of decolonization too quickly. “We need time to think through the methodologies we are using,” Denysova said. “Ukraine’s history is specific. It cannot simply be explained through concepts developed elsewhere.”

The Labor of Witnessing

One of the most powerful moments of the evening came when Asia Bazdyrieva discussed the concept of the “labor of witnessing,” developed together with media theorist Susanna Bianchi. The idea emerged from Bazdyrieva’s own experience during the first weeks of the full-scale invasion in 2022. “Witnessing is a form of labor,” she explained. “Your body metabolizes reality — what you see, what you hear, what you know.” She described how, during the first weeks of the invasion, a social consensus emerged among civilians in Ukraine not to photograph bomb sites because images could reveal geolocations to Russian forces. “For several weeks almost nobody took pictures,” she recalled. “Imagine that reality today, a war where people consciously refuse to produce images.” In these circumstances, witnessing became deeply embodied. “War is not only visual. It is sonic,” she said. “You learn to recognize explosions, aircraft, air defense. Your whole body becomes an archive of what you experience.” Bazdyrieva argued that witnessing today is oriented toward the future. “We register reality in order to make justice possible later,” she said. “Our bodies become archives of things we have witnessed.”

Archives, Memory, and Cultural Infrastructure

The question of archives returned repeatedly throughout the discussion. For Georg Schöllhammer, one of the most urgent forms of support Europe can offer Ukraine lies precisely in this area. “Without archives, memories are lost,” he said. “Personal archives, institutional archives, oral histories, these are essential for constructing counter-histories. ”However, participants also emphasized that archiving is never neutral and must remain critically examined. At the same time, Schöllhammer stressed the importance of creating spaces for reflection rather than constant production. “Create small caverns where thinking can develop,” he said. “Spaces not bound to immediate production, but open to reflection.”

Life Beyond Victimhood

Toward the end of the evening, both speakers and audience members addressed another important dimension: the danger of reducing Ukraine solely to suffering. Denysova described the remarkable vitality of cultural life in Ukraine despite the war. “You go to any city in Ukraine and cultural life is flourishing,” she said. “Theatres are full, exhibitions open, new bookshops appear.” This vitality, she suggested, is not separate from the reality of war but exists alongside it. “Life doesn’t just continue,” she said. “In many ways it develops at an unprecedented level.”

Bazdyrieva described this intensity as a different experience of time. “When you live in a place that is constantly under threat of erasure,” she said, “the present moment becomes incredibly intense. Life happens in the now.”

Continuing the Conversation

The discussion concluded with reflections on how European cultural institutions can continue supporting Ukrainian artists and cultural workers. Beyond emergency funding, speakers emphasized the need for long-term infrastructures, research opportunities, archival initiatives, and institutional partnerships that allow Ukrainian culture to develop on its own terms.

The discussion at Depot in Vienna demonstrated that artistic practice in times of war cannot be separated from witnessing, memory, and political responsibility. At the same time, it also showed that cultural life persists not only as testimony, but as a form of resilience, imagination, and collective future-building.

You can listen to the full discussion on Tuesday, 31 March 2026, from 5.00 pm to 6.30 pm on Orange Radio.