Almost for the whole week, 3-7 December 2024, Theater im Bahnhof in Graz hosted the Ukrainian multidisciplinary festival “Waiting For…” dedicated to the exploration of the Waiting state through different artistic media. Today we want to tell you more about each of the main festival blocs.

1. Waiting Room
One of the Theater’s spaces, the Blue Room, turned into an interactive laboratory of three Ukrainian visual artists. Anton Tkachenko, Eva Fomitski, and Yurii Golik invited visitors to share their stories of anticipation and expectation and in this way contribute to the creation process. Filled with different art supplies, the Waiting Room became a creative playground: for the whole duration of the festival, artists collected stories, experimented with forms and materials, and gradually filled the room with art objects that summed up their exploration. This Lab for sure was the backbone of the festival, hosting artists and visitors until late night (and sometimes overnight too!).

2. Book Presentation
On the Friday evening of December 6th, the theatre stage hosted the panel discussion associated with the presentation of Office Ukraine’s publication “Two Years of Support for Ukrainian Artists”. Ten guests who have worked with or been accompanied by the Graz office over the last few years were on stage with Pia Hierzegger, talking about their work and themselves. A wide variety of questions on the subject of Waiting provided very personal insights into the lives and thoughts of the panelists. This event continued the series of Office Ukraine’s book presentations held all over Austria.

3. Performance Night
The multi-layered performance evening on Saturday, Dec 7th, vividly wrapped up the festival week. Five different pieces, from readings (Yulia Ilukha, Eva Hofer), monodrama (Lilia Kryvets), and performance (Oleksandr Halishchuk) to audiovisual artistic duo (ZhizhiNiNi, Nick Akorne, Svitlana Zhytnia) and solo singing under video projection (Nina Eba, Verena Schneider), led the audience through a full spectrum of versatile emotions. At the very end of the evening, the Waiting Room laboratory was presented in its final shape.

Besides that, the theatre’s cozy bar hosted a small art&crafts showcase by the Ukrainian art community of Graz. The festival was also visited by the Ukrainian interns from the Professional Hub program as a part of their study visit to Office Ukraine Graz.

Text by: Johanna Hierzegger, Maria Kardash