ABOUT US

Past / Future / Art is a memory culture platform that carries out commemorative, research, and art projects and establishes discussion programs to engage broader audiences in working through the past

On values

The past is not something that is long gone. The past shapes us today, producing reflections of us and our future. It cannot, however, force us to be someone we are unwilling to be, as we are in power to interrogate the past, testing the trustworthiness of our world-building values. You can learn here more about the core values of our project.

What we do

What is it, the culture of memory? It designates what we remember, how and what for. It may occur as a bizarre matter: we just remember, full stop. But in reality, we ask ourselves how to envision the future by remembering the past. Everyone asks, yet artists pose the most unforeseen and essential questions. Precisely the artistic statement occasionally propels the understanding of what, how, and what for. Past / Future / Art invites you to look into the art practices tackling the images of the past.

No one will teach us how to remember “correctly.” Overcoming the past and shaping the future’s perspectives is a shared task, the performance of which commences with a pertaining conversation. Thus we organise public discussions of important historical events and their reverberations in arts; jointly with our partners, we develop memorial projects and strategies for commemorating the significant phenomena in Ukrainian history; we research regional identities. Engaging professionals in the fields of memory studies, history, philosophy, international law, art history and criticism, we have been creating a pioneering glossary for the work with memory. We realise exhibition projects with the artists who rethink the past.

The project was founded in 2019 by the NGO Cultural Practices in partnership with forumZFD (The Civil Peace Service) in Ukraine.

Team

Oksana Dovgopolova

Co-founder and curator of the memory culture platform Past / Future / Art, PhD, member of the Memory Studies Association, author of scientific and educational publications

Graduated from the Odesa Mechnikov National University with a degree in history, defended her candidate’s and doctoral theses on “Social Philosophy and Philosophy of History.” She completed an internship at the Swiss Peace Foundation (2022), Konsortium Ziviler Friedensdienst (2020-2022), the Museum of Second World War in Gdańsk (2019), the Yad Vashem Museum (2018), Central European University (2012), etc. Experienced in higher education, she has been working in the public sphere. Since 2014, she has been participating in dialogue initiatives in Odesa; launched the public history site Hubs of History. In 2015–2018, she organised several international student schools and public history projects focusing on societal reconciliation in the context of collective memory. Since 2018, she has been a curator of public programs for art projects at the Odesa National Art Museum, the Odesa Museum of Contemporary Art, Oleksandr Bleshchunov Municipal Museum of Private Collections, and the IZOLYATSIA fund. In 2018–2019, she developed the Memory Lab experimental unit at the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. In 2019, together with Kateryna Semenyuk, she founded the Past / Future / Art memory culture platform. From February 24, 2022, after russia’s full-scale invasion, the project continues its work with a focus on the commemoration of the Russia-Ukraine war.

Kateryna Semenyuk

Curator, cultural manager, co-founder and curator of the memory culture platform Past / Future / Art, head of the NGO Cultural Practices

Received the master’s degree in economics at Oles Honchar Dnipro National University. Participated in the international professional development programs CrossCulture Program (ifa, Germany, 2022), Memory Culture from the Inside (IBB Dortmund, Germany, 2020), Culture for Local Development (Adam Mickiewicz Institute, Poland, 2018), Cultural Managers Exchange Program Tandem (MitOst , Germany, 2016–2017), Spring School of Cultural Practices “The First-Person Account: Memory” (CSM, Ukraine, 2016), etc. Since 2010, she has been working in the field of culture and collective memory. Implemented exhibitions and educational projects in cooperation with the Dnipro Art Museum, Dmytro Yavornytskyi Dnipropetrovsk National History Museum, Mystetskyi Arsenal National Art and Culture Museum Complex, the Goethe Institute, Alliance Française, MitOst, Jewish Community Center London, The World Heritage Visitor Center Regensburg, Laznia Center for Contemporary Art and others. She was the head of the art centre Ya Gallery in Dnipro (2010–2017) and the interdisciplinary festival “October in October” in Zhytomyr (2018). She is an organiser of art exhibitions, conferences, workshops, and festivals in Ukraine and beyond. As part of her work with the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center (2018–2019), she was engaged in international exhibitions and the activities of the experimental unit Memory Lab. In 2019, together with Oksana Dovgopolova, she founded the Past / Future / Art memory culture platform. From February 24, 2022, after russia’s full-scale invasion, the project continues its work with a focus on the commemoration of the Russia-Ukraine war.