Olexii Kuchanskyi is a PhD researcher of media and film. Her dissertation project, which uncovers and analyses the constellation of cases of Ukrainian Soviet moving images and film-experiments, is associated with the research project »Madness, Media, Milieus. Reconfiguring the Humanities in Postwar Europe« at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar. S/he studied at the Cultural Studies department of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Kyiv.
- Art and Media History and Theory
- History and Theory of Culture
- Soviet Avant-Garde Film History and Theory
- Ecology-oriented Theories of Culture, Recursive Epistemology
Education
- Bachelor’s degree in Cultural Studies, National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla academy”, Kyiv, Ukraine. (2016 – 2020)
- Master’s degree in Cultural Studies, National University of “Kyiv-Mohyla academy”, Kyiv. (2020 – 2022)
Community Service
- Reading group moderation in the Independent Student Trade Union DIRECT ACTION, Kyiv. (January 2017 – December 2018)
- Volunteering at NEIGHBOURS Urbanistic Festival (a Kyivian part of WARSZAWA W BUDOWIE biennial). (September 2018 – October 2018)
- Activist of the OCCUPY KYIV CINEMAS movement, a nonviolent legal activist network protecting Soviet cultural heritage, Kyiv. (2018 – 2019)
Selected Articles
- (2023, February). ‘To Watch The War Through a Duct Tape Cross: Notes on Watching, Commonality, and Recognition’. figurationen, 1/2023.
- (2022, December). ‘Between Smoke Screen & Blur: Visual Practices in War Ecology of (Geo)Political Imagination’. Steirischerherbst 2022 Reader.
- (2022, April). ‘Digital Leviathan and His Nuclear Tail: Notes on Body and the Earth in the State of War’. e-flux Notes.
- (2021, April). ‘“Страх” та “Застереження”: Словник теорії влади у добу управління загрозами’ [‘“Fear” and “Preemption”: Glossary for the Theory of Power in Times of Governing the Threats’]. Political Critique.
- (2021, March). ‘The Politics of Noises and Rhythms. On the rearticulation of collective subjectivity in “Grey Horses” by Mykola Ridnyi’. BLOK MAGAZINE.
- (2020). ‘Екології та дисплеї. Про екологічну агентність аудіовізуальної есеїстики’ [‘Ecologies and Displays. On the Ecological Agency of Audiovisual Esseyism’]. Your Art.
- (2020). ‘Толщиною с дисплей: границы микрополитического и редизайн себя’ [As thick as a display: the boundaries of micro-politics and redesigning a ’self’]. Moscow Art Magazine, No. 115.
- (2020). ‘Геополитика утечки: о производстве экологий и беспорядке как новом порядке’ [The geopolitics of the leak: on the production of ecology and disorder as a new order]. Moscow Art Magazine, No. 113.
Selected Curatorial and Film-programming Projects
- To Whom It May Concern, a film program at Allied – Kyiv Biennial 2021.
- Forced Displacements and Moving Images, a film program on Lviv Municipal Art Centre, Interroom Space, Soma–Laboratory of Performing, Lviv National Art Academy, U Travni, 2022
- To Watch The War: The Moving Images Amidst Invasion of Ukraine, a group show at Coalmine–Raum Für Fotografie, Winterthur, Switzerland, 2022. Co-curated with Oleksiy Radynskyi.
- Exodus From the Post-Soviet Condition, a two-evenings set of screenings accompanied by a performative lecture, “Sunflower” Solidary Community Center, Warsaw, 2022.
- Mental Ecologies of War, an online film program on the e-flux Film followed by in-person screening at e-flux Screening Room, NYC, 2023. Co-curated with Elena Vogman.