Memorialization of trauma in the urban space of Kharkiv

Abstract

The purpose of the study is to determine the main strategies for memorializing traumatic experiences, both past and present, in the landscape space of the city. For this, monumental compositions arranged as places of memory and sorrow, as well as commemoration practices aimed at commemorating and etching collective trauma, are analyzed. The scientific novelty consists in the application of the analysis of the symbolic-spatial and monumental definition of injuries in the landscape of the city of Kharkiv, their artistic and cultural potential and political content. In a municipal landscape for years independence to the places of memory of ІІ of world war memorials to the victims of Holodomor, Afghanistan war and Chornobyl’ catastrophe were added. Their appearance and commemorations related to celebration in honors of victims of these historical events testified to the attempt to realize and condemn the criminal acts of the previous political power. The collective traumas of contemporaneity, caused by Russian aggression, are yet realized by society, however their scale causes a requirement in arrangement of places of memory and sorrow, maintenance and celebration in honour of memory about heroes and war victims in municipal space. One of methods of articulation of trauma it is possible to count appearance of artistic initiatives – strit-arts or perfоrmances, that report the depth of trauma and are one of facilities of her comprehension, acceptance and step on the way of overcoming. Dances are on ruins, painting of plywoods that covers the window-panes knocked out by explosions became the spontaneous symbolic forms of replacement of the lost peaceful life. Process of establishment of memorial objects or toponymy changes, that needs concordances with local-authority and observance of legal procedures, distinguished by unregularity and accidently. Initiatives and activity of veteran and volunteer organizations that try to influence on the decision of city authority, strengthening of their role certify in the process of memorialization of trauma. Absence of experience of participation in organization of municipal space generates the situations of conflict of interests and appearance of contradictions in the artistic decisions of commemoration. Questions remain open: who, that and for what remembers, who and as needed tributed, what role in the process of memorialization is played by the relatives of victims and heroes, organizations, that present their interests, power, artists, habitants. The vagueness of memorialization is caused by a that factor, that Ukrainian society until now did not enter on the way of overcoming of trauma, but tries to comprehend her, being in a middle. The terms of martial law, duration of military operations, front-line status of city, permanent threate habitants and continuation of destructions, complicate the process of ranging from a trauma, deepening her and deeply impinted in consciousness.