Friday, April 28, 2017

Victoria Myronyuk is an interdisciplinary artist, performer and theater maker from Ukraine. She graduated from the Department of Culture of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy in Kyiv, master's program of Contemporary Stage Practice in Madrid (MPECV) and postgraduate program in artistic research in Brussels (A.PASS). Victoria's works are mostly interdisciplinary projects at the intersection of performative, participative and visual art practices which research the issue of ritual structures, its boundaries and potentialities. 

In the framework of GeoAIR residency, Victoria Myronyuk has elaborated the artistic tour "The Rite of Passage" which tries to apply the model of rite of passage to the daily action of crossing the railway bridge. In the proposed performative practice, the artist constructed a contemporary fairy-tale about the poetics and problematics of the place, its inhabitants and workers, based on the research of personal stories, urban legends and typical corporeal gestures. This guided walk was an ode to the “small” heros and heroines of the city who pass their own journeys of everyday, looking for the adventures and fighting with the monster of routine.

The tours took place on May 29.

Going through the Patriots’ Bridge that connects Dadiani Avenue, platforms of railway station and Borjomi Station is a daily urban exercise for hundreds of citizens of Tbilisi. Busy dark figures go up and descend the stairs, street sellers call the clients, hairdressers chat in the corners of the passage, while smell of coffee enshrouds the space. Sounds like a typical description of a city locus from anywhere.

However, how to experience the urban space in the way that allows to step out of the quotidian scheme and deepen into the time and context of multiple unique details in situ? Following of which score of the daily practice would facilitate revealing the poetics of everyday and transformation of the subject?

In anthropology, the rite of passage refers to the ritualistic transgression of an individual from one state or place to another through the various phases. The essential pattern of it involves the cycle of growth, the path to knowledge and is usually known as a hero’s journey. It is the archetypical model that shapes many narrative and illustrative traditions, like, for example, sagas, Tarot cards and Byzantine iconography of saint’s life.

More details at Art Prospect Residency Program page.

Residency is supported by CEC ArtsLink in the framework of Platform Art Prospect project.