Selected concepts of the Antonin Artaud Fellowship South edition 2025
The Antonin Artaud Fellowship supports performing artists in Ukraine who are interested in exploring new forms in the field of the performing arts. It is the second time we have implemented an open call for concepts dedicated to the South of Ukraine, following the first in 2023. The program specifically invites artists based in or originating from the Odesa, Mykolaiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia regions, or Crimea with the aim of discovering local stories.
On October 1–5, a five-day workshop of the Fellowship took place in Mykolaiv, a city in the South of Ukraine. The workshop brought together 11 concepts the South — its local myths, histories, and transformations.
More than 30 participants — including authors of concepts, their team members, mentors, and the Fellowship’s team — gathered at the Ukrainian-Danish Youth House in Mykolaiv to develop concepts of 11 works-in-progress. The South Edition 2025 is organized in partnership with the Odesa National Art Museum and the MY ART platform in Mykolaiv, with the support of the International Renaissance Foundation.
Here is a list of Fellows, who will be supported to implement their concepts.
Georgii Gogatadze
My Friend From Nowhereland
The communication between two online friends — from Budzhak (southern Odesa region) and Balochistan (a historical region on the northern coast of the Indian Ocean) — evolves into a performative act of reconstructing time and space, synthesizing a shared experience that forms a new dimension: Nowhereland.
The work explores the parallels between two peripheral experiences: life on the margins of society, the search for oneself within a religious context, isolation, and the internet as the only channel of communication, where the search for closeness or a kindred soul becomes an act of resistance to loneliness. It is a multimedia installation with a performative component based on the exchange of memories, media, and roles.
Halyna Andrusenko
Protected
The project continues the artist’s exploration of the theme of ‘protection’ in wartime, begun in the graphic series and performances Protected and Unprotected. In this new work, she expands the scale and shifts the focus from the public spaces she worked with before — monuments and sculptures — to a personal space: a room filled with people and things dearest to her.
The performance speaks about the desire to preserve and protect domestic comfort — the fragile space of safety and closeness that constantly erodes under the pressure of danger.
Yelyzaveta Bliumska
Elektropolis
The performance explores the consequences of industrialization in Zaporizhzhia, particularly the construction of the DniproHES dam, and asks whether we ourselves bear responsibility for the past.
At the centre of the action is a meat grinder connected to a dynamo that powers a light bulb. The constant turning of the grinder becomes a metaphor for exhaustion and the cyclical nature of the labour of those who built the dam, while the bulb symbolizes the energy generated by the turbines and refers to a familiar process for many Zaporizhzhia residents.
The audience will be invited to participate, just as our predecessors were involved in building the city. Zaporizhzhia — envisioned as a city of the future — was once to be renamed Electropolis after the dam’s construction. However, dreams of progress bringing peace and prosperity turned into the taming of the Dnipro River, resulting in an ecological catastrophe for the entire southern region.
Oleksii Minko and Volodymyr Prylutskyi
Sea Battle
The authors, Minko and Prylutskyi, are from or often visited the city of Berdiansk on the Azov Sea, which is currently under occupation. In Odesa, on the shore of the Black Sea, they occasionally glimpse a mirage of their native city.
In the performance — through photography, play, and conversation — they attempt to approach the city hidden in the fog of war, reconstruct its complex context, and enter the ‘morage’ (the authors’ neologism). The performance borrows its form from the tourist practice of ‘taking photos by the sea.’ By documenting themselves throughout the performance, the authors create the illusion of returning to the Azov coast.
The photographic reconstruction of the physical landscape is accompanied by a playful reconstruction of the political and cultural ones. To return home, Volodymyr and Oleksii surround themselves not only with vast waters but also with conflicting political mirages and historical disputes that fill their lost city.
Mariia Cherkashyna
Shell Limestone
This work explores the feeling of belonging to the city, Odesa, to which she moved from Mykolaiv, where she was born. Her home was built from shell limestone — a material made of the remains of marine organisms that shape the living environment of the city. It is silent but omnipresent — in façades, foundations, and dust. We look at the surface without noticing the base. Likewise, the cultural layer of the city fades away without an archive, leaving only traces of those whose names are absent from official narratives.
The artist interacts with the limestone as with an immovable South — it is their shared dance. The aim is not to create a new myth, but to show the condition of its emergence: the absence of one’s own body in one’s space. When a person does not know where they stand or what surrounds them, they lose not only knowledge but also the right to act. Freedom begins where there is something “one’s own’”— recognized, named, preserved.
The artist speaks through the metaphor of stone: when there is nowhere to stand, one must place a stone. How to lay culture in order to understand where you are. She (does not) want to return, because the surrounding narratives do not correspond to her knowledge. Dance here is not a means of preservation but a way of witnessing disappearance.
Currently, the fellows of this Southern Edition are working on ton implementing their concepts. The performances will be presented in November–December across the Odesa, Mykolaiv, and Zaporizhzhia regions.