At the end of May, two major literary events were to take place — the Leipzig Book Fair and the International Book Arsenal Festival. The pandemic made its adjustments and the events were canceled or postponed. The online art and translation performance TRANSFORMANCE – THE ART OF TRANSLATION offers to imagine that this is not the case and to visit both Kyiv and Leipzig at the same time — thanks to the virtual space.

Translation is a constant (sometimes endless) process of finding meanings and trying to get to the bottom of them. This is the way to find a new text in your own language. It is both a reflection and your own voice.

Five artists — writer Heike Geißler, dancer Elena Francelanci, performer Angelika Venek, translator Roksolana Sviato, and musician Anna Khvyl — meet on the same digital stage between Kyiv and Leipzig. Each of them has its own language that is not always verbal. But they all try to understand each other through mistakes and corrections, distortion of narratives and finding their new meanings. Each of them has its own art of translation.

The event is part of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Commonwealth of Leipzig-Kyiv cities. In cooperation with the City of Leipzig’s Department of International Cooperation and with the financial support of the German Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and Media (NEUSTART KULTUR program).

The plurality of views is both our strength and our weakness. This is what we inevitably inherit alongside the right to freedom of thought and conscience.

Narrowing their eyes, skeptics will see the consequences of this diversity as follows: a thick bold layer of post-truth, a gelatinous slime of delusion and fragile cartilages of distrust of any information. Optimists will notice a light space of choices and decisions, a rich palette of possibilities and a spicy mixture of new impressions.

We want to take a risk and try to seize the unseizable, catch the whole spectrum, hear different opinions, and look from a different perspective. Look at translation as a polyphonic instrument. For each translation is a cover of the original text. The meaning is the same, but the timbre of voice, the tenacity of intonations and the inner melody can be completely different. This difference can be radical and overshadow the integrity of the original, but it can also advantageously highlight its subtle features. It all depends on dosage.

Within the Book Arsenal Festival, we will try to talk about how translators from different countries are working on one and the same novel. How much does the plurality of views affect the perception of the text? Who exactly are these grey figures in the book world – translators – and what do we know about them? How do two different translators manage to work on the novel of one writer, while maintaining their authorial style? How far can the translation dare to deviate from the original?

 TRANSLATORIUM is the only literature and translation festival for now in Ukraine, which is dedicated to the International Translator’s Day. Each year during the first October days, the Festival holds such events as discussions, workshops, lectures, informal meetings, and performances relating to literary translation.

Science fiction is expected both to show the future and certain patterns of social development. Historically, it has long met these expectations. Science fiction texts ranged from optimism to skepticism, from dreams of a happy future for humanity that seems to do anything – conquer distant stars, overcome disease and enmity – to the scenes of the decline and destruction of society, the domination of sinister corporations and totalitarian cults.

These fluctuations almost always correspond to the prevailing attitude towards the world. The events of the last few years have put science fiction writers in a dilemma: to reflect the optimism prevailing in the field of high technology and scientific progress, or to focus on the pessimistic sentiments caused by the pandemic and the accompanying social limitations. What will our future world be like? Will we see colonies on Mars, built by dreamers such as Mask, or terrible totalitarianism with restrictions on freedoms and economic decline?

Echoes of the contradictions between technological progress and social development have previously been seen in many works of science fiction authors. The collapse of most of the world’s empires in the 20th century and the realization of the price paid by humanity for ‘spreading progress’ led to a final rethinking of the close connection between the two concepts. Today, after the events of 2020, it has become almost impossible to calculate one’s place among optimists and skeptics, and science fiction is finally getting rid of their clear division.

The participants of the Program will try to comprehend how science fiction authors see human development now, whether there is room for such a thing as progress, and what our new world will be like. Is there room for dreams of a bright future, or are only utopias and increasingly gloomy literature ahead?

Ukrainian writers, scientists and public figures will meet in a dialogue on complex issues raised in the works of science fiction authors. We will focus on a few topics that particularly illustrate the gap between the optimism of scientists and the skepticism of the general public after the events of 2020: the pros and cons of online communication, the scientific scenarios for overcoming epidemics, which have not materialized, the social constraints and voluntary ‘iron curtains’ as harbingers of restrictions on freedom, as well as the lost ability to dream and make plans in conditions of uncertainty. The guests of the Festival will decide for themselves which of the participants an optimist is and which a skeptic is.

Science fiction can offer a wide range of topics where optimism and skepticism go hand in hand. There are essays with warnings, in which the main idea is a hope that this will never happen; works that call for the destruction of existing social systems, especially totalitarian ones; and works where human genius is glorified, who will find a solution to any problem, even if it was created by another genius. Science fiction authors are often the greatest optimists and the greatest skeptics, and it is up to us whether our world will be full of dreams.

Star Fortress Literature Association promotes the emergence of new names and ideas in the Ukrainian science fiction, strengthens the links between science fiction authors and readers, and supports the desire of young authors to intensify and develop their literary skills.

Pandemic, lockdown, quarantine easing, and lockdown again – we have been living in this mode for the second year. We are alone with ourselves for so long. Some of us have learned this, learned the gentleness of silence and found peace within ourselves, and some, on the contrary, having been forced to be alone, only realized more deeply the need for someone else, communication, and community.

However, even in the face of solitude in our homes and social distancing, are we really alone? This is where literature comes in as another source of communication and an inexhaustible field of voices and dialogues (between characters and authors, between the text and the reader). Literary voices are what allow us not to feel lonely. Here they are – poets and poetesses – they are here, they are next to you. They experience moments of self-isolation just as painfully (or not?) as you do, they feel lonely sometimes and need to talk and be heard the same way as you do.

The immersive audio installation allows you to be alone with poetry, to feel it truly, to meet the voices of poets and poetesses and to feel that we are not alone in isolation.

Poetic texts and voices used:

Mykhailo Zharzhailo, Oleh Kotsarev, Yaroslav Gadzinsky, Anton Polunin, Olena Pavlova, Oksana Gadzhiy, Bohuslav Poliak, Ihor Mitrov.

The project is available in the space of Mystetskyi Arsenal, and its recording can also be heard on the ABUK platform.

Іt is said in Wikipedia that the term ‘isolation’ has several meanings:

[In architecture and construction, it is a process of insulation (thermal insulation), hydrofuge insulation, and sound insulation of the building. Isolation in population genetics is the process of creating any barriers that disrupt the panmixia and gene flow. Isolation is a restriction on freedom of action in state policy, in society regarding the individual, etc.] And in life… In our life, it seems to be one of the most commonly used words since 2020.

Today, most of us primarily associate the term ‘isolation’ with the pandemic and quarantine restrictions. However, we want to consider it in a broader context, to find threads that would combine the full range of meanings. In some way in society, creative people are marginalized, being excluded or unconsciously sealing themselves off from too harsh realities. We feel the need for solitude, as well as the need to be with each other.

From whom and from what do we want to isolate ourselves? What gives us this state is a space for creativity and self-exploration, listening to our own thoughts and the opportunity to finally find out who we really are; or perhaps, an awareness of the urgent need for the other, whoever he is? What will this isolation experience teach us? Won’t we want to stay with it forever? Poetic texts reveal these states, referring us to very personal stories and experiences.

In the special program Poetry of Isolation, we will share poems written during the quarantine, walk through the favorite streets of the city, whispering to ourselves conversations with it, visit an art-healing session, where the poet will meet his shadow, and we will look into his creative dialogue with himself. We will not miss the topic of forced political and cultural isolation, mentioning the poets of the so-called ‘displaced generation’. We will walk the path from restrictions and barriers to conscious ‘insulation’ of our inner ‘selves’.

“I am a picture person” is a phrase that can be said by almost every second person today. Indeed, we perceive information differently now, and text or just sound is not enough for us. To read and comprehend the article, we need visual infographics, and we can no longer do without scribing in training sessions.

We perceive the world with images, each time drawing pictures in our heads. And literature is something that allows us to create immeasurable variations of these images and different views on the same story. Perhaps, that is why we are so interested in literary adaptations today. For we can first live our own film, by reading a book, creating frames page after page, and imagining the backstage, costumes and facial expressions of the characters, and then – watch the someone else’s view in the literary adaptation, and compare these two films. In addition, we are interested in a comprehensive experience. We are attentive and observant like real birdbookwatchers.

Every year, Ukrainian cinema develops rapidly, telling new stories – whether created by directors and screenwriters, or caught from the ocean of literary plots. Fortunately, we have enough sources, from which we can derive. As part of the BookWatchers Program, we will see how a book can turn into a film and talk about the close relationship between literature and cinema.

The Book Pitch project was launched in 2020 by the International Book Arsenal Festival and the Odesa International Film Festival. Book pitching aims to find modern Ukrainian books that have the potential to be adapted as feature films. The winners receive prizes from Book Arsenal and OIFF, as well as get the opportunity to present their works before the best Ukrainian producers and directors.

Have you ever wanted to write a book and see your name on the cover next to a famous author? At Book Arsenal, you will be able to write your own story in real time in co-authorship with Lubko Deresh, the author of the bestsellers Cult and Worshipping the Lizard.

The basis of Visa’s project You are the Author is a 3-meter interactive installation in the form of a book installed in the territory of the Festival. Choosing 16 scenarios, you will be able to write your short story, choose a title and even a cover design.

You can also create a book online together with author Lubko Deresh, writer Irena Karpa and storyteller Sashko Lirnyk. At home, on the road or on a work break just from your smartphone, you can create your own work.

Read, dream and write your own story wherever you are.

Literaturgarten is a pop-up library of the Goethe-Institut Ukraine, created in partnership with the Frankfurt Book Fair and the German Stories project. Settling comfortably in the green street space of Book Arsenal, you can flip through new German books. Among them: the collection Children’s Books on Tour, which German curators collected from the best children’s books for 2019-2020; 10 award-winning books of DAM Architectural Book Award; a short list of Deutscher Buchpreis, one of the most important literary prizes in Germany; contemporary German poetry; a collection of the most beautiful books in Germany, as well as MINT books for teenagers. In the Literary Garden, you can meet the team and guests of the Goethe-Institut Ukraine, take part in workshops, readings for children and trial classes in learning German, as well as learn more about the augmented reality project Discover Askania-Nova from the German Embassy in Ukraine.

The untranslatability of poetry is a myth that reaches the same depths as the notion that translation is a craft, not an art. We have made another attempt to test this, using different models of interaction between very different authors. Four Ukrainian and four Scottish poets tried to give examples of how poems, which are translated and rendered in completely different ways, sound.

Some of these poets translate professionally and on a daily basis, such as Les Beley, who works in tandem with Vicky Husband. Someone has translated directly from English, knowing it well. Someone has used a version made in non-native English. Myroslav Laiuk offered to tell about emotions, experiences and metaphors not only in literary Ukrainian but in dialect, just like Rosanna Watt, who writes in Shetland. Olena Huseinova took up Hannah Lavery’s social poetry, and Liuba Yakymchuk looked for matches to the rhythms and rhymes of Andrew Blair.

How can literature bridge the gap between Ukraine and Scotland? Aren’t we closer than the map shows? Who in general has the right to undertake translation – is it really only for language experts with good theoretical training? How much do poets need communication with each other, casual acquaintances at festivals and in joint projects? What gives them a way out of their own self-sufficiency?

After all, how important is it to make poetic interactions — seemingly the most ephemeral and least practical — when borders are closed, freedom is restricted, culture is first given up in order to save the economy, and fun is poisoned by information attacks along with travel?..