Ukraine is under siege following a full-scale military invasion by Russia on 24 February 2022

During the presentation, on the 5th of August, the researcher will speak about the idea of landscape as one of the most all-encompassing and complex ideas in the natural, social and human sciences and why it is one of the central ideas in the epoch of the Anthropocene and rising ecological threats. 

Soledar interests Roman as an example of industrial interaction of people with nature through mining of  rock salt formations and changes in the perception of the landscape by local residents. Through communication with the residents and his observations, Roman tried to understand the situation and find answers to several questions. For instance: has the discourse of the industrial epoch changes under the new conditions of post-socialist capitalism, and how has it changed; what meanings and values do the residents attribute to nature and the landscape (the steppe and salt mine), how nature and the landscape are used in everyday life — leisure in (altered) nature and its role in the treatment of the landscape and emotional bonds with it. The researcher’s goal is to search out and understand the language used by residents for comprehension and descriptions of the landscape, and what narratives are present among people who live directly in it, create it and comprehend it through everyday experiences.


Roman Lozynsky is a geographer and researcher, visiting scholar at the Ukrainian Catholic University (Lviv), Fulbright scholar and author of the book Cultural Landscapes of Galicia: the ethics of human interaction with nature (Ladeks, Lviv 2020), and papers in the journals Kritika and Spil’ne. A resident of the IZOLYATSIA Foundation in August 2021. Roman’s interests are cultural geography, town planning and landscape as an instrument of social change. Over the past five years, Roman been undertaking an analysis of urban planning strategies with a focus on the environment and cultural and historical context, for the purpose of developing effective recommendations. 


Time: 05.08, 19:00

Place: Soledar, Donetsk Oblast, Vulitsa Parkova 1 (there will also be a livestream of the event on the IZOLYATSIA. Platform for Cultural Initiatives Facebook page).

The Grounding short-term residency series was created by the IZOLYATSIA Foundation in collaboration with the Soledar Amalgamated Hromada, with the support of the Ukrainian Cultural Foundation.