Social Contract is a project by IZOLYATSIA. Platform for Cultural Initiatives aimed at creating a discussion platform for art community, society and authorities on the status and functions of commemorative objects in urban space, using the case of the Lenin statue in Kyiv as an example. The destruction of the statue of Lenin in Kyiv in December 2013 triggered the symbolic Leninfall around the country, calling into action a controversial set of laws on Decommunisation to a broad polemic in Ukrainian society.
The so-called commemorative objects have been erected for centuries in public spaces designed to remind society and future generations of the heroes, outstanding achievements and victories of the past. The sculptors would use long-lasting materials such as stone, marble or bronze to emphasise the perennial nature of the given historical character or event. Nowadays, however, the public spaces depart from monumentalism, while the general tendency for digitalisation changes the function of memory. The way people store and transmit memories is changing rapidly, substituting marble with more ephemeral and functional forms of memory.
Curator: Kateryna Filyuk.
Learn more here.