Khaschi

Since 2015, I am curating the Khashi [Хащі] (Kyiv, Ukraine), an interdisciplinary space for performative arts and urban ecosystems research, street art and music. It functions as a platform for art production, exhibitions and meetings, as well as a street art zone with a space for experimental music performances and a silk-printing studio. It occupies about 1 hectare of an abandoned street in central Kyiv. Khashi has non-commercial profile, opposing the gentrified spaces of the modern East-European megalopolis. Giving room to multidisciplinary creative practices, we try to involve young and underrepresented figures and collectives, stimulating connections among artistic sectors and disciplines. Khashi–a laboratory of a kind, a dynamic network of practices experimenting with ways in which groups can coexist – functions as a point where various counter-dominant social forms overlap: subcultural musical and artistic movements, queer fashion, botany communities, leftwing activist groups, contemporary art workers and others. Here, ecosystems are understood not simply as a (dis)harmonious natural system, but rather as an ecology of practices, a network of connections between human initiatives and the environment; as interactions between leaves and insects, fresh air and people (like botanists caring for local flora), vibrations from noise concerts and populations of weevils, geological processes, since the Khashi space is located in a landslide area, and cultural communities. The project pursues the objective of inventing an alternative, less repressive form of coexistence.