The ‘Metropolis, Machine, Mass’ slogan echoed across Europe, an ode to technology and the social engineering of man and society. An appeal to rebel against the time-honoured artistic canons. The Ukrainian protagonists – the Burliuk brothers, Oleksandra Ekster, Kazymyr Malevych, Vadym Meller and Oleksandr Bohomazov – remained firmly anchored in their homeland and resolutely opted for a new frame of mind, where Ukrainian Futurism was not a pure art movement, but rather a revolutionary impulse. Futuromarennia focuses on the autonomy of the Ukrainian version of futurism: the avant-garde artists put Ukrainian identity and national cultural sovereignty first, after centuries of Russian domination. And this triggered a fiery polemic in the 1920s, which has echoes in the 2020s.

Futurist ideas were universal in se, but they also worked powerfully within local contexts at the same time. For instance, historical myths about Scythian warriors and freedom-loving Cossacks who once ruled the Ukrainian steppe inspired the literary artists’ association Hylaea in the Khersion region, home of the Burliuk brothers. The creative laboratory that emerged there united young artists, who, while calling themselves futurists, also used the neologism ‘budetliane’ to emphasise their individuality. Budetliane is derived from the future time form of being.

David Burliuk was the spiritual leader of Hylaea and was given the epithet ‘Ukrainian father of Russian futurism’. He organised a series of exhibitions of Ukrainian futurists in the cities of the Russian Empire in 1913. Provocation met with general indignation. At one lecture in Kyiv, he hung a grand piano upside down above the stage, an apt metaphor for the futurist destruction of the time. At the FeliX Art & Eco Museum, we take that idea into Futuromarennia and the grand piano takes centre stage, upside down on the ceiling.

The futuristic idea of creating ‘total art’ fitted well with stage experiments. The new idea for theatre destroyed the fourth wall between the spectators and the stage, thus engaging the audience and blurring the line between reality and stage art.

Vadym Meller is Ukraine’s most famous scenographer. He studied at the Munich Art Academy and exhibited at the Paris Salon des Indépendants. He continued his experiments in form in Kyiv, where he worked with Bronislava Nijinska and Mark Tereshchenko, the most consistent apologist of futuristic theatre. The theatre Tereshchenko founded in 1920 bore the name of the young writer Hnat Mykhailychenko, who was shot for his revolutionary activities and left-wing ideas. Around the same time, Tereshchenko published his own manifesto, Art of Action, in which he called for the theatre to adapt to social shifts. The actors of the new theatre were to become free creators of their art, just as workers in a communist society became the masters of production. Tereshchenko gave shape to his theories in a number of mass spectacles in the form of collective action. However, his experiment did not last long: in 1925, the Hnat Mykhailychenko Theatre was closed down.

In Futuromarennia, the idea of the Ukrainian futurists lives on. From creation in the here and now in experimental cinema, to urban constructivism in architecture, to poezomaliarstvo, the creation of synthesis artworks in so-called ‘poetry paintings’. At the FeliX Art & Eco museum, we will create a synthesis artwork of the Ukrainian avant-garde, to further dream together of a futurodelirium.

Within this project, we have the support of The Ministry of Culture and all players of the National Lottery.

For Futuromarennia, a whole pedagogical offer was developed, where the very young – like the Ukrainian futurists – are allowed to be different and rebellious.

An overview of the activities can be found here.

To Futuromarennia with the class

A special thanks to the Ministry of Culture and the National Lottery for making this great solidarity project possible. Thanks to National Lottery players, we can enjoy this unique exhibition. National Lottery profits thus go back integrally to the community, in many of their fine projects, including Futuromarennia.