Book Arsenal Festival 2023 announces the program

The program of the XI International Book Arsenal Festival has been announced. It has been posted on the official website of the festival.

The Eleventh Book Arsenal (BA) will take place on June 22-25. The festival program includes about 100 events.

The festival program

The Book Arsenal will start on Thursday, June 22. On the first day of the festival, 10 events will take place: discussions, poetry readings, film screenings, a children’s program and music events. This day the festival will be open from 16:00 to 21:00.

The official opening of the 11th International Book Arsenal Festival will take place on June 22 at 17:00. The program will continue with the discussion “Democracy and War” within the focus theme “When Everything Matters”.

As part of the literary program, the first day will feature a discussion titled “Our Crimea: On the Book Pages” and “Pixelated Poetry” poetry readings.

The program of the first day of the festival includes a master class for children and teenagers by Agrafka Art Studio.

The festival will also feature short films about Kyiv, six stories about the city in “How Can I Not Love You 2.0” from the Takflix online cinema, and a musical performance “DJ-set. Borys”. The opening day will end with a concert by “Renaissance” Chamber Orchestra of the Mariupol Chamber Philharmonic. The event will be held in cooperation with the Ukrainian Institute.

The focus theme “When Everything Matters”, curated by Nataliya Gumenyuk, will feature 8 events. Every day, the values and experience of Ukrainians, what is happening to society, the country, and the world will be discussed on the stages. “This is a space for recognizing, as well as creating a new civic vocabulary for the things that we have not yet verbalized. This is a place where, by reflecting on our current experience, we will be able not only to comprehend, but also to word ourselves and what is going on with us,” the KA website says.

The literary program “Transforming the Experience into Memory”, curated by Iryna Slavinska, will be the largest at the 11th Book Arsenal. “The program will present various voices of the literary scene: diaries, documentary notes, and fiction, texts by professional writers and those who began writing only in reality after February 2014 and 2022. We will also present poetry, which has once again become the cutting edge, where words are formed today, which we will use tomorrow to tell about our experiences,” the organizers note.

The program for/about children and teenagers “When War Is Not Only in Books” offers a safe and friendly space for communication, reading and discussion of children’s books and stories written and published in times of war. The program’s events include a marathon of readings by children’s writers, a public interview with Iryna Slavinska by the Mystetskyi Arsenal’s Teenage Council, “Knyhodruziachennia-Peredbachennia” performance, and workshops for parents. The program is curated by Yulia Kozlovets.

Partner of the program: BaraBooka. Space of Ukrainian Children’s Literature. The program is supported by the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI).

The professional program of the Book Arsenal, curated by Oksana Karpiuk, will become a meeting place for sector representatives and provide a platform for public discussions, formulating requests and finding solutions, and sharing knowledge and experience. “As part of the program, we will talk about state policy and the role of specialized institutions in the book industry, business models that give publishers sustainability, and the role of small independent bookstores in promoting reading and building civil society,” the BA says.

The program is supported by the Goethe-Institut in Ukraine.

The special program “(non)public libraries” by the Literary Laboratory of Mystetskyi Arsenal, curated by Dima Kazakov, will tell about small traveling, homeless libraries, real and online archives, collecting, personal book and vinyl collections, curated shelves, zines. “The special program “(non)public libraries” is about the sound of our time and how to transmit it without interrupting it,” the organizers note.

PEN Ukraine’s special program “Memory Speaks” will feature 5 events, including a presentation of Volodymyr Vakulenko’s war diary on the first day of the 11th Book Arsenal. “Within the program, we will talk about the memory that makes us responsible — to our dead and to our culture,” add the authors of the special program.

The special program by Dovzhenko Center “Literary Film Canon. Volume One” will present three films based on iconic literary works: “The Dream”, based on Taras Shevchenko’s poem, a frantic adaptation of Mykola Hohol’s “The Eve of Ivan Kupala”, and an epic film adaptation of Ivan Franko’s “Zakhar Berkut”. Each of them shows how, despite original works and ideological distortions made under party orders or censorship, Ukrainian filmmakers managed to bring important topics of national history and Ukrainian identity to the screen.

The visual component of the XI Book Arsenal will be represented by 7 exhibition projects:

• “Protective Layer” by Kostyantyn Zorkin;
• “Ukraine: 50 symbols of resistance” by Maria Kinovych;
• “When Everything Matters” by the Pictoric Illustrators Club;
• an exhibition of Ukrainian and Israeli book illustrations “The Eye of the Storm”;
• “Chronology of Russification” by the Linguocide project;
• “Calligraphy and Font 2022-2023” by the School of Calligraphy “Art and Me”;
• The Reckoning Project.

The festival guests will also be able to visit the exhibition “Forms of Presence“, which will be located in the right wing of Mystetskyi Arsenal from April 2023, and the exhibition “(pro)movy”, which will be presented by the Laboratory of Contemporary Art “Small Gallery of Mystetskyi Arsenal”.

The full festival program is available here. Tickets will be available soon.

As reported earlier, in 2023, the Book Arsenal will be held offline from June 22 to 25.

In 2022, the festival was canceled due to the full-scale Russian invasion. The focus theme for the 2022 Book Arsenal was “The Migration Period,” curated by Oksana Forostyna.

Read also: How Ukrainian publishers work during the war

Image: Oleksandr Potapenko/Mystetskyi Arsenal