Every September, Barcelona hosts one of the largest cultural festivals in Europe, La Merce. For several days, the city fills with makeshift stages and concert venues, with countless music, dance, and circus performances. This year, Kyiv became the festival’s “guest city”, with Ukraine’s dance group Apache Crew, musicians DakhaBrakha, Gogol Bordello and Alyona Alyona, and DJ Dasha Kolomiiets all performing in Barcelona on 22-25 September.

The Village Ukraine spoke to curator Kateryna Pidhaina, one of the people involved in deciding who would represent Ukraine in Catalunya, and founders of Ukrainian Signal, a creative production company, Ani Kazarian and Dasha Andriushchenko, producers of the contemporary art stream for Kyiv at La Merce.

ЦЕЙ ТЕКСТ ТАКОЖ МОЖНА ПРОЧИТАТИ УКРАЇНСЬКОЮ.

Why La Merce matters

   

La Merce is a cultural festival; it has been held in Barcelona every year since 1871. Curator Kateryna  Pidhaina says that the festival’s main goal is to offer as many people as possible the chance to attend cultural events and to boost the city’s cultural and touristic appeal. All of the festival events are free and take place outside: in parks, city squares, and makeshift stages. La Merce is funded by the Barcelona City Council.

“Barcelona is putting a lot of effort into making culture accessible for all. Even if you can’t afford an expensive theater ticket, the city’s cultural department is looking for ways to make sure you can 

still experience theater – whether in an actual theater or during festivals like this. Some shows hold their premiere performances during the festival. That’s why this festival was established over 100 years ago and continues to take place every year. It’s about making culture more accessible,” Pidhaina says.

The festival is split into several streams: folklore, music, street art, food, cinema, contemporary art, and performance art. Pidhaina explains that people from all over Europe flock to Barcelona to attend La Merce; in addition to free music, exhibitions and performances, entry to all municipal museums is free during the festival.

Dasha Andriushchenko from Ukrainian Signal says that La Merce is like a large-scale celebration of the city, interlaced with cultural events. Almost no one in Barcelona works during the festival, choosing instead to attend the many events on offer. Each year La Merce spotlights the culture of one other city, a different city every year. This year’s “guest city” is Kyiv. “Barcelona city government was very curious about Kyiv’s cultural program and funded travel and salaries for Ukrainian artists to come to Barcelona,” Ani Kazarian adds.

Who was in charge of deciding how Kyiv would be represented at La Merce?

   

Curator Kateryna Pidhaina has lived in Barcelona for the past year and a half and has opened the Test Gallery, a contemporary art gallery. She also continues to work on a number of cultural projects back in Ukraine, including the Kaniv International Sculpture Symposium, where the controversial Vpevnena (Confident) sculpture was first presented.

Pidhaina says that Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko met with the Barcelona City Council in August 2022, when the decision on Kyiv’s participation was made. The Kyiv City State Administration (KCSA) Department of Culture proposed the initial program, most of which comprised folk groups funded by the KCSA. The Barcelona Institute of Culture (ICUB) rejected the majority of this program for lack of diversity and poor fit with the overall festival’s concept.

Pidhaina joined forces with the Association for Friendship between Ukraine and Catalonia (UCRACAT) to lobby the KCSA Department of Culture to allow them to help curate a program for Kyiv’s participation in La Merce. The official response came after an intervention from Ukraine’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs: they said there was no need for help, and suggested that the Kyiv collectives could perform at the free stage which is normally designated for amateur artists.

Pidhaina then appealed directly to Barcelona’s department of culture. She was invited to attend a meeting alongside Ukraine’s Consul in Barcelona. Pidhaina prepared a presentation in which she described the strengths of Kyiv’s contemporary culture. “ICUB was impressed because they haven’t even thought about murals, they didn’t know that Kyiv was full of very modern murals, they didn’t realize Kyiv has a great rave scene,” Pidhaina says. “The Barcelona Department of Culture was really struck by Waone Interesni Kazki (works by mural artist Volodymyr Manzhos). They found funding – and murals cost a lot. Creating a Waone mural in central Barcelona was supposed to be one of the events, but unfortunately we weren’t able to secure a permission from the Urban Planning Department. Many buildings in Barcelona have the status of protected structures,” she explains.

Pidhaina also turned to other managers of cultural projects for support – among them Ukrainian Signal, a creative production company that has organized 30 screenings of contemporary Ukrainian movies across Europe within six months. Ukrainian signal screened Pamfir in Ireland and the UK (in partnership with Conic, a UK-based distributor) and organized cultural events in the US, where they collaborated with YouTube Music to promote Ukrainian musicians.

“We were offered a chance to curate the Contemporary Arts stream. We decided to bring a contemporary ballet performance by Apache Crew,” Ani Kazarian, the founder of Ukrainian Signal, says. Ukrainian Signal had collaborated with Apache Crew before, screening Anatolii Sachivko’s Vodurudu improvised folkloric film ballet across Europe and organizing a number of contemporary performances.

Pidhaina and Ukrainian Signal were not the only people involved in the programming for La Merce, but neither the KCSA nor the ICUB say who else was involved. Besides the artists Pidhaina and Ukrainian Signal invited, Kyiv will be represented by rapper Alyona Alyona, Berehynia (Protectress) Kyiv Theatre of Ukrainian Folklore, a circus performance by Kraplynka (Droplet) cabaret, and an exhibition of posters of Ukrainian artist Mariia Pryimachenko’s paintings. Dasha Kolomiiets, a DJ, will play a set dedicated to Kyiv, and Ivan Sai, Poli Chein, and Maryana Klochko will also represent Kyiv’s vibrant electronic music scene.

There were no restrictions on themes and messages, but war was off limits

 

Pidhaina says that La Merce has an overarching theme each year, but it’s usually quite broad. This year’s theme is support. Posters advertising the festival show a castell, a human tower traditionally “constructed” during festivals in Catalunya, this one made up of characters of different ages and experiencing different emotions. The poster pays tribute to the multicultural richness and diversity of Barcelona’s artists and residents. Still, the festival will not make statements about the war.

“Here our task wasn’t to use culture to convey that we’re living through a war. Rather, we wanted to showcase [Ukraine’s] cultural potential and create a platform for Ukrainian cultural diplomacy in Barcelona. Kyiv will be at the core of it. We want to talk about the city’s spirit, its traditions, its urban environment, and the artists working here,” Kazarian adds.

“No one asked me not to talk about the war,” Pidhaina says. “But I wasn’t going to anyway. The war wasn’t the focus of my presentation for the Barcelona Department of Culture, because I knew full well that this issue wouldn’t be acceptable here, especially at a culture festival. We might want really badly [to talk about the war], but we won’t be able to. We’ll just be told that we can’t, and that’s it. So if you have an hour to showcase something, you have to think about the best way of using this hour. There’s no point trying to talk about the war within this format. There are other platforms for doing it: the Centre for Democracy, the Museum of Contemporary Art. Though there too we aren’t allowed to show weapons, blood, or anything like that. We might be frustrated, but we’re in someone else’s country, and we have to play by their rules. I’ve been dealing with this for the past year and a half here.

Unfortunately, the farther away you get from Ukraine, the less people feel this pain. Local politics also matters: Russia has spent many years peddling its narratives, drawing comparisons. Catalunya is fighting for independence, and Russia has been comparing it to Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics [illegal Russia-controlled formations] in Ukraine for years. Russia has invested a lot in propaganda, has nurtured this interpretation of the situation. And although we know that it’s actually totally the other way around here in Catalunya, we are bound by that reality,” Pidhaina says. 

Representing Kyiv

   

Anatolii Sachivko, the Apache Crew choreographer, has always wanted to bring together choral singing and dance in his shows. The La Merce performance that he staged will involve five dancers and singer and actor Solomiia Kyrylova, most recently of Pamfir fame. They will perform “dance stories” bringing together movement and voice, with Solomiia singing ballads about Kyiv a capella. Each performance will last 30 minutes, and will be performed a total of six times. 

DakhaBrakha will play a full set, 45 minutes to one hour long. Dasha Kolomiiets will play for an hour and a half, showcasing diverse Ukrainian artists, from Myroslav Skoryk and Volodymyr Ivasiuk to contemporary electronic music. “It will be a showcase of Ukrainian music. I want to show that Ukrainian music can be different: electronic, funk, experimental. I want people to turn Shazam on and get to know Ukrainian music. I often show people the vinyls I’m playing so that they can revisit them later. I’ll also have a microphone, which I’ll use to talk about the lives of famous Ukrainian musicians,” Kolomiiets says.

Differences between Kyiv and Barcelona’s cultural institutions

   

The governance of Barcelona’s main cultural institutions is currently considered among the most effective in Europe. Each institution is overseen by two to four public and private organizations, such as the Ministry of Culture, the Department of Culture, the Barcelona Provincial Council, and a number of private organizations. “This is very effective both in terms of making a profit and in terms of social equality, making culture accessible for all.

[For example,] ICUB, Barcelona’s Department of Culture, is responsible for popularizing art. It’s a huge organization that deals with festivals, among other things. The person behind La Merce and several other festivals is a very curious and open middle-aged man. He wants to listen. He was thrilled when I gave him a book from Rodovid [a Ukrainian publishing house]. He’s extremely busy but he always answers my emails. Which is the opposite of the KCSA,” Pidhaina smiles.

“The Kyiv government didn’t offer us any support, not even a letter. It made everything more difficult. We could’ve shown more, something could’ve been done about the Waone mural, if we had official backing, if it wasn’t just curator Katia Pidhaina but the city officials, it would’ve been seen as important. But there was no communication,” Pidhaina says.

Ukrainian Signal founders Kazarian and Andriushchenko are disappointed that the Kyiv government failed to come up with a campaign to communicate the city’s involvement in and representation at La Merce. They ended up developing a marketing approach, making visuals and mock-ups, and creating social media posts despite only actually being responsible for Kyiv’s representation at one of La Merce’s streams. They say they would like the city government to understand the importance of covering events like this, and doing so in a loud and creative way. 

“It’s a shame the KCSA didn’t get involved. It’s a major and important European festival attended by cool artists and performers, but people in Kyiv might know nothing about it,” Ukrainian Signal says.