Стріха. Захід: гуцульська ґражда, дерев’яні церкви та відновлення старих хат • Ukraїner

Summary

The Ukrainian documentary explores the traditional folk architecture of Ukraine, covering the indigenous hut called "grazhda" and the restoration of ancient wooden churches and homes. Highlighting the architectural uniqueness, the film examines how these structures symbolize family heritage and cultural identity, especially poignant as many Ukrainians live far from home due to the current conflict. The narrative intertwines personal stories of preservation efforts, reflecting a deep desire to maintain cultural traditions amidst modernization and adversity.

Highlights

• Traditional grazhda houses act as living history, showcasing Ukrainian resilience and cultural depth. 🏠
• Folk architecture offers a window into the past and a canvas for cultural expression and renewal. 🖼️
• The grazhda symbolizes a blend of aesthetic simplicity and practicality in Ukrainian rural homes. 🌾
• Wooden churches in Ukraine are a testament to traditional craftsmanship, many needing urgent restoration. ⛪
• Stories of personal effort and community initiatives bring hope for the preservation of cultural heritage. 💪

Key Takeaways

• Grazhda houses are traditional Ukrainian huts that resemble small fortresses, built for protection and showcasing unique rustic charm. 🏠
• Ukrainian folk architecture, including grazhda and wooden churches, is crucial for cultural identity and is at risk due to neglect and historical destruction. 🌳
• Restoration of old houses and churches is a growing trend, fueled by personal passion and communal efforts to preserve history. 🛠️
• Ukrainian youth are increasingly drawn to revitalize village life, valuing tradition and natural living over city comforts. 🌿
• Artistic endeavors, like painting villages and restoring huts, symbolize a revival of cultural appreciation and community engagement. 🎨

Overview

The documentary by Ukraїner takes viewers on a journey across Ukraine to uncover the secrets of traditional folk architecture. From the highland grazhda to the picturesque wooden churches, these structures not only illustrate the resourcefulness of Ukrainian craftsmanship but also serve as bastions of cultural history and familial stories passed down through generations.

In a time where many Ukrainians find themselves displaced due to conflict, these architectural marvels provide a tangible connection to their roots. The film shares touching narratives of individuals revitalizing their ancestral homes, communities coming together to restore churches, and newcomers embracing village life, thus safeguarding a cherished heritage.

Viewers are inspired by the dedication of people like Mykola and Adriana, who, through their passion projects, preserve and celebrate Ukraine's rustic beauty. This drive to maintain and restore folk architecture underscores a wider national movement towards cultural conservation, fostering a stronger sense of identity and pride among the Ukrainian people.

Chapters

• 00:00 - 00:30: Introduction This chapter provides an overview and sets the stage for the following content.
• 00:30 - 01:30: Ukrainian Folk Architecture Introduction This chapter introduces the project on Ukrainian folk architecture, focusing on the Ukrainian hut.
• 01:30 - 02:30: Memories and Heritage of Old Houses This chapter explores the concept of home and heritage for Ukrainians, spanning the geographical breadth from Uzhgorod to Luhansk. It delves into the cultural and historical significance of the architectural styles, materials, and traditions that define Ukrainian homes. The chapter reflects on the emotional and heritage value these structures hold for the people who build and inhabit them.
• 02:30 - 04:00: Hutsul Land and Grazhda Houses This chapter discusses the concept of home, especially in the context of Ukrainians who are displaced from their home due to destruction. It further subtly references different places within Ukraine, highlighting a sense of nostalgia and longing for home, even when far away.
• 04:00 - 05:30: Building Techniques and Historical Context This chapter delves into the architectural styles and methodologies passed down through generations. It explores the familial stories embedded within the walls of homes, highlighting examples like a grandfather's house built in close proximity to that of a great-great-grandmother. Discussion points include the significance of construction dates such as 1925, representing not just a historical timeline but also a tapestry woven with family histories and traditions.
• 05:30 - 07:30: Eco-Building and Restoration Trends The chapter titled 'Eco-Building and Restoration Trends' provides a historical perspective from the late 19th century, around the years 1860-1870. It recounts personal experiences, such as surviving the war without direct missile hits on their yard, preserving their hut, and enduring famine by gathering resources like nettle. This reflects the resilience and resourcefulness during tough times, setting a foundation for understanding modern eco-building and restoration practices.
• 07:30 - 09:00: The Revival of Old Family Houses The chapter covers the transformation of family land ownership before and after the fall of the Soviet Union. During the Soviet era, family land was heavily restricted, and people could only keep a limited number of livestock. However, after the Soviet Union's collapse, families regained their ancestral lands and significantly increased their agricultural activities, expanding their livestock holdings. The chapter highlights how many people relocated to cities like Lwiv and Kyiv during the Soviet reign.
• 09:00 - 12:00: Wooden Churches as Cultural Phenomena The chapter discusses the destruction and erasure of Ukrainian culture, specifically focusing on the burning and destroying of the unique Hutsul land hut, known as grazhda. This structure represents one of the few cultural manifestations that is not confined to a museum setting, as it continues to be inhabited by people. Grazhda is noted as a complex architectural phenomenon consisting of a house combined with additional structures.
• 12:00 - 14:30: Challenges in Preserving Wood Churches This chapter discusses the challenges faced in preserving wood churches, focusing on the traditional structure known as 'grazhda' used in farm buildings. These edifices, constructed by relatively wealthy individuals, resemble small private fortresses, offering protection and security through limited access points like gates or wickets. The presence of dogs further emphasized the need for security against potential threats. Historically, these structures symbolized and provided a means of safeguarding inhabitants from external dangers.
• 14:30 - 17:00: Polish vs. Ukrainian Village Infrastructure The chapter titled 'Polish vs. Ukrainian Village Infrastructure' discusses the methods and timing of construction in Polish and Ukrainian villages. It highlights the practice of cutting trees in the autumn, particularly in the highlands, due to natural conditions such as low water content and tar presence. This timing allowed for a drying period before building houses the following autumn. The passage also notes that historically, people were not as wealthy, implying limited resources impacted construction practices.
• 17:00 - 19:00: Youth Returning to Villages The chapter titled 'Youth Returning to Villages' discusses traditional methods of building and agriculture in rural areas. The narrative details the processes involved in construction using local materials, such as clay, and the manual labor involved in farming practices like threshing. It reflects on the ingenuity and resourcefulness of village communities, describing how they adapt to circumstances using available resources. The chapter paints a picture of life in rural areas, highlighting how people relied on communal efforts and hands-on techniques, potentially contrasting with modern, machine-assisted agriculture.
• 19:00 - 21:00: Painted Village Project The chapter delves into the traditional architecture of Ukrainian huts, specifically looking at the 'painted village project'. It highlights the eco-friendly and sustainable building materials used, such as straw, which provide natural insulation. The text discusses the cultural significance of the 'White masanka', a well-known style of Ukrainian hut, and touches on its historical transformation over 150 years, including changes in its address and status as signified by different numbered plates on the wall, reflecting various periods including Ukraine's independence.
• 21:00 - 22:30: Conclusion The chapter titled "Conclusion" discusses the historical influences and governance changes in the region mentioned, highlighting the numerous authorities that have presided over it. Among the ruling entities were the Soviets, Polish, Romanian, Czecho-Slovakian, and Ukrainian authorities. The passage particularly notes the resilience of the region's infrastructure, mentioning how, for nearly a century, the buildings have seen minimal changes except for updated windows and periodic maintenance of the roof using natural animal fat to prevent leaks. This brief historical overview emphasizes the constant changes in political administration and adaptation in maintenance practices over time.

Стріха. Захід: гуцульська ґражда, дерев’яні церкви та відновлення старих хат • Ukraїner Transcription

• 00:00 - 00:30
• 00:30 - 01:00 This is the project about ukrainian hut, or rather said about ukrainian folk architecture
• 01:00 - 01:30 about what we, ukrainians, are used to build for ourselves on our land from Uzhgorod to Luhansk
• 01:30 - 02:00 from Vylkovo and Hurzuf to Poltava and Chernihiv Today, when millions of Ukrainians are staying far away from home and their houses are destroyed, feelings and memories about the home are strong as never
• 02:00 - 02:30 because every house is a story of a family, in every house they lived for generations My grandfather built it behind us there’s a house of my great-great-grandmother they’ve built. -This hut is built on 1925
• 02:30 - 03:00 we counted approximately the year 1860-1870, she has seen everything, the war thanks God no missiles hit, like on the yard, but the hut survived and famine, grandma told me they gathered nettle, well, it wasn’t that bad here, they could get through it
• 03:00 - 03:30 more in the west, closer to Poland, but it wasn’t good either. -When there were collective farms under soviets, you were only allowed to keep a cow, a calf and 2 sheeps, and when soviet union went down and we had our land back, because grandpa had the land, we got our garden back, we keep 50 sheeps, 5 cows, a horse had a horse that time too cause they took chicken. A lot people moved to Lwiv, to Kyiv, during soviets
• 03:30 - 04:00 they’ve destroyed a lot, taken as if it never existed. They were burning and destroying Ukrainian culture that’s typical for Hutsul land hut - grazhda. One of the few, if not the only, that isn’t a museum where people still live. Generally grazhda is a complex of a house and couple of
• 04:00 - 04:30 farm buildings surrounded with grazhda - high fences with a cape. -We had a dog here, because there were villains. Grazhda was mostly built by more or less wealthy people. Grazhda looks like a small private fortress, get into which you can only through the gates or a wicket. Just as fortress, people built it for protection
• 04:30 - 05:00 from villains, wild beasts, strong mountain winds and snow. -They cut the trees in autumn mostly on the highland. It was mostly in the autumn, november-december. In the autumn there’s a few water not much, mostly tar. It was kind of a natural dry, and then next autumn after summer passed and in the next autumn they built the house. -Before people wasn’t wealthy like now
• 05:00 - 05:30 when you have options to build, and where you dig, you take the clay and you build It was cheaper - you sow grain, gather, bake break, straw is for the roof, here on the yard they’ve put tarpaulins and threshed with flails, threshed everything. Well maybe someone had a machine for horses and it worked better, but we did with our hands made sheafs to know how wide they should be, and made strihach, that was two types of sheafs
• 05:30 - 06:00 some are used for undercover and corners, and middle ones are longer there is no wires, nothing, just straw, 100% ecological and no chemistry and it’s warm White masanka under straw roof is probably the most well-known image of ukrainian hut today over 150 years this hut changed the address for many times, if you take a better look, there are 3 plates on the wall with different numbers. -Number 11 was already when Ukraine became independent, on the left was when
• 06:00 - 06:30 soviets were, on the top was Poland, 225 and there’s Austrian 129 if I’m not mistaking Grazhda Mykola lives in saw many authorities - Romanian, Polish, Czecho-Slovakian soviet and finally Ukrainian. For almost 100 years they only changed some windows and cover, and once per 5 years they cover the roof with natural animal fat to avoid leaks
• 06:30 - 07:00 60 years since the roof was changed, it was covered in the same way and add ram or combined fats, because others are a bit dry, and this holds pretty good that’s why was added There’s a new house nearby, where Mykola’s daughter lives with 3 daughters. Grandpa is making cheese and kids are running
• 07:00 - 07:30 between two huts or go to school, like long ago, 4 kilometers through mountains to the neighboring village. Like long ago on Christmas they go with traditional Hutsul Kolyada, they keep their traditions stronger in mountains For Christmas all came here, sisters from Byrshtun, brothers from Ternopil, we were
• 07:30 - 08:00 5 sons and total of 16 people, brought in the Diduh, laied the straw roughly then laid carpets, bedsheets, kids slept down, elders on the coach it was for us like a fairytale, snow, everyone is going for kolyada, it was a different time
• 08:00 - 08:30 Today we are used to that house is a luxury now everyone can allow, but 100 years ago it was easier - everyone could build himself a house, it was enough to dig some clay or cut some wood, today building from spruce a grazhda or ecological clay masanka will be very expensive. Masters, they take a lot, to make it from reed they take 300 dollars, I asked them, per square meter
• 08:30 - 09:00 with material, it’s more expensive than making it from shingles, if you think about it. I know near Lwiv, not far, around 20 kilometers, young programmer built himself a two-storey house fully of clay, I was surprised, visited my friend, he had his house not far from there. I came there and asking what was that, he says it was some IT guy he could buy himself he got money, but he built, found people and paid more money, a two-storey house of clay, totally.
• 09:00 - 09:30 eco-building trend really exists, though costs a lot, and apart from this trend here came another trend of restoration of authentic huts for different regions. This idea became especially popular among youths, who decided to change life in a big city to a life in a village
• 09:30 - 10:00 -That’s the house of my childhood, I’ve lived here for around 10 years, then moved to Lwiv and rarely came back, closer to the war that has started, instinctively we started coming here more regularly and making some order, reclaiming everything around. Vasyl is a restorator and artist, his company is restoring monumental art - frescos
• 10:00 - 10:30 and paintings. -There are 2000 square meters and more these are churches in the center of Lwiv where history is from 1500th, when was gothic then renaissance, then baroque then rococo and then soviets came and covered it all, and we bring it back Olia is a craftswoman, who’s making scene characters for different artists, filming
• 10:30 - 11:00 and photo-sessions. None of them ever planned to live in the village. -I never wanted to live in village, but right now But you need to realize how it was looking before today It’s a hut from 50th, here lived other people, had their household, here are other people’s things, clothes in wardrobes, in the attic. -Mouses, rats. -How’s that called? Hayloft? Where they kept hay. And I wasn’t feeling like this was kind of my
• 11:00 - 11:30 space but you just had to put much effort to get through all these things and create your atmosphere, now it’s cool. Absolutely. -Cause I came here Olya didn’t. I came with friends, we were drawing, drinking beer, picnicking, weren’t really making some household
• 11:30 - 12:00 but at some point Olya started too and generally what you see now is a really huge difference, because it literally was a forest, abandoned hut. For a long time Vasyl wasn’t interested in history of father’s hut, but he was lucky to have an old man nearby who had answers for all questions. -This land bought father of my father-in-law, 1923 he was working as a forester for a landlord
• 12:00 - 12:30 I came here in 59th, here was an old hut and place was taken, we’ve built, father-in-law was disabled after WW2 he was receiving some money, not much, but at least something And mother-in-law had two brothers in Canada, they were sending packages and she was selling and they gathered money for the hut
• 12:30 - 13:00 -We’ll have an Austrian, cooler one. This is Soviet. I bought it on the auction, but I’ve painted it a bit, needs some cleanup has a beautiful old oak frame, they’ve brought it and two armchairs very cool. bought from Kharkiv, secession times, beginning of the century. Constructive things, interior, long ago just like now
• 13:00 - 13:30 you buy it in Ikea there were fabrics and factories, they’ve produced, people bought. And we collect this and full this place, like this object it will be in stratography-style like 1900th years and 2025 let’s say. -To the left it’s a cellar, kind of a modern fridge
• 13:30 - 14:00 but in future we plan to upgrade it and it will be a winery, we’ll keep there wine. This is our storage, looks big, but actually it’s for a half of the winter or 3d part this is at this moment our workshop, if we need some work with paint or some dirty work or some workspace. But long ago it was a hayloft where they kept hay, I haven’t seen
• 14:00 - 14:30 those times but grandpa told me about it. -And this wardrobe I’ve exchanged for a chair. This wardrobe was in a flat 1901 in Lwiv, didn’t fit the owners interior and design, I had a cool secession chair, we’ve just exchanged. That fits me, chair - them. Ok we can come here, that’s kind of our sleeping room, but near the walls you see the furniture
• 14:30 - 15:00 all for beginning of the century, paintings as well, some are mine, well there’s my icon, kind of interpretation of Chenstohova In my vision, when I was a young student I had time to paint. That’s the old chest we use it as a book depository, we have different interesting albums.
• 15:00 - 15:30 Vasyl and Olya decided not only to clean and restore old parent’s hut, but expand it, rethink and add a new modern part that can be filled with artifacts of the past. -We need to expand it more or less, make bigger or something, so we talked to architect colleagues, what can we do not to destroy the construct and this esthetic
• 15:30 - 16:00 moments of worth of the object, he came, we talked, he said great, construct is good, need some strengthening and that’s it, we basically expand in a way that we have partially modern, it will be a contrast of old and new, but we will see the hut of 50th and we will see what is done in 20th of the next century, that’s generally
• 16:00 - 16:30 the project, a draft of, colleague came, we set for a coffee and I talk he writes and turned out He visualized my first thoughts. -Familiar wooden porch stays but appears a second floor with additional bedroom and kids room for the next generation
• 16:30 - 17:00 -I can’t express how pleased I am. Thanks to me it was saved, I was going to work then back here, took some care about the hut. Well take care isn’t a word, I was working for long and I was like 85 years old and still working, and it looked like, people came asked if we sell it, if we do, I say no one sells it. Thanks, I believed he will return and he returned
• 17:00 - 17:30 brought some order, imagine, no one did it for 70 years apart from different ukrainian huts, we’d also like to get into other phenomenon of folk architecture - phenomenon of wooden churches. Vasyl from the previous episode advised us to go to
• 17:30 - 18:00 Uzhgorod to visit art critic and researcher Mykhailo Syrokhman, who learns for years Ukrainian wooden church. -Wooden church is really a phenomenon, in couple of aspects first of all from side of art, it perfectly fits the landscape, looks fine near the leaf cover with leaves on the trees, distant plan, medium plan, foreground, secondly it’s a history alive time machine isn’t invented yet and you get into it, come and dive deep into 18-17-16 century
• 18:00 - 18:30 -It was built for a bit long, in 1502 it became an actual church, paintings appeared a little later The church of Holy Spirit is one of the oldest churches at Halychyna, more than half of the millennium ago it was built for money of village Honchari habitants. -Why the church appeared, because our village was a rich one, it was
• 18:30 - 19:00 high-culture, and generally the street called Centralna now, it used to be called Honcharna, because at that street lived potters Church is build from Carpathian trees without a single nail only with wooden stakes - tybres, which kept the building together. -It isn’t spoiled
• 19:00 - 19:30 with any unnecessary decoration, anything artificial, everything goes from logic of wood, from material it goes with respect to material, to texture, to the way you put it together, because actually this is the church that can be constructed. All achievements which were present were used in this or that region, they are mostly present in such a building as a wooden church, that’s why
• 19:30 - 20:00 they are that unique. If we speak about Ukraine, Ukraine is a land of wooden churches It was even more a country of wooden churches, but still is. We have around 2.5 thousand wooden churches, moreover, in the regions where you could think how they could appear there and generally wooden church could be one of the symbols of Ukraine
• 20:00 - 20:30 On the old engravings you can see that such churches were in Kyiv before the city was burned by tatars, and in central and supral-Dnipro Ukraine. If in the mountains churches weren’t high because had a hill as a pedestal on plains wooden churches could reach 50-60 meters. Today the most of the wooden churches are saved in the Carpathians. -Conservation is always better in the mountains. Like Slobozhan Ukraine
• 20:30 - 21:00 Kharkiv region and nearby regions all that is gone, mostly thanks to the soviet period it was a planned destruction. If I remember it well, on Luhansk region there’s one in lists and one in Donetsk, no one knows if they still exist, on Kyiv region a range of beautiful churches, on Chernihiv great wooden churches.
• 21:00 - 21:30 This politics of destroying churches reached the Carpathians later, Zakarpattya was the last to join the soviet union in 1946 officially, and the regime was less bloody didn’t attack that much but still destroyed some churches. Churches that weren’t destroyed by soviets mostly stayed closed for decades, up to 1991
• 21:30 - 22:00 many were turned to grain storages and other agricultural buildings, others got towers destroyed and turned into storages too. In 1946 church was closed because pseudo-cathedral of communist authorities and moscow church that has banned Greek Catholic church, there was no armory nothing like bolshevists liked to do with other churches, but the cathedral was closed all the time and there was no sign that it’s memorial of architecture of Ukrainian soviet
• 22:00 - 22:30 socialist republic and that’s it, absolutely no one has access to this cathedral and when our church was out of the underground in 90th, church was consecrated as a church of Saint great martyr Demetrius that’s why the church has two names, as people come here and ask, they don’t know why church has two names, because it was roughly twice consecrated, once in year 838 and once in 1990 Church of Holy Mother of God is a great architecture
• 22:30 - 23:00 memorial in Boyky style. If you see familiar silhouette of a pyramid - that was built by Boykys inhabitants of middle of Ukrainian Carpathians The year 1838 was a hard year because that time Austro-Hungarian empire took men as recruits and church was mostly built by women very few men were here to help, so women literally hewed timber, lifted them up
• 23:00 - 23:30 It was their ophir for their men who were on frontlines. As we see it has a very interesting form. If we look at a spruce in the forest, it looks really familiar because it goes the same big and then smaller and smaller and to the top. That’s unique Boyky style because cause wherever we go we won’t see such a style and that much spruces. In the year 2013 on the session of committee of UNESCO world heritage in Cambodia wooden churches of the Carpathian region
• 23:30 - 24:00 were included to the list of World heritage, but protection of UNESCO isn’t a panacea from destroying there was no light, only candles and they stretched the electricity from center here, the panel where switchers were, and some relatives of high authority man from Zhovkva who had
• 24:00 - 24:30 relation to such cathedrals, who had no license or permission to do such a work and they’ve set there an electricity panel and one day at night during the thunderstorm, ball lighting hit the panel and the only good thing is that the cable was on the ground
• 24:30 - 25:00 it started to smolder and our church almost burned down like many churches especially in Carpathians and here were, well, not even the fire extinguishers, that were some balloons filled with white powder and actually this was the save, when it started to smolder, it reacted
• 25:00 - 25:30 and that powder spread all over the church, you can’t imagine how it was Today the church is ruined itself because of lack of money for restoration, but most of all because of negligence and misunderstanding by crowd or priests the true value of the old wooden church often the authentic look of the church was changed due to the favor or unfavor of the visitors. -This idea of local
• 25:30 - 26:00 people and local communities first of all and most of all they have no taste and understanding of value of wooden architecture, that’s idea of priests who mostly have no taste and understanding the value of wooden architecture, for them church is a place to pray, so what is left? State We have lists, we have historical directories, we have expertises, we have everything, we have law, it just doesn’t work
• 26:00 - 26:30 When some miserable barn is burned down the prosecutors look on everything who could burn what. Church burned down - “what happened has happened”, though this church is the main value of the village. Often village raises some incredible money just to massacre the most valuable they have in the village and cover it with some shining plaque. It’s some weird trend for pseudo-golden
• 26:30 - 27:00 pseudo-silver purple plaques, that’s some horror. Peak of bad taste, the incredible peak of a bad taste. Imagine yourself a picture - green mountains, trees, spruces, background are blue mountains and all that and suddenly an explosion sun reflected from that super-shining surface torn your eyes and torn your brain. -After the year 1928 church was covered with plaque we can see in front
• 27:00 - 27:30 of us, it will be 100 years old soon, before that time it was kept under the shingle surely we want to restore it to be with shingle roof but you understand that’s obviously financially expensive. Maybe one day there will be a sponsor who wants to make his contribution we’ll be very happy to restore the old historical antiquity for people understood it we just need to explain more to people, to tell them more that yes we’d like
• 27:30 - 28:00 you know our church to shine, to have fine lining and so on and if you have a neighbor nearby, for example of the other community and so on who did it, it attracts people and they say obviously that it’s like that there and we do nothing and why is it so and so on, but there’s a good good question to ask if your neighbors church is shown on TV or in the internet for example, highly developed, who is visited by tourists and so on and everyone says that
• 28:00 - 28:30 that’s ours. So they come here and that means they like it -You came to a calm mountain landscape and suddenly there’s an enormous golden onion we can’t just ignore moscow patriarchy, they build the church with a square-nest method they need to take the territory but there’s a false concept of the orthodox style and orthodox style is moscow style - that enormous golden onion, hipped bell tower and that’s it, as if there’s no
• 28:30 - 29:00 ukrainian orthodox style or carpathian church that used to be orthodox long ago but that’s our treacherous enemy, he’s brought it long ago, it happened on Volyn either, for example, on Kyiv region, when three-frame or groin vault churches, they build this bell tower near the entrance they russified the appearance, russified the landscape, it is happening with incredible
• 29:00 - 29:30 speed, we have lots of that golden onions around mountains, that’s incredible and reaches some marasmatic situations when on the wooden church they take off that baroque dome and set on the same height another tower which has to look like the tent stile, because Ukrainian comes from Visantia, and Visantia is a half-sphere, accurate noble half-sphere, firstly. Secondly, that’s baroque church, Mazepas
• 29:30 - 30:00 baroque is pear-like forms, which look like European baroque ones, that’s definitely not the onion, but for some reason people think that there must be an enormous onion, the biggest of the biggest, and for some reason under it should be such a thick neck. Excuse me, but that’s a totally Islamic cathedral, thats Islam, islamic form. Generally I think that moscovian architecture mostly comes from it…
• 30:00 - 30:30 everything has its own road, every architecture, every nation, the question is aggression, intervention, imposition colonial condition is colonial condition, everyone has accepted a sign of colonialism, including the church architecture. That’s incredible, but the main reason for massacring the architecture memorials is initiative of local inhabitants, who just lack knowledge. If you just travel
• 30:30 - 31:00 around villages you can hear that people are proud for covering their church with a plaque and now it seems to be more good-looking. -It’s a five-dome church, it was covered with shingle, now it’s re-covered with plaque already but until 1990 it was covered with shingle and it was the only church at that time on the Prykarpattya, of five domes. This church has an interesting history. People say it was built by ex-henchman
• 31:00 - 31:30 of Dovbush for opryshky’s money - that known to us rebellious villagers who fought against polish landlords. -We were told that this church is built for sins. Sins of opryshky. Opryshky were such people only men, of a very strong figure, they… You couldn’t join opryshky just because
• 31:30 - 32:00 they had as we say now casting, but their special casting, we were showed even on practice, they’ve either put a big tree log, as they say in our village, or just found a place with a tree cut, and a guy who wanted to join opryshky, he had to put his hands there and the main thing, either Olexa Dovbush or his henchmans in high
• 32:00 - 32:30 ranks in the group, they stroke with an axe among the fingers and it happened cutted the fingers and in that case they couldn't join because they said they don’t need disabled the church also belongs to UNESCO world heritage list and if the decision about re-covering the church with a plaque was taken today, it would have been criminal responsibility, but this plaque is more than 30 years old and who knows if we’re ever lucky enough to see it authentically wooden
• 32:30 - 33:00 -It’s obvious that folk architecture is about huts and churches. We have amazing examples, for example, hotels in Slavske there is one, I’ve forgotten the name, that kind of imitates the folk huts on size, but that’s the apartments of hotel made like huts with Boyky iliac roofs under the shingle, look as made with and old technology, but with surely modern functions with a bit
• 33:00 - 33:30 bigger rooms, bigger, with generally new thoughts about all this and it’s cool, so I think that’s not something can exist, but possibly it should exist, because someone from Mariupol or Kharkiv comes to Slavske and see the same silicate brick houses under the red iron roof isn’t interesting to most of them, yeah, and exactly neo-Boyky hut is interesting, same
• 33:30 - 34:00 I’ve seen the fantastic works of Oleh Ukraina who loved this trans-Dnipro theme, he’s made couple of farmsteads under cane, minimalistic, like white masankas but with bigger square of glass, atrium-like rooms, a bit more complicate, well not a bit, much more complicated iliac roof from the cane with mansard-like windows. So that’s definitely not about the folk architecture but he was inspired with that things and it turned to be delicious, really, very-very delicious but
• 34:00 - 34:30 moving the cane rooftop on the office scale to Lwiv city or Dnipro city definitely isn’t worth it Sure, there are ukrainian architects who work on integrating folk architect achievements and techniques into modern objects. But on the same time folk architecture itself hasn’t disappeared anywhere, people keep on making experiments with their houses. -All that costed almost
• 34:30 - 35:00 20 gran, and 2.4 gran for summer kitchen. For roughly a months I’ve made the wall, drafts I was doing myself, by in the newspaper I’ve read once how do people make a pathway and a wall I’ve decided to try it myself, firstly made a pathway one, second, trained a lot, for the whole winter in the winter I trained, took two sheets of pressed paper, made a sketch and the pattern, vyshyvanka
• 35:00 - 35:30 and made it. Then I tried on the summer kitchen, first pattern I’ve made, I liked it, it was good Mykola lives in this house with his wife and often they have guests their grandchildren. When the idea of making that kind of vyshyvanka came to Mykola, he wasn’t understood, but now this hut is known all around the village. -I’ve started painting at school, I was best in the class and competitions,
• 35:30 - 36:00 I had first place on my region, then Crimea region, I was studying in Crimea at school, took first place, and that’s why I’m doing this good, selecting colors and all that, then we moved here, worked as a painter on a collective farm “Progress” it used to be. We mostly painted for the church
• 36:00 - 36:30 icons and mostly, what, banners, it was a trend for communist painted swans, it was a tread for swans and they’ve put a banner on the wedding “Welcome” and we had to take it away from the other side. Then I injured the hand and I got third group and I was doing, started collecting caps long ago, 16 years, why so long
• 36:30 - 37:00 because they’ve burned it, you go to the scrapyard, someone burns it and you go back with nothing there were moments I couldn’t collect a thing, mostly I take it on summer, I had to take with me a net against bees, also in collective
• 37:00 - 37:30 household I came and gathered, they press, take off the caps and press the bottles, I’ve took went there in winters, but you take, sort this colors, I have a lot of dark ones, cherry dark green, dark colors, I’m not using them, a lot of black ones, I haven’t
• 37:30 - 38:00 tried yet. Well black color is beautiful, but caps I’ve tried didn’t like Mykola was looking for ornaments in the books he took from regional library, bought from women on market and took a look at his wife doing embroidery. -From “Soviet woman” magazine, this patterns. Old one. Recently been to library made a copy for myself, we’ve argued for ornaments for vyshyvanka, that I’ve taken all of them
• 38:00 - 38:30 she’s embroidering with me and I make my patterns, and we had some conflicts for that vyshyvankas I have a lot of them, quite a collection, but I choose the best. Like every folk art it was created from the materials you had nearby and plastic caps, nuff said are really wide-spread material. -So one pattern to be honest, on the floor it takes month or a bit less
• 38:30 - 39:00 to train, put it together until there’s some beautiful pattern, here on the wall it was the easiest, it’s rather hard to collect it, takes long time, and clean them, there are often signs on the top of the caps and there are some you can’t clean. I’ve taken some universal solvent 647 and that thing girls
• 39:00 - 39:30 use to clean the nail varnish, it works good too. But not all. In winter I sit and clean them there are some easily cleaned and some need more time. Sorry to throw them away, I don’t know 8 bags or something which weren’t good, and here for plinth I have from yogurts 4 centimeters in diameter will be all around the house. With that bigger caps. For now patterns from caps
• 39:30 - 40:00 are only on the one side of house and summer kitchen, but it’s planned to do it on the both sides for now the work is slowed down and there’s lack of caps, so if at home you were doing sorting plastic and you have some extra, send to the Drevyni village in Volyn region, receiver - Mykola Levchuk -Honestly I need everything, red, green, I have them the most, blue needed, here
• 40:00 - 40:30 are 13 colors, there’s 3 types of blue. There was some water, morning dew, blue, so there in the pattern, and here Zhyvchyk, well blue are a deficit, also orange they are kinda not good can’t be cleaned from black and there’s black dots on it and it’s not good, so orange color, what else, yellow or white, the most deficit
• 40:30 - 41:00 Nowadays there’s no other entertainment in the ukrainian villages except doing something on your own yard there’s lack of some public places where common village life could happen, something like this somewhere is a church, which anyways can’t be reached by asphalt pavement
• 41:00 - 41:30 -What is the difference between a Polish village and Ukrainian? Polish has a pavement, bicycle road and road signs, and we have nothing, a piece of asphalt without marking and right next to it people walk in dirt on the road, well not even a road, kind of a pavement and and that’s spread almost all over the villages and no one is doing literally nothing about it and there has to be a mega-program
• 41:30 - 42:00 for villages.What is a public space in villages - that’s a school, a village council but not always not all the villages have culture houses and who have it left from soviets they have in front of it totally modernistic square just of concrete tiles and in the best case people just seed marigolds, maybe a memorial for liberators or Shevchenko, more or less such landscape
• 42:00 - 42:30 or no public places at all, there’s a church, a school and that’s it and all this streets without pedestrian pavements. And actually a good project could be is a stadium in the village that’s just an incredibly important space for a community, for society, they get together there
• 42:30 - 43:00 and again what is the stadium - it’s a square, people need open space, open sky and that’s all, where everything will connect, either administrating options and with some kind of a bank with a market, maybe with some playground for village could naturally get together there, had a place to talk about something apart from after service in the church. Today life of a village is a life of every separate hut separated by the fence. Everyone is used to treating his house like something special. My land - my rules
• 43:00 - 43:30 Mykola would never take his vyshyvanka off the wall, whatever laws would be. -I would never do it. Even if they shoot me, I wouldn’t take the caps off. Let it be as it is. I won’t walk through the village and tell what to do and how to do, no one ever commanded me to do
• 43:30 - 44:00 or not to do, I’ve done it and that’s it. We have democracy, you do whatever you want for yourself that’s some participative level to make the law and say like let’s go and break everything no village head will go and break his neighbor’s fence cause he’ll slay him that very moment or stab with pitchforks, no other way. You need to do the program of pushing to development the public spaces, make programs of development let’s say tourism or some
• 44:00 - 44:30 strategy of space development, involve villagers, give them cool examples to gain trust authority and then you say “guys, we need to move it” and for example you’ll compensate the land elsewhere or just buy it from you, or kind of, but this is very important, I mean 10 years needed of certain rhythmic work, no flicks, cause all this flicks lead
• 44:30 - 45:00 to violence. February 24th brought some changes into village life too A lot of youth came there, often with children, and they are interested in options village gives to them and how to make living here more comfortable. In each village there are people who are ready to change something -Regarding synergy moves, what do central authorities have to do, they have to give powers at the places
• 45:00 - 45:30 they need to release these powers locally for people learned to manage Why the village was so abandoned, cause everyone like the beggars were going to regional council governor asking for money, to fix the holes. I don’t need to beg, I have local budget, it is filled, I’m looking for investors myself, work on creating new places or some business because I want to involve money, I have plans, I have young people willing to live here, they have requirements, they have offers, we’re creating
• 45:30 - 46:00 civil society, Poland has 50% of population in cities, 50% in villages, we have the opposite 75% in cities, the rest in extincting villages. Country bigger in square than Poland, which has that resources of agriculture and so on. I mean, we need to create conditions for people that they don’t need to go to town currently everyone wants to break out from village and move to city by any chance, but there are different interesting stories -If you are in a big
• 46:00 - 46:30 city everything is pretty much the same, doesn’t matter if it’s Berlin or Istanbul or Bangkok or New-York, it’s all the same, but when you are in some small Macedonia, in some village you go or you are somewhere in India or Thailand, in countries less economically developed but who saved their traditions, and that moment we’ve started to think about
• 46:30 - 47:00 that there’s something in it, that civilization ruins something, it brings comfort but it takes something maybe much more valuable Today Adriana with a husband and daughter live in the village Hrushka, what’s next to Bakytu. The decision to move here didn’t come right away, but after years of living in abroad, but the most interesting is that Adriana and her husband didn’t stop at buying the house, they’ve made the whole project of transforming the village
• 47:00 - 47:30 -This hut belongs to us, we’ve bought it, this project, we’ve called it “Painted village”, it was initially created as a some kind of hobby, we just like everything connected with ukrainian traditions of murals, painting, we’ve researched it, it looked very beautiful before, people lived in kind of sacred world, they were surrounded with this beauty in everything, it was in clothing in towels
• 47:30 - 48:00 furniture, houses, wells and you just lived your life, but you’re all the time into this beauty, and we as people of esthetic liked it very much and we decided to represent it in some minor volume we had access to, and with our funds we’ve started to paint it a bit something in the yard, a well near the house and so on
• 48:00 - 48:30 Hobby of researching Podillya painting quickly turned into the idea of creating in the village museum under the open sky, for someone walking around could come across painted well or a museum hut We faced the fact that if this object doesn’t belong to you personally, you have to agree and deal with other people and it was a bit more complicated, we’ve realized that where we want to show our views we have to buy it personally, so
• 48:30 - 49:00 we’ve bought this hut, we plan to make a museum here, a museum of ukrainian village, it will be called “Ridna hata”, people, villagers of Hrushkivka support us very much, they message us on Facebook, offer to bring some exhibits, because for years we’ve been buying old things, furniture, towels vyshyvankas and so on, so we plan to finish repairing here and then kind of call out, go and collect
• 49:00 - 49:30 all our exhibits, I think that next summer we’ll open a museum here with an absolutely free entrance for everyone willing, for villagers, tourists who come here, because we understand that our generation and our children who are townsfolk they have a very poor knowledge about how people in Ukraine lived before because before there was a small percentage of people in towns, mostly lived in villages, but how all this looked like, what their everyday life looked like, what did people use and how it looked like
• 49:30 - 50:00 our children have a poor knowledge about it. The hut where the museum will be created soon is one of the oldest in the village. A sign on the old door is for the year 1897. Painting on the hut is new, but is as much as possible alike ones were common in this region. -I’ve researched the painting thoroughly, because we’re on Podillya, that’s Khmelnytsky region and Podillya painting is canonized that it exists
• 50:00 - 50:30 but sadly there are very few examples now, because before they’ve built everything from clay, that means this hut over 150 years just goes down, because clay is melting, it’s raining if people aren’t living there and supporting it, as a result very few are left, literally all over Khmelnytsky region there are just a couple of objects where there’s a true authentic
• 50:30 - 51:00 painting, but we’ve spent a lot of time in archives, we’ve researched all that because we didn’t want to paint it for beauty just for it looked pretty, we wanted to represent as much as it’s possible Podillya paintings, that’s mostly plant ornaments and you can see that’s the Podillya tree of life Today painted village contains around 20 painted objects - hut’s, gates, bus stops and wells All that is made by initiation of Adriana’s family and her sister’s, who also moved to Hrushky
• 51:00 - 51:30 -Here we have the dug well, it’s around 700 years old, here always was the social context, right, it was a place where people met and shared news, right, so before human was the only source, there were only natural sources of information, not digital ones. Museum hut and painted wells aren’t the only what project
• 51:30 - 52:00 of Adriana can offer. In the neighbor village there’s another restored hut, where’s completely different space, more focused on tourists from big cities, who want to come to the village for the Ukrainian “retreat”. Here you can sleep on the straw, eat a pear from the branch and surely walk through the unique flooded world of Bakota, which is right nearby. Adrianna is sure that village and living in nature is the best cure for burning out and other common city psychological troubles. Living
• 52:00 - 52:30 in the village though physically challenging is simple and happy. -Kid came to the village when she was 8 years old, so she had a background of living in city with conditions, she had background of living abroad and I had some threats about that it will be hard for her of other kids won’t accept her but these are really that open-hearted people, she just went to school as a new girl and kids just all of them
• 52:30 - 53:00 stood up and went to give her a hug on the first day. I was standing with tears on my eyes, when we lived in the big city and second grade there is 8 years old but that’s the competition who’s got what kind of phone, what kind of clothes, branded or not. We’ve moved to village and we saw here many advantages for living actually, and we saw a lot of kindness in people and we were very impressed, that inspires us a lot, we have no troubles of for example
• 53:00 - 53:30 in big cities or abroad, where people are, well, there’s no community. In ukrainian village it is still alive. On the other hand we’ve seen the village extinct just on our eyes, because there are some reasons, economical, unemployment and so on, but still here are some people who live here, people who carry this culture and traditions and we’ve realized
• 53:30 - 54:00 that it’s like the last wagon of the train, if we aren’t doing it now, in 10-20 years it will be too late Each expedition in Ukraine inspires and leaves two feelings how we lack knowledge about our country and how much we want to save, restore
• 54:00 - 54:30 and how much we want to do. Take off the plaque from the wooden churches and return the authentic shingle restore old huts slowly being destroyed, restore lost paintings of ukrainian architecture But the main for every ukrainian to fall in love with their own architecture traditions which are a part of our deep and various culture. And it only depends on us what happens to it further.
• 54:30 - 55:00 -That’s like a family memorial. -That’s history alive. -You know, this is the land where you can talk to people about anything. -You can live in such a beauty, in such a community where people help each other, where everyone is so open-hearted. -We live in very interesting times, because each
• 55:00 - 55:30 of us is involved in building this state. -500 thousand of caps would be fine I would make such a cool exhibition, somewhere here and it would be a damn show.