Curatorship: Mirjam Niemeyer / helsinkizurich (Finland / Switzerland)
Tutors: Víctor Cano Ciborro (Arquitectura Subalterna), Fani Kostourou, Adriana Pablos

Workshop dates: May 29 - June 3, 2017
Location: Mystetskyi Arsenal (10-12 Lavrska St., Kyiv, Ukraine)
Format: 6-day international and interdisciplinary workshop in the framework of the 10th International Architecture Festival CANactions 2017 (with full-time involvement)

During our five-long days work shop, a Pop-Up action was proposed. We used art as a tool to make visible the spatial necessitates of the MA,  as the main program and operative concept in such amazing space.

Therefore, the proposal 'Art is the Weapon' is sensitive to heritage, and fosters contemporary programmes. Programmes related to art because after the fall of the Soviet Union, most of the great pieces of Ukrainian art - including Malevich Masterpieces- were taken away and sold abroad. In this framework, we promote the Mystetskyi Arsenal as a place where art is not only exhibited but rather created. The reason is as powerful as necessary: art is the weapon to fight against retrograde thoughts and promote cutting-edge ideas, ways of life and critiques that are crucial for the future of Ukraine.




To reinforce this strategy, we have planned a 'bartering system' for making the project feasible. On the one hand, MA gives space - workplace and residence - to young national and international artists of multiples disciplines in order to express their own voices and be the interpreters of contemporary world narratives. On the other hand, artists in residence cooperate with the Arsenal in maintenance issues, opening art to the common people through several workshops, exhibitions, and leaving their masterpieces in the museum. In this way, a new, radical and contemporary collection is supported and hosted by Mystetskyi Arsenal to make Ukraine one of the most important cultural centres of the world.

These ideas were built thanks to a young Ukrainian artist - Polina Shcherbyna- that lived and worked in an installation created by participants that replicated -in 1: 1 scale- how such situation will be within the Arsenal.