Witnesses

This multidisciplinary site activation involved the projection of large-scale texts from and on to two buildings that face each other on Chicago Avenue. These dynamic, historic billboards suggest a dialogue between factions in the community: elderly survivors of the 1932-33 Ukrainian Famine (Us) and outsiders such as Soviet Officials and recent Latino immigrants (Them) represented by the voices of Soviet propaganda and local Chicago schoolchildren. The site work explored the commodification of land, crops, labor, real estate and history itself, while drawing parallels between the historic genocide and the tenacious survival of urban children. The texts incorporated into this project come from writing workshops held at the Ukrainian Cultural Center involving elderly survivors of the famine and from seventh-grade students at a local, ethnically diverse public school.

Design Team

B.J. Krivanek (Artistic Director); Cynthia Perkin, Karla Roberts; Jennifer Van Winkle (Site Director) Witnesses and Writers: Halyna Boyko-Hrushetsky, Ivan Kolomayets, Lydia Kurylak, Lena Schrebetz-Skyba, Sinovi Turkalo

Design Firm

Community Architexts