Jeff Rosenthal Three teenagers tear down the posters of the Russian rapper Kasta near the metro station and screw the Russians They are wearing vibrant clothes and heading to the nightclub Closer. On June 25, the charity festival “Na Chasi” (“On Time”) was held there. The event became a symbiosis of creative expressions of DJs, sculptors, and artists.
The long queue at the entrance is divided into three at the end. Nearby, a girl in rainbow sneakers says that she is a volunteer. I remember how she looks like to find her later at the festival. As I enter, I immediately forget about it. I am now thinking about how not to get lost here myself.
I feel like I am a freshman looking for the right audience. Several clubs have made a vast chain of rooms and I can stand in each one for an hour. Before the full-scale invasion, Otel and Closer clubs held the most famous techno parties in Kyiv. The night events were postponed to noon and afternoon due to the curfew, and the festival was organized to raise money for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
We are not the only ones who decided to catch the festive moment. There are a lot of photographers. Jeff Rosenthal came to Kyiv from the USA a month ago. He wants to show the cultural resistance of Ukraine with his photos. Jeff says that the US knew almost nothing about Ukraine before the full-scale invasion. Now the West sees Ukraine as both a future ally and a vision of their history.
“Ukraine is a new democracy, a people united after centuries of imperial reign around the vision of a society with the same standards of individual liberty and justice that form the structure of western democracy”, — Jeff says.
He believes that we need to remind ourselves in different ways. The monotonous news make the West get used to the topic of war.
“As for what the west notices and admires, it’s the human stories: stories of relatable people who do unimaginable things to support their country, whether on the battlefield, as volunteers, or as survivors. All for the sake of independence and freedom.”
Here are Jeff’s photos from the event.
Jeff Rosenthal
A charity metal concert is held on the territory separately from the festival. We enter there for a small donation. The atmosphere here is different. The whole festival is serene and bright-coloured, and here it is dark, cool, and loud.
We find the True Tough band near the barbeque stand basking in the sun and waiting for their performance. They have played since 2013 and often perform at Closer. A group drummer Denis doesn’t like any of the songs about full-scale war. He sees it as an attempt to hype the topic. The most important thing in music for him is sincerity. Therefore, if True Tough releases a song about war, they will do it before or in the autumn.
“We once again made sure that people really need music and that it supports them morally, — the group says after the performance. — It’s very cool that the concert was organized because a few months ago we could not even think about a simple band rehearsal”
We ask the group if they felt the difference between commercial and charity performances.
“It is very important for us to help our country and our army as we move forward to defeat the Russian occupiers. Therefore, of course, there is a difference for us.”
True Tough performance on “Na Chasi” by Alina Chernohor
Minimal techno plays on the dancefloor. In the rooms, we find performances, shops and an exhibition. There is a second entrance, where the club “Lesnoi prichal” is. Here is a place where everyone is chilling. We go upstairs and meet Bohdan. He is the creative director of the GORN ceramics studio. Bohdan can make everything: dishes, furniture, installation and art objects.
Bohdan offers me to sit on a rainbow chair, which he made himself. There is a lot of pottery around him. The studio is exporting more since a full-scale invasion started. Bohdan says that although Ukrainians buy less after February 24, foreigners are now more likely to buy a piece of Ukrainian art. The pieces of art, though, shall be authentic and not represent a distorted Ukrainian image Russia wants to create. And the main idea of the studio is the pursuit of the essence and casual perfection.
Translator: Valeria Molderf
