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Mykola Ridnyi, a Berlin-based Ukrainian artist and filmmaker, has been exhibiting a brand new transferring picture challenge titled The Battle Over Mazepa on the John Hansard Gallery. To speak concerning the challenge, he joined us for a quick interview.
As an artist and filmmaker, how do you navigate the intersection of visible storytelling and rap music in The Battle Over Mazepa? What challenges and alternatives did you encounter in merging these creative kinds?
The Battle Over Mazepa is a rap battle which has a construction of 6 rounds. It’s embodied by 4 performers Ellie, Moh, Caxxienne and Exo, who’re representing completely different creative method, completely different gender and nationwide background. Every spherical has personal thematic route associated to the determine of Ivan Mazepa. He was a political and army chief of Ukraine in XVII-XVIII century. In Russian historiography he’s iconic traitor of the empire. In Ukrainian historiography he’s seen as a fighter for independence from extra highly effective neighbours. On this sense, “the battle” is ongoing for a number of centuries of European historical past earlier than I remodeled it into rap. Along with my German colleague and literature researcher Susanne Straetling, we run a workshop for performers in Berlin the place they got here from completely different locations in Germany, the UK and Romania, to get them in a course of political, historic and tradition context of Mazepa. After that they wrote their reflections which now you may see and listen to within the movie.
The Battle Over Mazepa brings collectively hip-hop tradition and European historical past. Are you able to share extra concerning the inspiration behind this challenge and the way you determined to make use of rap battle because the medium for this creative exploration?
All the things began from the purpose once I discovered about two poems: “Mazepa” by Lord Byron and “Poltava” by Alexander Pushkin. Each of them form Mazepa as a central determine of the story. However the views are fully completely different. Byron romanticising Mazepa and telling a narrative of his youth and punishment for the forbidden love affair. Pushkin wrote his textual content in opposition to Byron and describes Mazepa as an aged pervert and a political loser – betrayer of Russian empire. However, romantic picture of Byron impressed many different writers, painter and filmmakers to inform the story of Mazepa. Sadly, Pushkin’s method mounted the adverse picture of Mazepa in Russian tradition till the current day. After we take into consideration modern type of poetic expression which is each delicate about political context and impressed by human’s passions, completely different types of rap tradition come to a thoughts. Rappers typically specific their adverse angle in the direction of one another in a type of a diss-tracks. Similar to Pushkin did in opposition to Byron.
The juxtaposition of historic themes with present sentiments in your work highlights the enduring relevance of occasions from centuries in the past. Are you able to talk about the importance of those historic narratives in in the present day’s international context and why it’s important to revisit and reevaluate them by way of modern artwork?
Mazepa is an attention-grabbing determine as a result of it illustrates and proves that opposition between Ukraine and Russia has outdated roots. This opposition primarily based on Russia’s imperialistic aggression and Ukraine’s anti-colonial wrestle. The opposition of Mazepa and Russian tsar Peter I is the interval when it began and when Ukraine has no likelihood to outstand. However this isn’t solely Ukraine and Russia and its historical past. It associated to Britain rather a lot. As a result of that was Lord Byron who made Mazepa’s title well-known in the entire world. That fame remodeled him from an actual determine to a fiction character and even a well-liked title. For instance, a number of cities within the US and Canada are named Mazeppa however for certain most inhabitants don’t know why. That’s the issue when sure nations and societies doesn’t have personal political company and tradition legacy on this planet to be heard straight however not by way of interpreters from bigger nations. Sadly order of issues in a historical past change by tragedies. Right this moment extra a extra folks hear and begin to be fascinated by Ukraine and its tradition due to the continued warfare.
In what methods do you envision The Battle Over Mazepa contributing to bigger conversations concerning the intersection of artwork, historical past, and modern tradition? What do you hope viewers will take away from this immersive expertise?
Historic and tradition analysis and hip-hop kind of expression just isn’t one thing you may simply discover in a single place. That’s one of many targets of the challenge: to combine completely different audiences and alter folks’s approaches of how they have a look at completely different phenomena and context. Secondly, inventive folks in the present day are very completely different from the period of Byron and Pushkin who’ve been two privileged white males of the time. Feminism and decolonisation modified lots within the XX century however this combat remains to be ongoing. I’m grateful to the performers who carry modern perspective and critique to the historic materials they labored with. They demonstrated that regardless of things like native historical past or specifics, sure issues are vital all over the place.
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