“Farewell, Empire!”: a video blog about research on personal decolonization at Suspilny
On YouTube channels Society Culture May 8 a new project is starting, dedicated to the search for identity, saying goodbye to the habit and feeling for everything Russian — “Farewell, Empire!”. The video blog consists of ten series, each of which will have a separate topic, in which the host and author of the project Olesya Kotubey-Herutska will explore various aspects of personal decolonization with invited guests.
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“Such worldview projects during major catastrophes, in my opinion, help to ground yourself, get to know yourself, your identity better. And also to rummage through our past and try to understand and eradicate the habits, traditions, elements of daily routine that were imposed on us by the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union, and the Russian Federation. The project has great potential, because many Ukrainians are currently searching for their identity, interested in their own history and culture. They are trying to distance themselves from everything Russian, and therefore the stories of Olesya Kotubey-Herutska, as well as invited guests, will help viewers make this transition less difficult and painful.”– says the editor of the project Oleksiy Matskevich.
Project manager and editor Anna Pogrebna said that the author of the project, Olesya Kotubey-Herutska, has previous experience in creating multimedia materials about the search for identity and decolonization. “Similar materials used to find a good response in the audience of the Social Culture YouTube channel, which was reflected in the number of views. Therefore, the logical next step was to create a separate digital project”.
The first issue, dedicated to the Day of Remembrance and Victory over Nazism in the Second World War 1939-1945, tells about the difference between the Western worldview concept of “never again” and the Russian “can do it again”. How did we perceive the date of May 9 before, how was Ukraine able to free itself from the cult of “victory” imposed by Russia, and why is this an imperial story?
“Some people know what the “optics of the empire” is, through which we have long looked at ourselves, and, for example, refuse Russian content. But there are still many phantoms and surprises that haunt us on the way to liberation from the domination of Russian culture– says Olesya Kotubey-Herutska. — We want to create a safe environment to analyze these things, add humor and irony to this often difficult process. Decolonization policy is behind the state, personal decolonization is behind us. This is a struggle that can be waged by both civilians and the military — the destruction of Russia within itself, the eradication of the cultural artifacts of the empire from one’s private life.”.
The guests of the first issue were: a political consultant, host of the Grunt YouTube channel, Oleksiy Kovzhun; historian, co-author of the YouTube channel “History without Myths” Vladlen Maraev; head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory Anton Drobovich; musical performer Alice Change.
The author and project manager worked on the project Olesya Kotubey-Herutska; project editors Anna Pogrebna and Oleksiy Matskevich; editing director Maria Dergacheva; a designer Nika Nazarenko.
Subscribe to the YouTube channel Society Cultureso as not to miss the next vlogs “Farewell, Empire!”.
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