Chapter 3 · 2 years · Kyiv

2019

Home in Kyiv

No desert this year. Instead, a home: the Kurenivka Palace of Culture, 1,200 m² in Kyiv, alive from May until the pandemic.

The year at a glance. Tap a moment to read its part of the story.

1,200 m²

in a former factory hall in Podil, Kyiv

1,300+

guests at the housewarming

500–1,500

people at every Precompression and Decompression

Why a home

Tired of renting halls

After two burns the community was growing on its own. Precompression before the burn and Decompression after it had become Kyiv’s favourite parties, and every one of them meant finding and renting a venue all over again. Sasha Ovsianko kept pushing one idea: Kurenivka needs a place of its own.

The idea had a model. At the European Leadership Summit Kurenivka had met the Swedish burners, who ran a space of their own, and every Kyiv party meant building a venue from scratch twice a year and taking it down again.

In 2019 they found it: a former 1946 military plant in the industrial part of Podil, 1,200 square metres with twelve-metre ceilings. Over two months some 300 volunteers cleaned it, painted it, built stairs and washbasins and cooked for each other, under a simple motto: it’s not your job, it’s just your turn. Tools and materials were paid for by the community itself, through crowdfunding.

The Palace opened on 11 May 2019 with a 24-hour Precompression themed Housewarming, and ticket sales paid for the build-out. More than 1,300 guests came.

Guests came the way burners do, with gifts: potted plants, food and drink for a home that was still half-furnished. Why a Palace of Culture? Nobody in Ukraine had opened one in twenty years, and this one would be a palace on the inside, about what happened in it, with its own clubs for dance, song and making things. Soon the KISS Bar opened in the courtyard, possibly Ukraine’s first recycled bar: built entirely from things that had already been used once, nothing bought, staffed by volunteer bartenders. KISS stood for keep it simple, stupid, and every drink came with a kiss from the bartender, if you wanted one. Kurenivka also wrote its own eleven principles. One of them read: there are only participants, no spectators.

Art of the year

Vitya's head

Over the year the Palace hosted parties, art and a giant sculpted head in glasses, Vitya’s head, made by artist Rostyslav Dudchenko. He built art for every Kurenivka decompression, and six years later he would bring Blue Bull to life.

The year

A year of the Palace

On 13 July 2019 the Kurenivka Stage played Atlas Weekend, the largest festival in Eastern Europe, with more than thirty artists, DJs and performers between the main and night stages. On 13 October came Decompression Rocket, an official regional event that launched the Palace as a spaceship, with colourful costumes, a gift economy and no idea where the mission would land.

Two creative communities grew out of the Palace’s workshops and went on independently: the Kurenivka Artists' Guild, gathered by Semen, for painting, sculpture and customised clothes, and Papaykalab, led by Alina Volkova, for music, DJing and electronic experiments.

Now what?

The morning after

The morning after the first party, for the first time, nothing had to be taken down. And with that came a new question: now what? A permanent home needs a working model, with a bar licence, studio rents and taxes. The camp had dreamed about the space more than it had planned for it, and the team disagreed about where to take it. The original core went separate ways.

All of that year’s energy went into the Palace, and Kurenivka didn’t make it to the playa. The Palace stayed open until the pandemic closed it.

In their words

2019, as people told it