KURENIVKA
Highlights
The year at a glance. Tap a moment to read its part of the story.
The well
Another project on the scale of the Temple was out of reach, too costly and too draining. But stopping making art was not an option either. Kurenivka chose something small and honest.
Researching the camp’s own name, Yaro found an old photograph of a well near Babyn Yar marked “Kurenivka tragedy”, a reference to the 1961 mudslide that buried part of the Kurenivka district in Kyiv. The camp rebuilt that well on the playa: a simple shape, easy to see from afar, easy to build.
It was a replica of well No. 3, the only thing left standing in that photograph after the mudslide, an image digitised by the team of the Babyn Yar memorial. The camp rebuilt it from reclaimed timber and set it on the open playa. Yaro made it with co-artist Dmytro Pavlenko, and at sunset he and Marina Malyarenko performed inside it.
Kurenivka also kept its door open to Ukrainian artists that year, offering a ticket and a place in camp to anyone bringing art. On the same playa Oleksiy Sai, whom Kurenivka had first brought to Burning Man in 2018, showed I’m Fine, his third project there.
After every black stripe, a white one
If you looked down into the well, you saw a projection: an animation, a single coin rolling through the darkest moments of the last century: the Holocaust, the Holodomor, Chernobyl and the Kurenivka mudslide. But the animation never stopped at the darkness. After every black stripe came a white one; after every death, life returned.
Honour history, and know that everything moves in cycles.
Simply good
The camp around it was simply good: about a hundred people, a lounge, and a separate cherry bar pouring the camp’s own vyshnivka. There were sound sessions with Carpathian instruments, pysanka workshops, pottery at striped low tables, sound healing by day and dancing every evening.
Kurenivka’s cook that year, Taras Klipin, once had a restaurant in Kharkiv and now runs Need to Eat, a Ukrainian cafe in San Diego. He brought varenyky from his own kitchen and cooked more than a hundred litres of khrinovukha and Drunk Cherry, which earned him the name Cherry-cherry Lady. A new team of volunteers cooked dinner every night, and on the last day the camp’s founder smoked brisket and steaks himself.
Behind it all: a container kitchen and fifteen tonnes of drinking water for the week.
The art page
How Much Is Life? Ukrainian art installation at Burning Man 2024
How Much Is Life? A question from Ukraine: the full animation
2024, as people told it
“We will build a replica of well No. 3 from Babyn Yar, the one caught in a historic photograph of the Kurenivka tragedy of 13 March 1961.”
Vozhd, I am who I am, Burning Man 2024.
The 2024 build crew
The people who arrived first and left last.
- Dmytro Pavlenko
- Ros Rusakov
- Sasha Maslov
- Oleg Vasilevich
- Ivan Divan
- Pavlo Makhrinsky
- Yev Zee
- Nikita Vashchenko
- Natalya Markova
- Marina Malyarenko
- Inna Chekhonadskykh
- Ilya Khamushkin
- Masha BM
- Oksana Zaporozhets
- Mitya Zinoviev
- Alexey Popov
- Evgeniya Popova
- Mikhail Turchenko
- Yana Krila
- Anya V.V. Kanary
- Taras Klipin
- Natalya Klipina
- Lilya Bagirova
- Volodymyr Trak
- Andrii Nikitinko
- Igor Panchenko
- Anna Panchenko
- Yaroslav Korets
Were you here in 2024?
New names appear after a quick check by the camp.
- Aleksandr Blackk
- Alex Roman
- Alexa Sandler
- Alexandr Suvorov
- Alexey Popov
- Alexey Prohorov
- Alina Gruner
- Alina Pash
- Alona Makarenko
- Anastasia Bondar
- Anastasia Kalashnikova
- Andrii Nikitinko
- Andriy Baboshko
- Andriy Burkovych
- Angelica Pakhomova
- Anna Panchenko
- Anna Soroka
- Anya V.V. Kanary
- Artur
- Athena Zhe
- Bagirova Lilya
- Dima Chikaho
- Dinara Kasko
- Dmitri Barbaruk
- Dmytro Pavlenko
- Dmytro Rozhko
- Evgeniya Popova
- Frank Lavin
- Galyna Shcherban
- Golovko Konstantin
- Grigoriy Tripulenko
- Igor Panchenko
- Ihor Kuzin
- Ilya Khamushkin
- Ilya Sukhomlyn
- Inna Chekhonadskykh
- Iryna Rudenko
- Ivan Divan
- Ivan Volchanskyi
- Ivanna Morhun
- Kostya Goshchevskiy
- Kseniya Mochalkina
- Maks Karpiy
- Maksym Studilko
- Mariia Litichevska
- Marina Malyarenko
- Marina Rozhko
- Mary Angel
- Maryna Khlynina
- Maryna Slobosky
- Masha BM
- Max Colt
- Max Petruk
- Max Slobodsky
- Mikhail Turchenko
- Mitya Zinoviev
- Natalya Klipina
- Natalya Markova
- Natalya Razumnyak
- Nika Hunko
- Nikita Vashchenko
- Oksana Zaporozhets
- Oleg Bahatyrchuk
- Oleg Vasilevich
- Olga Orlova
- Olya Zinovieva
- Pavel Makagon
- Pavlo Makhrinsky
- Richard Gruner
- Roksolana Vasilyuk
- Roman Marushkin
- Roman Shcherban
- Ros Rusakov
- Sasha Maslov
- Sasha Tryukhan
- Sergii Prykhodko
- Sergiy Gasenko
- Serhii Orlov
- Slava Dyadyura
- Stanislav Chernomorchenko
- Taras Klipin
- Taras Shvets
- Tetyana Prohorova
- Tolik Keda
- Umida Samoenko
- Valeri Kaligorsky
- Vasil Perepelitsya
- Vasyl Nikitenko
- Viktoriia Mishchenko
- Volodya Trak
- Yana Krila
- Yaroslav Korets
- Yev Zee
- Yevgen Loistenko
- Yevhen Kasyanenk
- Yulya Dyadyura
- Yura Zelemskiy
- Zarina Kastelman
- Zina Horetska Tatoo
More from 2024
2024 in the press
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1 Nov 2024
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20 Sept 2024
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17 Sept 2024
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1 Sept 2024
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31 Aug 2024
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6 May 2024