This workshop is part of the educational platform ‘Without Distance’ 2026, within the project ‘Life Long Burning – Future Lost and Found (LLB 3)’, funded under the Creative Europe programme of the European Union. It is implemented in partnership and with the financial support of the Goethe-Institut Bulgaria and the National Culture Fund under the programme ‘Targeted Support – Creative Europe’

Four Ukrainian women endure the trials of war but do not participate in armed confrontation with the enemy. These are the women who “haven’t done anything extraordinary” for victory but, nonetheless, through loss, emotional exhaustion, forced migration, and the inability to live a “normal” life, are direct participants in the war.

They work with the body not as illustration, not as therapy, but as a carrier of experience – experience that cannot be reduced to headlines or statistics. Each artist choose a site that resonates with her own history of rupture: a place marked by fracture, adaptation, stubborn continuation. These locations became stages for site-specific solo performances

• In A Fragile Circle – OLENA CHUCHKO

• Exit – NINA BULHAKOVA

• Warm Of The Cold Walls – JULIIA HRYSHYNA

• Drowsiness – KATERYNA KUZNETSOVA 

The event opens with a conversation with Anton Ovchinnikov – curator, multidisciplinary artist, choreographer, and performer from Ukraine. He is the founder of the dance company Black O!Range Dance Productions and co-founder of the Ukrainian Association for Contemporary Dance. In conversation with him is Bulgarian director, producer, choreographer, and writer Kosta Karakashyan, who with his Studio Karakashyan and dance company Karakashyan&Artists explores empathy and emotion through movement. The work of both artists is connected to dance, immersive performance and film production, which are the themes at the heart of this event.

In Ukrainian, “pamyataty” means “to remember.” But hidden inside this word are two pronouns: “ya” – I, and “ty” – you, as if to emphasize that memory exists between us, in me and you simultaneously, and that it must be shared. The project is an attempt to hold memory without aestheticising pain. At a time when Ukrainian culture risks being reduced to a political symbol, “PAM_YA_TA_TY” insists on complexity and awareness that Ukrainian artists are not witnesses, but creators shaping the cultural memory of today. “PAM_YA_TA_TY” is also a bridge between Ukrainian artists who remain in Ukraine and those who have settled in Europe.